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Abstract

As economic internationalization advances, the question of how firms cope with increasing pressure for competitiveness gains momentum. While scholars agree that firms need a competitive advantage, they debate whether firms exploit the comparative advantage of their economy and specialize in that strategy facilitated by national institutions. ‘No’, argue strategic management proponents of the resource-based view. ‘Yes’, claim contributors to the competitiveness literature. My micro-level studies of these opposing views show that firms within one economy do not specialize in the institutionally supported strategy. The discrepancies between these findings and the analyses of the competitiveness literature are attributed to differences in the indicators employed to measure corporate strategies. Whenever macro-level indicators are used, the related loss of information on micro-level variety entails that specialization effects are pronounced – possibly exaggerated.