Dynamic Capability as Fashion

1. IntroductionThe question of how best to create an adaptive state with environments and organizations has been an important and fundamental theme in strategic and organizational theory (Andrews, 1971; Chandler, 1962; Miles & Snow, 1978). Research on dynamic capability1 (hereafter abbreviated as "DC") emerged from the latter half of the 1990s to the early 2000s as a study on how an organization gains and sustains competitive advantage to overcome changes in the operating environment2 (e.g., Dosi, Nelson, & Winter, 2000; Eisenhardt & Martin, 2000; Helfat, Finkelstein, Mitchell, Peteraf, Singh, Teece et al., 2007; Helfat & Peteraf, 2003; Teece, 2007; Teece, Pisano, & Shuen, 1997; Zollo & Winter, 2002). Teece et al. (1997) were famous for being quoted even while having only a working paper, which was subsequently published. They were followed by Eisenhardt and Martin (2000), and researchers3 such as Zollo and Winter (2002) studied routines and organizational learning focusing on the keyword "capability." These three influential papers cite the following concepts that comprise DC: 1) the level of environmental change; 2) organizational processes or routines; 3) resource configuration; 4) the role of managers (for example, decision making with regard to resource investment and allocation); and 5) learning mechanisms. Later, many researchers adopted a resource-based view (RBV) and advanced their studies as being based on DC if they contained the keywords "change," "competitive advantage," or "capability" though these papers did no more than provide descriptions of static resource states and the related changes. By casually labeling research on RD Teece et al., 1997; Zollo & Winter, 2002) suggest fundamental concepts that were later cited in scores of papers.5Implementation of DC concepts as the source of sustainable competitive advantage: Teece et al. (1997)Teece et al. (1997) created and implemented DC concepts to explain why some companies can build competitive advantage in rapidly changing environments. According to Teece et al. (1997), DC is "the firm's ability of a company to "integrate, build, and reconfigure internal and external competences to address rapidly changing environments" (Teece et al., 1997, p. 516). DC is a firm-specific process, and the reasons for it being the source of sustainable competitive advantage are as follows: 1) the structure and processes of organizations themselves are idiosyncratic; 2) organizational processes are determined by the companies' history (i.e., path dependency); and 3) the resource configuration of an organization is heterogeneous. A company derives competitive advantage from its organizational processes (both organizational and managerial). Organizational processes can be divided into three primary roles: coordination and integration, learning, and reconfiguration. The processes themselves are formed by the current assets held by the company and the path the company has taken to that point.6A focus on managerial capability: Eisenhardt and Martin (2000)Eisenhardt and Martin (2000) state that "the firm's process that use resources-specifically the processes to integrate, reconfigure, gain, and release resources-to match and even create market change. Dynamic capabilities thus are the organizational and strategic routines by which firms achieve new resource configuration as markets emerge, collide, split, evolve, and die" (Eisenhardt & Martin, 2000, p. …