Measuring Competence? Exploring Firm Effects in Pharmaceutical Research

Renewed interest in the resource-based theory of the firm has focused attention on the role of heterogeneous organizational ‘competence’ in competition. This paper attempts to measure the importance of these effects in the context of pharmaceutical research. We distinguish between ‘component’ and ‘architectural’ competence, and using internal firm data at the program level from 10 major pharmaceutical companies show that together the two forms...