1. Session 6: Resource-based View: Empirical Testing
The Effect of Time-to-Build on Strategic
Investment under Uncertainty
Resolving the Commitment Versus Flexibility Trade-off:
The role of Resource Accumulation Lags
Goncalso Pacheco-de-Almeida
James E. Henderson
Karel O. Cool
Academy of Management Journal (2008)
by Eunkwang Seo
Modified by Anand RV-09/30/2017
Goncalso Pacheco-de-Almeida
Peter Zemsky
Rand Journal of Economics (2003)
Anand RV-09/30/2017

2. Almeida and Zemsky (2003) Mathematical model for 2008 paper
Real options vs. Industrial organization (IO) economics literature
Real options
Delay investments
IO stream
Value is created by early irreversible investments
But both these streams make simplistic assumptions about investments
and the time to attain returns
Almeida andZemsky (2003) build their mathematical model using a two
firm example

3. Pacheco-De-Almeida et al. (2008)
Research Objective
To examine the role of resource accumulation in an effort to better understand the commitment versus flexibility trade-off.
Conventional wisdom: the long time required to accumulate resources favors flexibility of firms.
Argument of this research: competition may be fierce in industries in which firms accumulate resources more slowly.

4. Flexibility Versus Commitment
LITERATURE REVIEW
Flexibility Versus Commitment
The value of flexibility
Stigler’s early contribution (1939) and recent research on real options have largely emphasized the value of flexibility.
As demand or technological uncertainty increases, keeping options open by postponing strategic investments and waiting for uncertainty to subside may be the optional strategy.
The value of commitment
Mainstream economics and strategy have stressed the value of commitment (inflexibility).
Making early irreversible commitments may secure future market space and discourage rivals from investing: the inflexibility of such commitment has value by shaping rival’s future behavior.
The role of resource accumulation lags
This debate has overlooked the impact of resource accumulation
The value of flexibility or inflexibility varies according to the time it takes to accumulate resources prior to enter the market.

5. THEORY AND HYPOTHESIS DEVELOPMENT
Resource-based View
Resource accumulation
Resource accumulation is a central tenet of the resource-based view of the firm.
The firm-specific resources cannot be bought on strategic factor market; they must be internally accumulated by firm over time (Dierickx & Cool, 1989; Peteraf, 1993).
Inimitability Issue
With time compression diseconomies, the long time it takes to accumulate resources increases the barrier to imitation, ultimately leading to sustainable competitive advantages.
Literature Gap
Despite the importance, understanding how time-consuming resource accumulation affects firms’ ex ante strategic decisions, in particular investment timing, is much limited.
This research is focused on addressing this gap in the strategy literature.

6. THEORY AND HYPOTHESIS DEVELOPMENT
Resource Accumulation Lags
Definition
A resource accumulation lag is defined as the time a firm takes, on average, to accumulate the resources to produce one unit of output in a product-market of interest (the time-to-build) .
This definition allows us to conduct an integrated analysis of resources and products, linking internal resource development to external product-market.
Also, it obviates the measurement problem associated with most resources accumulation process.
This time-to-build of a new plant may differ substantially over industries.

7. THEORY AND HYPOTHESIS DEVELOPMENT
Resource Accumulation Lags
This paper’s concern is the plant expansion phase in the petrochemical industry

8. THEORY AND HYPOTHESIS DEVELOPMENT
Resource Accumulation Lags Favoring Commitment(1)
Conventional Wisdom
Intuitively, resource accumulation lags decreases the likelihood of commitment.
According to the real option literature, uncertainty will exacerbate the negative impact of time lags on investment (e.g., Trigeorgis, 1996).
Resource-based View & Financial Economics Literature
If there is an interval of time between a decision to invest and a receipt of a project’s first revenues, the opportunity cost of postponing investment can be substantially higher.
Also, according to Resource-based View, long resource accumulation lags are known to create barriers to imitation and sustain competitive advantages (Dierickx & Cool, 1989).
Therefore, the anticipation of such favorable ex post conditions, amplified by longer investment lags, triggers early investment.
Hypothesis 1: Ceteris paribus, resource accumulation lags have a positive effect on a firm’s likelihood of investment.

