The competitive advantage of an enterprise originates from its special resources, which can bring economic rent to the enterprise. Driven by economic interests, enterprises that do not obtain economic rent will certainly imitate the superior enterprise, and the result is that enterprises converge and rent dissipates. Therefore, the existence of enterprise competitive advantage and economic rent shows that the special resources of superior enterprises can definitely be imitated by other enterprises. Researchers of resource-based theory have conducted extensive discussions on this issue. They believe that at least three factors hinder mutual imitation between enterprises:
① The causal relationship is vague. The environmental changes faced by enterprises are uncertain, and the daily activities of enterprises are highly complex. The rent of an enterprise is the comprehensive result of all the activities of the enterprise. Even professional researchers find it difficult to tell the relationship between various activities and the rent of the enterprise. Disadvantaged enterprises do not know what to imitate and what not to imitate. Moreover, the observation of superior enterprises by disadvantaged enterprises is costly. The more comprehensive and careful the observation of disadvantaged enterprises is, the higher the observation cost is. Even if disadvantaged enterprises can obtain a small amount of rent through imitation, it may be offset by the observation cost.
② Path dependence. Enterprises may have certain resources and advantages due to foresight or accident, but the value of such resources or advantages was not recognized by everyone before or at that time, and no one imitated them. Later, the environment changed, the situation became clearer, and the value of resources or advantages gradually emerged, becoming the object of pursuit by enterprises. However, due to the passage of time, other enterprises can no longer obtain such resources or advantages, or can no longer obtain such resources or advantages at such a low cost. Enterprises with such resources or advantages can obtain rents stably.
③ Imitation cost. There are costs for the imitation behavior of enterprises, and the imitation costs mainly include time costs and capital costs. If the imitation behavior of an enterprise takes a long time to achieve the expected goal, then during this period of time, it is entirely possible that the advantageous resources will lose their value due to changes in the environment, making the imitation behavior of the enterprise meaningless. Under such a deterrent, many enterprises choose to give up imitation. Even if the imitation time is short and the advantageous resources will not lose their value, the imitation behavior of the enterprise will consume a lot of funds, and the consumption of funds is uncertain. If the benefits brought by the imitation behavior are not enough to compensate for the costs, the enterprise will not choose to imitate.
Resources are closely related to the profitability of an enterprise. The resource view focuses on the question of “how can a resource create long-term high returns for an enterprise”. The competitive advantage of an enterprise lies in directly or indirectly controlling resources that competitors cannot control, so as to increase competitors’ output costs or reduce their use benefits. The business management activities of an enterprise revolve around the acquisition and control of resource barriers. There are many ways to obtain and control resources that increase the profitability of an enterprise, which can be self-created, purchased, or through cooperation and mergers. Due to the limitations of objective conditions, it is impossible for an enterprise to obtain all the resources it needs, so there are business management behaviors such as project cooperation, strategic alliances, and mergers between enterprises.
An enterprise should determine which resources to operate on its own and which resources to seek cooperation from the outside world, the possibility and cost of the enterprise to obtain and control such resources, and whether such resources can bring long-term benefits to the enterprise.