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Currently, Resource-Based View (RBV) theory is also looking at economy, social orientation, and environment. Triple bottom lines, make money, give back society, and preserve the environment. RBV is moving away from the traditional economy, but now incorporating the important aspects of learning, community engagement, and the natural environment.
Scholars have suggested how the role of learning is being part of the development of RBV theory. It stressed how learning could enhance VRIN to become input for increase the competitive advantage and the firm performance. RBV must incorporate with the Learning Theory, or known as Vicarious learning. RBV has reached a very prominent position in strategic management and has become a very important element of the strategy field, whereby it uses the economic theory to explain the implications of strategic action (Greve, 2020). Scholars have suggested that learning theory had adopted the organizational theory to link with the causes of strategic actions. Vicarious learning happens when the firm allows the individuals to exchange their knowledge indirectly from the others such as observation through hearing and viewing, rather than direct learning via instructions (Dahlan, 2021).
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The role of learning can be related to understanding environmental change. Environmental change can be originated from other sources than competitors and it can weed out or eliminate sustained competitive advantage (Barney, 1991). The learning process of the firm can be triggered when the firm does not fully understand the environment or the change in the environment that requires the firm to conduct additional learning.
In business run by university and colleges, a university have the vision to be a leading flexible learning provider in Malaysia has already developed a mature online distance learning system that can fit the outbreak of pandemics that causing the country to be locked down nationwide. With this leading management strategy on the university’s resources, it has caused the university to develop a competitive strategy that is sustainable, valuable, rare, and difficult to be imitated by its competitors as most of the universities or colleges have only started to struggle and take necessary measures to convert the real in-person physical classes to online at the beginning of 2020 during the outbreak of a pandemic. the university have learned from its own experience of wanting to be the leading provider of flexible learning, that this clearly demonstrates how the university has conducted additional learning due to lack of understanding of the market at that time, and have been compatible with the current market demand. This is a classic example of how the role of learning is integrated to be the source of competitive advantage.
Furthermore, community engagement is now considered as the source of competitive advantage. Ideas and views are exchanged with the community and firm to achieve the critical steps to improve the resources of the firm. Scholars had applied insights from organizational behavior, psychology, and sociology to make the case that the community in which a firm is embedded is a valuable, rare, inimitable, and non-substitutable resource that holds potential as a source of sustained competitive advantage (Gibson et al., 2021).
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It is obvious that RBV has been extended to include community engagement. RBV is now merging back with IO principles. In order to enhance the firm’s performance and competitive advantage, interacting between internal capabilities and the external environment is very important. Scholars have suggested that communities are promising resources of the firm during tumultuous times (Wellman & Wortley, 1990).
There are motives behind community engagement when some may opt to mitigate pressure, resource acquisition, or improving the reputation of the firm (Fontana, 2018). Community engagement is deemed to be the action taken to mitigate pressure when certain firms collaborating with NGOs to avoid unnecessary interruption by other parties that may affect the implementation of their project or plans.
Other than that, community engagement can be seen as acquiring resources as Firm-NGO collaboration will allow either the firm or NGO to develop resources that may not be done in isolation.
Lastly, reputation of the firm can be improved with community engagement such as CSR that will create an impression of good corporate citizens that allows the firm to be more receptive by the local market and gain recognition from the local communities (Kemp, 2010). In short, a firm’s competitive advantage can be sustained by taking steps to be engaged with the community, whereby such measures are taken are intact with the RBV that will enhance the resources of the firm according to the VRIN’s principle.
RBV theory has also been evolved to include the idea of having a natural environment as a source of competitive advantage (Gibson et al., 2021). Preserving the natural environment can be one of the efforts to develop the competitive advantage of the firm. For example, KFC Malaysia has gone further level to the partnership with Eclimo Sdn Bhd, whereby Eclimo Sdn Bhd has provided KFC with Eclimo ES11 eco-friendly scooter for deliveries whereby this electric scooter is fully electrical and do not produce carbon dioxide and reduces noise pollution (The Jakarta Post, 2013). With this collaboration of KFC and Eclimo Sdn Bhd, KFC Malaysia is taking further steps to protect its resources from being obsolete or weed out by the authorities.
Another example is that the Iranian government has already banned the use of combustion motorbikes in their capital and opted the electric vehicles as an alternative (Voon, 2015). From the measure taken by KFC Malaysia, it is clearly shown that KFC is taking one step ahead to prevent a similar incident to happen in Malaysia that may affect their resources which will bring a direct impact on their competitive advantage. The collaboration between KFC Malaysia and Eclimo Sdn Bhd will create a sustainable competitive advantage for the firm in a long run.
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Hence, the above example clearly demonstrates that preserving the environment is one of the sources of competitive advantage where it will cause the resources of the firm to be aligned with VRIN especially on the element of inimitable whereby such strategy taken by the company of evolving of the resources will create the sustainability of the resources.
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