From Resources to Sustainable Advantage: A Deep Examination of the VRIO Framework in Strategic Management and Entrepreneurship

Strategic management scholarship has long been concerned with explaining why some firms consistently outperform others despite operating in similar industries and environments. While early strategy research emphasized industry structure and competitive positioning, subsequent scholarship shifted attention toward the internal characteristics of firms as the primary drivers of sustained performance differences. The VRIO framework (value, rarity, imitability and organization), highlights how he business and equipment and the technical knowledge of its workers are the resources that, due to their attributes grant an advantage competitive position compared to other companies in its sector. Which is a good approximation to explain the construction of competitive advantage (CA) in businesses (Amaya, et al., 2024). The VRIO framework emerged from this intellectual shift as a systematic method for evaluating whether a firm’s internal resources and capabilities can serve as sources of sustained competitive advantage. The VRIO theoretical lens is rooted in the Resource-Based View (RBV) within the feld of Strategic Knowledge. It centres on the idea that the resources existing within a company play a pivotal role in its competitive advantage within the market. Resources are then seen as tangible and intangible assets that the company controls and that can be used to create and implement strategies, while capabilities are sets of resources of a company (Gondim, et al., 2024). Rather than focusing on external threats or market opportunities, VRIO analysis directs analytical attention inward, asking whether what a firm owns or controls can generate superior value over time.