Senior Leaders as a Source of Competitive Advantage and Above Normal Performance: An Empirical Examination
In this paper, we isolate a critical organizational resource – senior leaders of organizations. We assess these senior leaders using the four criteria of value creation, rareness, inimitability and being organized to exploit to isolate those who are sources of competitive parity, disadvantage and advantage. Our results suggest that general managers with different organizations have the potential to be a source of competitive parity, competitive disadvantage or competitive advantage and can, respectively, lead to normal, below normal and above normal performance. Our study contributes to a better understanding of the Resource Based View and the link between specific resources and performance.
Professor Rowe joined the Richard Ivey School of Business as a faculty member on July 1, 2001. He served as the faculty advisor for the PhD Program in General Management/Strategy from January 2002 to June 2009. He teaches Strategic Analysis and Action to EMBAs, a Corporate Strategy elective to MBAs and a Strategic Leadership elective to HBA2s (senior undergraduates). He taught a doctoral strategy seminar from 2003 to 2009. He was appointed the inaugural holder of the Paul MacPherson Chair in Strategic Leadership in July 2002. Effective July 1, 2009 he became the Director of Ivey’s Executive MBA Program.
Professor Rowe's research is in the area of strategic leadership and he has published several journal articles and made numerous presentations at annual meetings of the Academy of Management, Strategic Management Society, Project Management Institute, Administrative Sciences Association of Canada, and Atlantic Schools of Business conferences. He serves as a reviewer for several academic journals and is active in the community where he has served as the Vice-Chair and member of the Board of Directors of The International Alliance for Missions and has served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Newfoundland and Labrador Employers' Council. Finally, he is an active consultant and has facilitated strategic thinking sessions for several organizations such as the Association of Canadian Publishers, the Alliance for the Control of Tobacco (Newfoundland and Labrador), the Newfoundland and Labrador Medical Association, Fishery Products International, Gros Morne National Park, and Sir Wilfred Grenfell College.