Limits to Growth of Multinational Replicator Companies. the Case of Mobile-phone Operators
Abstract: The notion of a resource-based competitive advantage contains a paradox. How can superior and inimitable resources that are so widely believed to be the source of competitive advantage also be a source of competitive advantage for multinational companies that compete by replicating their highly standardized and increasingly imitable business models in foreign markets? This article examines the competitive advantage of multinational replicator companies through the combined lens of the resource-based view and transaction cost economics. I ask what it is that distinguishes business model transactions (replications) after which I compare the efficacy of multinational and national firms for managing such transactions (replications). I conclude that there is a source of sustainable competitive advantage for multinational replicators, that such an advantage is more likely to be found in the multinationals’ dynamic capabilities than in their locally operative business models, but also that such capabilities and business models may contain the seeds of their own demise partly caused by the replication strategy itself, partly by attributes of the business model such as open and non-proprietary global standards and weak appropriability regimes.
