Objectives: Ongoing environmental turbulence and the accelerating pace of change call for a rethinking of conventional strategy frameworks such as sustainable competitive advantage. Adaptive advantage has emerged as a central construct for formulating effective strategy under such conditions, yet its novelty means it remains underexamined. Viewed through a resource-centric lens, it is the organization's resources that generate adaptive capacity and confer competitive capability. This raises a pivotal question: how does resource portfolio management shape the attainment of adaptive advantage? This study examines the nature and impact mechanisms of three organizational processes, namely organizing, combining, and leveraging resources, in generating adaptive advantage, with the aim of clarifying the mechanisms that underlie its emergence. In particular, the study addresses a theoretical gap left by traditional resource-based view research, which has tended to privilege resource possession over the actionable processes through which resources are managed. These mechanisms are examined within the Iranian construction sector, a setting marked by institutional volatility and fluctuating demand, to test the framework's applicability in an emerging-economy context and to offer a more nuanced account of strategic navigation under such constraints.
Methodology: This exploratory study draws on quantitative data from the construction industry. The population comprises active construction companies with capital exceeding 10 billion rials that are members of the Construction Companies Syndicate of Iran, the sector's main professional association. Given a population of 470 companies, the required sample size at a 5% margin of error was 212. Data were collected through random distribution of questionnaires to the population. Correlation analysis and regression modeling were applied across eight models: the first incorporated control variables; models two through four tested the effects of the three resource management mechanisms individually; models five through seven examined the combined effects of each pair of mechanisms; and the eighth tested the simultaneous effect of all three mechanisms together. To ensure robustness, 255 questionnaires were distributed, 20% above the required sample, yielding 227 usable responses after a one-month collection period. Instrument validity was established through an expert panel of strategy scholars and industry CEOs, with a Cronbach's alpha of 0.911. Firm size, firm age, main industry’s focus, environmental context, project size and financial capability were controlled for to isolate environmental effects.
Findings: Results from the regression models indicate that, among the three resource management mechanisms examined, combination exerts the strongest influence on the attainment of adaptive advantage. This finding is further substantiated by the models testing pairwise combinations of mechanisms: each pairing of mechanisms demonstrates markedly greater explanatory power than any single mechanism applied in isolation, indicating that resource management mechanisms operate more effectively in tandem than individually. The eighth model, which incorporates all three mechanisms simultaneously, further confirms their synergistic and mutually reinforcing effect on the attainment of adaptive advantage within the study's population, underscoring the collaborative and complementary role that organizing, combining, and leveraging play together in shaping this outcome. With respect to the control variables, financial capability emerges as significantly and positively associated with the combining mechanism, a result suggesting that resource slack, that is, the availability of uncommitted or surplus resources, facilitates the process of capability creation within firms. Finally, the full model, encompassing all three mechanisms concurrently, yields the highest adjusted R-squared value among the eight models tested, confirming that the simultaneous deployment of the three mechanisms accounts for a greater share of variance in adaptive advantage than either isolated or pairwise implementations, and thereby reinforcing the conclusion that these mechanisms operate most effectively in concert rather than in isolation.
Conclusion: Responding effectively to environmental change and disruption requires organizations to implement resource management mechanisms and embed them within organizational processes. The findings show that ambidexterity for adapting to dynamic, turbulent environments is not achieved through exploration via organizing mechanisms or exploitation via leveraging mechanisms alone. Rather, combination functions as the crucial intermediary mechanism through which ambidexterity, and in turn adaptive advantage, is realized. Practically, this suggests that managers should prioritize converting raw resources into specialized capabilities through combination before pursuing exploitation, as illustrated by integrated project delivery approaches such as EPCF. While these results affirm the overall structure of Sirmon et al.'s (2007) framework, they reveal a more prominent role for the combination mechanism in dynamic, project-based industries, and suggest that future research treat this mechanism as a key variable in comparable settings. Given the cross-sectional design of this study, longitudinal and mixed-methods research is recommended for deeper validation. Practically, investing in resource management capabilities, particularly bundling and configuration skills, yields greater returns than simply expanding the resource portfolio, enabling managers to navigate environmental change more effectively. Future research is encouraged to integrate dynamic capabilities perspectives and examine longitudinal antecedents and consequences, building toward more comprehensive models of adaptive strategy formation in volatile industries.