Resources and Capabilities 41op other products that compete closely with those of the offender, or attempt to shut
the offender out of the market with long-term contracts and tie-ups.
Unique Historical Conditions. The defining moment for many organizations is their
founding. At birth, organizations are imprinted with the vision and purpose of their
founders. This emphasis on the founders illustrates the importance of the individual.
The initial assets and resources that accompany the organization’s origin are unique to
that place and time. Firms founded at different times in other places cannot obtain these
resources; thus, the resources cannot be duplicated. Examples of unique historical
foundings abound, such as starting a company in a great location that was unrecognized
by others at the time. Another example might be the creation of a new venture by sci-
entists and engineers whose special knowledge is in companies specializing in genetic
engineering or software development.
Ambiguous Causes and Effects. Causal ambiguity exists when the relationship be-
tween cause and effect is not well understood or is ambiguous.^25 In business, causal
ambiguity means that there is doubt about what caused what and why things happened.
When these factors are imperfectly understood, it is difficult for other firms to duplicate
them. Even though the pieces may look the same as in the original, the rules of congru-
ence are unknown, so the imitator cannot replicate them. Entrepreneurs themselves
often cannot explain their own successes, so how can imitators hope to duplicate their
operations? Sam Walton’s break-all-the-rules rule shows that he understood that some
things simply could not be predicted by an algorithm.
In the context of competencies and skills, two kinds of causal ambiguity exist. One
is linkage ambiguity, which includes how relationships work together. Linkage ambi-
guity is related to the complex relationship issue discussed below. For example, compa-
nies recognize that training is a good thing, and they spend billions of dollars each year
training their employees and managers. However, sometimes much of the training is
wasted as people return to their jobs without demonstrating any noticeable change in
performance. What is the link between training and performance? Some companies train
more successfully than others, but no one really understands why. If we understood, we
would make all training the same and it would all be effective. Even copying the way a
successful company does its training doesn’t work because the capability of transferring
skills also has linkage ambiguity.
The other ambiguity is characteristic ambiguity,which refers to the lack of knowl-
edge about which competencies are the actual sources of SCA and how they work. Why
do some ventures have high-performing teams while others do not? Why is information
technology an advantage in one firm and a continual problem in another? The reason is
that IT and teams have characteristic ambiguity, that is, we do not know everything
there is to know about either IT or teams.
It may seem odd that a firm with high-performance skills and resources has no bet-
ter idea of why things work than the potential imitator. How is this possible? Economic
organizations can be very complex. The relationships among product design, develop-
ment, manufacturing, and marketing are not subject to complete quantitative analysis.
They often depend on the complicated interaction of social, psychological, economic,