9. THEORY AND HYPOTHESIS DEVELOPMENT
Resource Accumulation Lags Favoring Commitment(2)
The main negative effects of uncertainty on investment
Under demand or technological uncertainties, the strategy of postponing investments until uncertainty is resolved is favored.
Therefore, uncertainty basically has a negative impact on a firm’s investment.
Moderating effect of resource accumulation lags
However, in industries in which resource accumulation is more time consuming, firms have more time to exercise the option of abandoning their investment projects.
The value of this option is greater when firms have to make projections for a more uncertain future.
Therefore, the time of accumulating resources is expected to moderate the negative impact of uncertainty on investment.
Hypothesis 2: Ceteris paribus, resource accumulation lags reduce the main negative effect of uncertainty (the option value of waiting) on a firm’s likelihood of investment.

10. THEORY AND HYPOTHESIS DEVELOPMENT
Resource Accumulation Lags Favoring Flexibility
Bandwagon Effect
When resource accumulation lags are too much long, early movers firms may not reap sufficient profits from their investments because of widespread “bandwagons”, wherein a large number of firms in an industry invest simultaneously.
This intensified competition ultimately reduces the opportunity for first-mover advantages.
Therefore, with very long resource accumulation lags, waiting is favored.
Short-term stock market pressure
Because of the market pressure, the rate of return required to make an investment may be higher for projects with very long resource accumulation lags.
This short-term bias increases exponentially with time lags (Miles, 1993).
Hypothesis 3. Ceteris paribus, very long resource accumulation lags have a negative effect on a firm’s likelihood of investment.

11. EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS Research Design Sample data
The empirical analysis was carried out in the petrochemical industry in the United States, Europe, and Japan during the period
Among three main life cycle periods ( , , ), the most recent period was the most suitable for this study because firms’ expansions were determined by purely profit-maximizing criteria in that period and “information asymmetry” about future market conditions were low.
From Oil and Gas Journal (OGJ), the data about 556 plant construction projects were obtained to calculate the average resource accumulation lags in each product-region.
5848 investment observations on 849 different plant projects identified from multiple data sources are the subject of empirical analysis.

12. EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS Measurement Dependent Variable
Investment was coded to one for all observations of adding a new “greenfield” plant or by increasing at least one existing plant’s production capacity by more than 10 percent.
Independent Variables
Resource accumulation lags were measured by the average time to plan and build new production facilities in product-regions.
Demand uncertainty was measured by the standard deviation of four years’ worth of industrial production prior to the year under consideration.
Control Variables
Demand growth, excess capacity, investment lumpiness, market share, rival’s expansion.

13. EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS
Measurement

14. EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS
Estimation
Logit regression analysis H1 H2 H3

15. EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS
Results
Descriptive statistics

16. EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS Results Logit regression results H1 supported

17. EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS
Results
Higher
Uncertainty

18. DISCUSSION Summary The role of resource accumulation lags
This research contradicts conventional wisdom that the time it takes to accumulate resources is negatively associated with a firm’s investment.
Resource accumulation lags are shown to enhance a firm’s likelihood of investment and reduce the negative main effect of uncertainty on investment.
Also, the empirical analysis shows that flexibility is favored when accumulating resources is excessively time-consuming prior to enter the market.

19. Discussion questions
The measure of demand uncertainty is the SD of the production for the
last 4 years. Given that longer accumulation lags often lead to excess
capacities how appropriate is this measure?
What is the relationship between this theory of the effect of resource
accumulation lags and theories of diversification?
In most modern corporations, the decisions to invest (especially such large investments) are usually made or whetted by the CFO. Given that strategic decisions are made by the CEO or by the Chief Strategy Officer, how does the relationship between the CFO and the CEO/strategy officer affect the
commitment vs flexibility decision?