International Human Resource Management-MJ Version

FIGURE 2.1

activities, but specific marketing skills and managerial capabilities can also
form non-location-bound firm-specific advantages.
With regard to location advantages – or country-specific advantages (CSAs)
as Rugman and Verbeke call them – they distinguish two sources: home and
host country and two ways of using them: ‘static’ and ‘leveraged’. Home coun-
try country-specific advantages, for example a highly skilled technical work-
force, may be used in a ‘static’ way, that is to support current firm-specific
advantages. However, they can also be used in a ‘leveraged’ way, that is to
develop new firm-specific advantages, for instance a new type of technology.
The same goes for host country country-specific advantages. For examples of
home and host country country-specific advantages we refer to Chapter 1.
In Figure 2.1 Rugman and Verbeke distinguish the two types of firm-specfic
advantages discussed above, location-bound and non-location-bound, and
three different combinations of country-specific advantages:

• home country country-specific advantages, used in a leveraged way;


• host country country-specific advantages, used in a static way;


• a combination of home and host country country-specific advantages, used in
  either a static or a leveraged way.

40 International Human Resource Management

Home country CSAs

(leveraged)

Host country CSAs

(static)

Home and host country

CSAs (dual)

Non-location-

bound

Location-

bound

Types of FSAs

Use of CSAs

Global

International

Multidomestic

Transnational

Sources of international competitive advantage and competitive strategies
(adapted from Rugman and Verbeke, 1992: 764)