Political resources are too specific to be redeployed into market strategy

Evidence

In this section we will use the resource-based view and path-dependence theory in order to develop a theoretical framework that addresses the above-mentioned research questions. In recent publications such as Dahan (2005a; 2005b) and McWilliams et al. (2002), the resource-based view offered a useful perspective on issues related to CPA, such as political resources. For our study, a resource-based perspective seems especially promising because increasing investments of resources in non-market strategies are to be seen as one of the core arguments for a potentially inefficient strategic path development. Since political resources are scarce, immobile and highly specific, they cannot easily be employed at the market strategy side of the company. Hence, these tangible and intangible corporate resources cannot be shifted into market strategies such as raising the customer satisfaction level of the company. — Georg Schreyögg and Jörg Sydow, The Hidden Dynamics of Path Dependence, 356

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains why scarce, immobile, highly specific resources produce lock-in — specificity is the mechanism that blocks redeployment between strategy domains.
• XREF: Connects directly to the resource-based view’s asset-specificity logic and to the volume’s sunk-cost/switch-cost arguments for path dependence.