Untangling Infinite Regress and the Origins of Capability

We argue that strategic management in general—and capability theory in particular—suffers from problems of infinite regress that can be traced to an unsatisfactory specification of initial conditions. We argue, first, that this has led to an overemphasis on path dependence, experience, and history, without sufficient attention on initial conditions: more proximate, decision-oriented punctuation points that can be used for better theoretical...