How firm resources and behavior impact firm performance: An examination of firm resources, competitive actions and performance

In this dissertation, I considered how firm resources, actions and performance may be interrelated. I tested the notion that resources both enable and interact with firm actions to impact performance. Drawing from resource-based and actions-based theory and empirical research, testable hypotheses were developed suggesting that a firm's resources may impact performance potentially in three ways -- directly, mediated by actions, and in combination with actions. I examined (1) the extent to which firm resources and actions each directly predict variation in firm performance; (2) the extent to which firm resources predict variation in intervening actions and thereby predict variation in performance; and (3) the extent to which the product of resources and actions in combination predict variation in performance. With a combined dataset of 4,337 actions, gathered through the structured-content analysis of over 16,000 published news articles, and 980 model-years of resources and performance data collected from industry and government sources, 44 foreign and domestic automakers were analyzed over a study period from 1993 to 2000. I find empirical support for key components of their relationships. The analysis shows evidence that firm resources impact performance, both through, and with firm actions.