The dynamic capability view (DCV) examines how firms alter their resources and operational capabilities when they respond to changes in their environment. DCV research has already converged around a set of core propositions but also suffers from important limitations (need for more empirical work with fine-grained measures, need to explore not only the outcome but also the deployment process, need to distinguish between different types of change). It is this paper’s endeavor to contribute to the DCV literature by being particularly attentive to these limitations, with both methodological and theoretical contributions. We propose to investigate the process of DC deployment through three building blocks, from the recognition that the environment has changed (monitoring and sensing) to the decision to deploy DC (analyzing and deciding) and to the implementation of asset re-orchestration (implementing). To achieve this objective, we conduct a longitudinal embedded case study of the U.S. defense systems integrators industry between 1998 and 2007. The 9/11 attacks represent an opportunity to study the response to a massive exogenous change and examine whether DC were deployed to deal with it. Series of data about the discourses and internal and external asset orchestration of five firms (Boeing, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon) were collected and organized around a set of fine-grained measures to analyze, over time and across firms, top management attention to change in the environment, discourse about firm-level change as well as how firms actually renew their assets at multiple levels.
