Dynamic Capabilities between Firm Organization and Local Development: A Critical Survey

This paper is about the different firm’s capacity to deal with change, recently conceptualised with the notion of «dynamic capabilities». It aims at showing that, in order to understand the nature and the determinants of dynamic capabilities, a cross-disciplinary perspective is needed. This should be based on two views: an «organisational» one – based on the firm’s internal capacity to develop learning processes – and a truly «economic» one – based on interactive learning mechanisms. Indeed, a review of the vast and heterogeneous literature that refers, either explicitly or implicitly, to dynamic capabilities in explaining firms’ performance, endsup identifying a gap between organizational and environmental kinds of approaches. By identifying the crucial elements to which a theory of dynamic capabilities is expected to answer, the paper proposes two taxonomies that help in defining the main points along which a cross-disciplinary approach can be articulated.