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Read the following article on intangible resources and for each question below (1-3) mark one letter (A, B or C).

Intangible Resourcesand Sustainability of Performance Differences.

By Belén Villalonga, Harvard Business School

According to the resource-based view of the firm (RBV), a firm's endowment of resources is what makes its competitive advantage sustainable intime. RBV stresses the importance of intangible resources as the key to sustainability. Intangible assets, such as a particular technology, accumulated consumer information, brand name, reputation and corporate culture, are invaluable to the firm's competitive power. In fact, these invisible assets are often the only real source of competitive edge that can be sustained over time.

The impact of intangible resources on the sustainability of performance differences across firms is likely to vary systematically by industry, for two reasons. First, some of the intan­gible resources that can be a source of advantage are likely to be of a different nature in different industries and sectors. For instance, a firm's technological knowledge base built through research and development is more likely to be a source of competitive advantage in the manufacturing sector than it is in the lodging and entertainment industries. Amit and Schoemaker use the term "strategic industry factors" to refer to the set of resources that has become the prime determinant of economic rents for industry incumbents. They note that the capacity of a firm's resources for creating and protecting the firm's competitive advantage depends not just on their unique characteristics but also on the extent to which they overlap with industry-determined strategic industry factors.

Second, the efficacy of different mechanisms for ensuring the appropriation by firms of the value generated by intangible resources is also likely to vary across industries. Intangible resources may exist at different levels within the firm: human resources, teams, functions, processes, projects, or the organization as a whole. RBV recognizes this, but focuses on the firm as the main level of analysis. RBV makes no prediction about the existence or persistence of performance differences across sub-units of a firm; only about differences across firms. It is therefore important to note that, in order for those intangible resources to be a source of superior performance for firms, the owners of the firm must be able to appropriate at least some of their value. Levin et al. (1989) provide evidence that the efficacy of different mechanisms for ensuring the appropriation by firms of returns to R&D varies significantly across industries.

1. Intangible resources are of great importance for the company’s

A. competitiveness.

B. productivity

C. image

2. The word ‘incumbents’ (the second passage) refers to the

A. rivals

B. factors

C. officials

3. The author can hypothesize that the impact of resource intangibility on the sustainability of a firm's com­petitive advantage will

A. be similar across industries.

B. depend on human resources.

C. differ significantly across industries.

TEXT 3

Read the text about financial resources. Choose the best sentence to fill in the gaps. For each gap (1-5) mark one letter (A-F). Do not use any letter more than once. There is an example at the beginning (0 – B).