Abstract

While the Resource-Based View (RBV) identifies socially complex resources—such as trust, organizational culture, and team cohesion—as sources of sustained competitive advantage, it remains largely silent on how these intangible assets emerge and why they persist. In this paper, we integrate insights from Baruch Spinoza’s Ethics into RBV to offer a richer account of the micro-level processes underlying resource formation and durability. Specifically, we argue that individuals’ innate striving for self-preservation and flourishing—what Spinoza calls conatus—naturally leads them to engage in rational cooperation, fostering mutual trust, shared understandings, and interconnected relationships. Over time, these interactions generate valuable, rare, and inimitable organizational cultures and team capabilities, precisely the kinds of socially complex resources RBV scholars emphasize. By illustrating how intangible resources develop through rational and affective human interactions, this integration responds directly to calls for deeper micro-foundations in RBV.