Software is critical to nearly every organization's performance and can create value for all organizational functions. Given that software development firms that create solutions for client organizations are by necessity constantly seeking competitive advantage, the central objective of this research was to investigate the impact of capability building on software development firm competitiveness. Developing software is a knowledge-intensive and often complex process that requires internal exchanges among knowledgeable and capable employees within the firm. Accordingly, for software development firms, capability building is critical for competitive advantage. This research draws from capability, intellectual capital, and relational capital research streams and develops an intra-firm relational capital to intellectual capital model of capability building for software development. Analyses of data from key informants of 200 software development firms provide strong support for our model. We discuss the implications of our research for the competitiveness of software development firms for capability, intellectual capital, and relational capital theories and for firm practices.

软件对几乎每个组织的绩效都至关重要，并且可以为所有组织职能创造价值。鉴于为客户组织创建解决方案的软件开发公司必然不断寻求竞争优势，本研究的中心目标是调查能力建设对软件开发公司竞争力的影响。开发软件是一个知识密集型且通常很复杂的过程，需要公司内部知识渊博、能力出众的员工之间进行内部交流。因此，对于软件开发公司而言，能力建设对于竞争优势至关重要。这项研究从能力、智力资本、和关系资本研究流和开发软件开发能力建设的公司内部关系资本到智力资本模型。来自 200 家软件开发公司的关键信息提供者的数据分析为我们的模型提供了强有力的支持。我们讨论了我们的研究对软件开发公司的能力、智力资本和关系资本理论以及公司实践的竞争力的影响。