Zooming in and out for strategic advantage: Slack configurations and R&D investments in high-growth firms

Our study reinterprets the relationship between slack and R&D investment using a configurational framework derived from the resource-based view (RBV) of firm growth. We address the unresolved paradox of equifinal non-substitutability, which raises the question of how firms can invest non-substitutable resources using different equifinal resources for R&D. To solve this puzzle, we develop novel arguments based on a set-theoretic approach. We conduct Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA) and fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) with a sample of high-growth Chinese firms. Our findings demonstrate how firms can form non-substitutable slack combinations disjunctively (“zooming out”) and configure slack investments conjunctively (“zooming in”) in various equifinal and asymmetric ways. By employing a holistic configurational zooming approach that involves zooming out for necessary, non-substitutable configurations and zooming in for versatile slack configurations, high-growth firms can achieve strategic advantages that create customer value and outmaneuver competition.