Integrating Strategy and Law

Caution: Academic Paper This paper presents a comprehensive integrated model of law and strategy. It weaves together the traditional approach to the nonmarket environment with Porter’s five forces, the resource-based view of the firm and the activities in the value chain to explain how law affects the competitive environment and the value and uniqueness of firm resources. This paper builds on earlier work postulating that “legal astuteness” is a valuable managerial capability and identifies the characteristics necessary for legal astuteness to be a source of sustained competition advantage. "Managers who view the law purely as a constraint, something to comply with and react to rather than to use proactively, will miss opportunities to use the law and the legal system to increase both the total value created and the share of that value captured by the firm."