Resource-based view of social media as a source of sustained competitive advantage
Name
761729574-MIT.pdf
Description
Full printable version
Size
5.13 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
d84c39dbe80d53211fbd658ca8e2a4de
Author(s)
Pervaje, Amith (Amith Kumar)
Advisor(s)
Jeanne Ross.
Date Issued
2011
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
Executive summary: Social Media is increasingly becoming prevalent and firms are increasingly adopting social media. Managers are concerned about the value social media provides and how it can be used for competitive advantage. The resource-based-view of a firm suggests that resources that are rare, valuable, imperfectly imitable and non-substitutable can create sustained competitive advantage. This thesis uses the resource-based view of the firm applied to five case studies of Wiki implementation and analyzes how social media could create sustained competitive advantage. The analysis in this thesis finds that social media can be used to enhance existing resources and capabilities in a firm. These organizational capabilities are hard to imitate because of path dependency, social complexity and causal ambiguity and thus provide the firm sustained competitive advantage. The effective implementation of social media by a firm requires that it identify its core capabilities and resources to enhance, identify the gap that exists between the needed capabilities and the capabilities the firm possesses and then systematically embed social media in the daily routines and processes of the organization. This can be done by adopting appropriate social media guidelines, training and policy enforcement. Adopting social media by itself will not confer a firm sustained competitive advantage but capabilities thus enhanced could confer a firm sustained competitive advantage.
Description
Thesis (S.M. in Engineering and Management)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, System Design and Management Program, 2011.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 59-62).
Subjects
Engineering Systems Division.
System Design and Management Program.
MIT Department
System Design and Management Program.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Engineering Systems Division
Terms of Use
M.I.T. theses are protected by
copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but
reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written
permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.
copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but
reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written
permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.
Persistent DSpace Link
