From Resource-Based View to Digital Resource View: Re-theorizing Competitive Advantage in the Age of Digital Resources

Publication Details

Publication Date

10/06/2026

Volume / Issue

Vol 1, Issue 1 (2026)

Article No.

009

Journal

British Journal of Contemporary Research

Received

30 May 2026

Views

25

Downloads

5

Abstract

The Resource-Based View (RBV) has long explained competitive advantage through firm-specific resources that are valuable, rare, inimitable, and non-substitutable. Although this perspective remains influential in strategic management, its assumptions of resource stability, ownership, scarcity, and protection-based imitation barriers are increasingly challenged by the rise of digital resources. Digital resources such as data, platforms, analytics systems, algorithms, and digitally embedded routines are scalable, recombinable, non-rivalrous, and continuously evolving, making them difficult to explain through static resource logic. This paper advances the Digital Resource View (DRV) as a theoretical extension of RBV and as a more suitable framework for understanding competitive advantage in digitally intensive environments. The paper conceptualizes digital resources as strategically configured and contextually embedded assets whose value emerges through integration, orchestration, recombination, and adaptive deployment within organizational and institutional settings. It identifies four core mechanisms of digital-era competitive advantage: digital value creation, configuration-based digital rareness, uncertainty-driven imitation barriers, and normative digital pressure. The analysis argues that competitive advantage in the digital economy depends less on exclusive resource ownership and more on firms’ capabilities to configure, reconfigure, and legitimize digital resources in response to technological, market, and institutional change. The paper contributes to strategic management and information systems literature by refining resource-based theory for the digital economy and providing a conceptual foundation for future empirical research on digital resource configuration, adaptive advantage, and digital-era firm performance.

License

This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License . Free to read, share, and adapt with attribution.