Creating and developing organisational capabilities: do we know more than we can say?

Organisational capabilities are increasingly distinguished from other firm resources as their distinctive contribution to organisational success is increasingly accepted with the resource-based view. Research has more recently begun to explore both the origins of capabilities and the processes through which they are developed over time, and the aim of this paper is to assess the literature to-date to establish what we understand about these complex processes. The paper shows that, while organisational capabilities are the outcome of idiosyncratic development paths, more is known about their trajectories of development than whether the process of developing capabilities shares common characteristics across firms. The paper concludes that more research is required to ascertain the microprocesses through which capabilities are built and developed.