The Dimensions of Competitiveness and Their Effects on Competitive Advantage

Abstract

This chapter explores two dimensions of competitiveness and describes how they affect economics to achieve competitive advantage. We used Grounded theory strategy to analyze the data and the targeted sampling was applied to gather information through in-depth semi-structured interviews. We can conclude that Impressive Factors include five categories containing Causal conditions, Context conditions, Inner-Intervening conditions, Outer-Intervening conditions, and Strategies. Also, Constructive Factors comprise just one category, the consequences, which in this chapter is competitive advantage. Impressive Factors finally result in Constructive Factors and Constructive Factors result in competitive advantage. To sum, all of the five Impressive Factors result in Constructive Factors.

1. Introduction

In this chapter, we explain two dimensions of competitiveness and describe how they affect economics to achieve competitive advantage. The first dimension is Inter-organizational Impressive Factors including organizational structure, strategy, system, management style, employees, culture, sensitivity to customer culture, external communication, solidarity and collaboration with other companies, five constructive factors of industry, innovation, organizational learning and imaging, and competitive knowledge management. The second dimension is Constructive Factors that include customer value, market and soft culture effects and specific activities, tangible and intangible performance, competitive rates, market-based definition and conceptualization of goods, customer recognition, brand sustainability, cost reduction, meeting customer expectations, gaining knowledge from competitors and market, reputation, productivity, technology, learning organization, information technology application, sales, market share, profitability, etc. After studying this chapter, you are able to answer these questions: What are the causes of competitiveness? What are the contextual conditions of competitiveness? What are the inner-outer mediating conditions of competitiveness? What are the strategies of competitiveness? What are the consequences of competitiveness?

A review of texts on competitiveness reveals no single definition for competitiveness, however, all the definitions use the same keywords for it, which refer to the competencies and capabilities of an enterprise, industry, region, and country that can be maintained internationally to increase market share and achieve competitive advantage. During COVID-19 pandemic, many enterprises failed to remain in the field due to rivalry and even those remaining enterprises are concerned about the potential increase in competition and the lack of adequate skills. Though digital technologies will drive the next phase of globalization, the principles and the dimensions of competitiveness are the same in both traditional and digital versions of competitiveness but the pandemic has accelerated the trend. Therefore, it is not enough to succeed post COVID-19 without developing new digital capabilities to interact with customers. Also, the focus on companies’ home country will be accelerated in this period. As one of the challenges for many companies, though some of them have competitive advantage across their countries and even in their regions through offering high-quality goods and services, they, in general, will have partial or no distinct competitive model in international and regional markets in the post COVID-19 era.

2. What is competitiveness?

Nowadays, international competition is considerably growing through globalization. Also, the increasing regional competitions among countries and their companies, and the low probability of competition in global markets have forced companies to pay more attention to the regional competitiveness and competitive advantage concepts [1]. By the 1990s, the competitiveness concept was a common term referred to as the solution, without the knowledge of how to achieve it [2]. In unstable economies, the managers who pay attention to their firms’ competitiveness search for finding new patterns to guide their companies [3]. Because of the similarity of competitiveness and the concept of competition, competitiveness is generally measured as: the potential of people, companies, economies, or regions to compete in the internal and/or at international level [4].

By the 1970s and 1980s, the macroeconomic indexes like per-capita income, economic growth rates, inflation rate, balance of trade, unemployment rate, and so on were related to describing the abilities of a national economy or comparing different nations but these indices failed to describe complex realities within economies [5]. Macroeconomic variables including employment rate, interest, and personal cost per employee meaningfully expand the area under curve (AUC) values comparing to the situation where only accounting indexes are applied [6]. Therefore, both business directors and international enterprises have been searching other indices to compare the economic métiers and weaknesses of different countries more broadly. Asgari [7] proposes that to have more competitive small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), the better and simpler way is to concentrate on revising and improving production methods to enhance productivity through managerial adjustments. Competitiveness, as the complementary concept of competitive advantage theories, can be studied from macro and micro viewpoints. From the macro perception, it appears at the national economy level but from the micro view, it is more extensive and contains the fundamental features of producers in terms of market share and the profit related to production and export [5].

