Falsificazione della relazione esistente fra vantaggio competitivo e sovra redditività

This research is aimed at clarifying the nature of the relationship between abnormal earnings and competitive advantage falsifying the assumption, subscribed to by a large part of the strategic studies, under which competitive advantage is a necessary and sufficient condition for the achievement of economic profit. If there is economic profit, it means that the enterprise has an advantageous position within the competitive system and, vice versa, if the enterprise has an advantageous position, it will generate abnormal earnings. Starting from this cause-effect relationship, within a lot of studies in the strategic field (particular reference is made to the structural competitive positioning studies and on the resource based approaches) the two notions of competitive advantage and abnormal earnings ended up overlapping, generating an ambiguity that makes difficult the comprehension of the definitional boundaries of the two concepts, ending up hypothesizing a substantial equivalence between them. However, the ambiguity existing between competitive advantage and abnormal earnings is not supported by any rational fundamentals. The two notions, in fact, are logically and conceptually distinct. In the light of these reflections, the research is aimed at clarifying the relationship existing between competitive advantage and abnormal earnings, denying, falsifying, the assumption under which the competitive advantage is a necessary and sufficient condition for the achievement of economic profits. This objective and the analysis related to it have their “methodological” roots, even if with some simplifications, in Popper’s theory of Conjectures and Refutations, in which the Austrian philosopher, repudiating the classical observationalist/ inductivist account of scientific method, argues that if even a lot of supporting examples do not allow the validation of the truth of a proposition, just one example allows the demonstration of its falsity. Starting from this theoretical framework, the work is aimed at identifying the existence of at least one condition under which competitive advantage and abnormal earnings are independent , namely, a condition in which an enterprise that has an advantageous position does not generate economic profit and / or in which an enterprise achieves abnormal earnings even if does not benefit of any advantageous position, falsifying, in this way, the assumption that considers that competitive advantage a necessary and sufficient condition for the achievement of economic profits.