Organizational antecedents of second‐order competences

Abstract According to dynamic capability theory, some firms are better able than others at altering their resource base by adding, reconfiguring, and deleting resources or competences. This study focuses on the first form of dynamic capability: the competence to build new competences. Two such second‐order competences are studied: the ability to explore new markets and the ability to explore new technologies—referred to as marketing and R&D second‐order competences, respectively. Using two wave panel data on a sample of U.S. public manufacturing firms, five organizational antecedents of these second‐order competences are examined: willingness to cannibalize, constructive conflict, tolerance for failure, environmental scanning, and resource slack. Willingness to cannibalize, constructive conflict, scanning, and slack have contemporaneous effects, while scanning also has a lagged effect and slack has a U‐shaped lagged effect on marketing and R&D second‐order competences. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.