Leveraging innovation knowledge management to create positional advantage in agricultural value chains

This paper surveys members of a beef cattle value chain in Vietnam's Central Highlands to examine the translation of value chain actor's resources into positional advantage and financial performance in an emerging country. Using structural equation modeling techniques, the paper estimates a path model to explore how resources are linked to positional advantage and ultimately financial performance. This study attempts to contribute to the literature in two ways. Firstly, there have been few studies employing resource, market orientation, positional advantage and business performance theory in the context of agri-food value chains in a transitional developing country. Secondly, the study contributes to the debate on the relationship between positional advantage and business performance. This paper is structured as follows: firstly, the literature on resource advantage, the capabilities of positional advantage and financial performance is briefly reviewed, and then our theoretical model and hypotheses are presented. The following sections describe the research design including data collection, analysis, and findings. The final two sections discuss our findings and their implications