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Relation-Specific Creative Performance In Voluntary Collaborations: A Micro-Foundation For Competitive Advantage?, Terence Ping Ching Fan, Duncan Robertson

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

A fundamental question in the strategy literature is how sustainable competitive advantage can be generated within one firm and yet difficult to copy by another. We offer one solution to this conundrum by way of relation-specific performance that is developed in creative projects – where the individuals involved have significant latitude on the intended objectives as well as their collaborators on these projects. Because higher-level cognition is involved in navigating such projects from conception to implementation, there is heightened relation-specificity in their performance – as measured by how widely they are adopted by third-party users. This relationspecificity means that any …