We posit that a firm's resource configuration constitutes a critical context for various corporate governance mechanisms. Although innovative knowledge assets are generally a key determinant of a firm's economic performance, they also lead to greater information asymmetry among managers and owners and to the need to grant managers more discretion in making resource deployment decisions. This we…
The resource-based view of the firm emphasizes the role of firm-specific resources, especially firm-specific knowledge resources, in helping a firm to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. However, the deployment of firm-specific knowledge often requires key employees to make specialized human capital investments that are not easily redeployable to other settings. Thus, in the absence of e…
We argue that the risk associated with the value of a firm's core resources has an impact on employee decisions to make firm-specific investments, independent of the threat of opportunism that might exist in a particular exchange. We further explore mechanisms firms may adopt to mitigate the employee incentive problem stemming from the risk associated with core resource value. These arguments s…