Abstract

Competitive advantage and stakeholder management are two important research streams that have attracted
much attention during the past few decades. Distinctive approaches to studies on competitive advantage exhibit
differences in their assumptions, units of analysis, and strategic implications; however, none of them can
individually explain the whole concept of competitive advantage. Although competitive advantage is the core
issue of strategic management in which stakeholder management is rooted, the two topics have developed
seemingly independently in the literature. By focusing on value creation, value protection, and value capture, this
paper suggests a theoretical framework that employs a stakeholder perspective, linking three approaches on
competitive advantage—the resource-based view, the relational view, and the activity-position view. This
framework provides insight to an incomplete picture of competitive advantage in the extant literature.

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