To what extent a firm’s resources (firm effect) and the structure of the sector (industry effect) are sources of a firm’s competitiveness has been debated for years in strategic management. Most of the empirical studies carried out have focused on large firms and have used static performance measures, and in them the firm effect generally outweighs the industry effect. This research contributes to this debate in trying to verify whether the competitive advantage that relies on the firm’s resources is sustainable, especially in small firms. We used a sample of almost 15,000 Spanish firms to test the impact that the firm and the industry effects have on sustainable performance, for both small and large firms, applying hierarchical linear modelling with a variable measured through time-varying parameters. Our results confirm the absolute importance of the firm effect on sustainable organizational performance, regardless the firm size, and show that, even though the industry effect has little weight in explaining sustainability, it is significantly higher in the case of small firms. This means that managers must concentrate efforts on providing their firm with the necessary resources to achieve a competitive advantage while choosing a good sector to position itself.

中文翻译：

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小型企业的企业效应能否解释可持续绩效？

多年来，企业的资源（企业效应）和部门结构（产业效应）在多大程度上是企业竞争力的来源，一直在战略管理中争论不休。进行的大多数实证研究都集中在大企业上，并使用静态绩效衡量标准，在这些研究中，企业效应通常大于行业效应。这项研究有助于验证依赖于公司资源的竞争优势是否可持续，尤其是在小公司中的辩论。我们使用了近 15,000 家西班牙公司的样本来测试公司和行业对小型和大型公司的可持续绩效的影响，并应用分层线性模型和通过时变参数测量的变量。我们的结果证实了公司效应对可持续组织绩效的绝对重要性，无论公司规模如何，并表明，即使行业效应在解释可持续性方面的权重很小，但在小公司的情况下却显着更高。这意味着管理人员必须集中精力为他们的公司提供必要的资源以实现竞争优势，同时选择一个好的部门来定位自己。