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Knowledge and competitive advantage: The coevolution of firms

This issue of JIBS offers reviews of two books that analyse the dynamic interaction between the business environments and business strategies in very different ways. The institutional underpinnings for business strategies are a major research topic for comparative management, aiming to explain why in different contexts firms pursue different strategies, and with different implications for performance. J Peter Murman in ‘Knowledge and Competitive Advantage’ takes a historical perspective focusing on the co-evolutionary processes between national innovation systems, business strategies, and performance. This books thus adds to the industry-level longitudinal research reviewed in JIBS no. 4/2003, Tom Murtha et al.’s ‘Managing New Industry Creation’ and David McKendrick et al.’s ‘From Silicon Valley to Singapore’. A more contemporary research focus is chosen by Doh and Teegen in ‘Globalization and NGOs’. They bring together an esteemed group of scholars to investigate a new phenomenon in the international business arena: non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Multinational enterprises are used to deal with other businesses, or with governmental authorities. The emergence of NGOs acting both nationally and internationally challenges MNEs’ established ways of interacting with other organizations because NGOs have different sources of legitimacy, and means of influencing business. Thus, they also challenge the theoretical models developed in international business research.