The Study Of Competitive Advantage Of Firm In The Bionic View

The reason why firms succeed or fail is a long discussed question in both economics and management. It can be traced to the classic economics on the growth of firms, but now it becomes the central question as "how firms achieve and sustain competitive advantage" in the fields of strategy. Generally said, there are mainly two paradigms on this topic. One believes that the competitive advantage is exogenous out of firms. This paradigm includes the competitive force theory by M.E. Porter and the strategic conflict theory by Carl Shapiro. The other paradigm is the new thrilling "capability theory" including resource-based view, core competence theory, dynamics capability theory and so on, which argue that the origin of the advantage is endogenous inside firms.This thesis aims to establish an approach to integrated the two paradigms above in the view of bionic study of firms, which helps a better understanding to the economic phenomena and has been employed throughout the development of economics and management. The recent development of the bionic study focus on the similarity between firm and human being, and the personification approach on firm is proposed. This involves the fields of psychology and sociology, according to which the success of individual person lies in two capabilities: Intelligence and Emotional Intelligence. The former concerns more inside while the later outside. This thesis argues that the success of firms is more like that of individual person. There are two kinds of competitive advantages; one is from internal activities rooted in "Corporate Intelligence", while the other is from external activities rooted in "Corporate Emotional Intelligence".Then a chain of causality model of success of firms is proposed, which is compatible with both the exogenous advantages paradigm and the capability theory. The purpose of this work is to provide a view by which the cause of success of firms would be understood as that of individual person. The coming of the informationeconomy impacts firms deeply both inside and outside. The approach initiated by this thesis can offer a useful idea for firms who pursue the sustained competitive advantage in the drastic competition of the information economy.