It is over two hundred years since Adam Smith began his “Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations”. The field of strategic management1 is barely fifty years old and it struggles to answer for the business organization the analogous question that smith posed (and for which he provided primitive but remarkably insightful answers) with respect to the nation state. The question (namely, what explains the ability of the business enterprise to generate wealth for the stockholders and other stakeholders) ani- mates managers, policy makers, investors, and the public. Over the last couple of decades a significant body of empirical research has emerged which provides at least partial answers.
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