A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future: The Focus on Organizational Competitive Advantage Lost Out

摘要

We agree with and heartily endorse Ploy-hart's (2012) elegant and insightful plea for research that contributes to the psy-chological underpinnings of organizational competitive advantage. It is clear to us that the organizational focus in our work has been severely lacking. Thus, reveal-ing how an individual will perform better than another in a company or how a team exceeds safety performance standards better than another in a company do NOT reveal anything about organizational competitive advantage. The rule, as Ployhart intimates, is this: When differences within a company are revealed, whether those differences are among individuals, teams, branches, or regions, we have learned nothing about organizational competitive advantage. It is only when we reveal differences between organizations that we can discuss competi-tive advantage.