The Competitive Potential of IT Applications - An Analytical-argumentative Evaluation

One of the prevailing views is that technology-based IT assets do not have the potential for sustainable competitive advantage because they are usually not rare and can be easily acquired by competitors. However, previous RBV-based research on the competitive potential of IT has paid inadequate attention to IT applications, which are a combination of application software and (digital) information content. Conducting an RBV-inspired analytical-argumentative evaluation, we challenge this view and argue that different types of IT applications as sub-group of technology-based IT assets differ in their potential to yield competitive parity, temporary and sustainable competitive advantage. More specifically, we show that out of nine types of IT applications, one has the potential to yield competitive parity only, three have the potential to yield temporary competitive advantage, and five actually have the potential to yield sustainable competitive advantage. Based on our theoretical analysis we suggest six propositions for future empirical research.