Consequently, from the micro perspective of competitiveness definitions, it implies the competition between domestic and international enterprises in order to achieve a superior share of the national and international markets but the macro perspective is related to the creation of a competitive environment consistent with the definitions of competitive advantage [1]. The competitive advantage creation through internal enterprises is related to introducing new methods and goods with decreased manufacturing costs in order to improve productivity.

Competitiveness is considered by World Economic Forum (WEF) [8] as the capacity of a national economy to create, grow, or preserve a standard of living based on the per-capita income. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development [9] competitiveness is related to a production measure for goods and services in a country, which can attract the world markets’ demands in a free market and getting to the various measures of such demands while improving the real long-term income of citizens. The organization views competitiveness, in another definition, as a level of free market in which a country can produce goods and services regardless of its international competitors and, at the same time, improve real income across the country.

From the viewpoint of competitiveness, we can present another definition of competitiveness. The competitiveness sources include three types containing technology, enterprises, and human resources. In case of sustainability, human-based competitiveness is much more acceptable than the other two sources of competitiveness and can be less imitated through competitors [10]. Peltoniemi et al. [11] recognized four meta-theoretical groups of competitiveness containing politics and market dynamics, the exogenous factors that have deterministic characteristics while technology and management abilities reflect the firm-internal failures with any explanation of how characteristics at firm level may clarify the loss of competitiveness at industry level. The Institute of Development Management describes competitiveness as the capability of a country to make value-added and improve the society’s monetary potential through managing resources and promoting its attractiveness [7].

Accordingly, the arguments on competitiveness are still rising and maturing. A few expert beliefs about an appropriate definition may be found because of fewer basic theories on this issue than those of competitive advantage [12]. A text’s review on competitiveness does not show any unique definition for competitiveness; however, all the definitions have similar keywords, signifying that competitiveness describes the competencies and capabilities of a firm, industry, region, and country, which can be sustained worldwide to develop market share and get high profitability during a definite period of time.

3. Competitiveness compared to competitive advantage

According to World Economic Forum (WEF), there are fewer theories on competitiveness in comparison with competitive advantage. Competitiveness refers to national economic sustainability, growth, or sustains the standard of life based on per-capita income [13]. Competitiveness emphasizes not only macro environments but also regional, urban, and local environments [14]. This concept implies the competition among the companies within an industry which is leading to their competitive advantage. Compared to competitive advantage, competitiveness is a concept with more comprehensive domain since the welfare of a nation depends on its international position. Why is everyone concerned about his/her domestic competitiveness? One of the reasons attributed to this concern is exporting goods with profits. In a business atmosphere, the competitiveness of each nation comprises not only those who are involved directly but also the people and organizations thereof [15]. The regional competitiveness is considered as a key incident in the efforts of policymakers, businessmen, and the academic community to improve the welfare [16]. Companies must consider the regional competitiveness and competitive advantage concepts because of two factors: the increasing regional competitions among countries and their companies, and the little chance of successful competition at global level. Here, we show the differences between competitiveness and competitive advantage in Table 1.

	Competitiveness	Competitive advantage
Definition	The welfare that a country creates for its people [15].	A value that a firm creates for its customers [17].
Focus	It focuses on competition among the companies in an industry [14].	It focuses on the value created for customers in comparison with other companies [17]
Who is involved?	A large number of people and organizations [15].	A firm and its system (most of the theories)
Theoretical concepts	Few theories (WEF, 1979)	Plethora of theories (WEF, 1979)

Table 1.

The comparisons between competitiveness and competitive advantage.

4. Approaches and components of competitiveness

There are different perspectives and levels of competitiveness. Though each perspective has its special viewpoints that are described below, the focus of this chapter is on its dimensions. From competitiveness life cycle viewpoint, it can be divided into three lifetimes: long-term, medium-term, and short-term. Regarding the competitiveness evaluating methods, we divide the concepts as proportional, qualitative, and quantitative. The chain of competitiveness refers to global, continental, national, local, cluster, enterprise, and Strategic Business Units (SBUs). The environmental levels of competitiveness assessment include internal and external factors. Micro, middle, and macro levels of competitiveness refer to its economic levels. Finally, the system levels of competitiveness are described as subsystem, system, and super-system [12].

Competitiveness is mainly perceived as the basis of two content approaches (environment and market needs) and process (the process of achieving competitive conditions) in its survey approach [18]. Likewise, the enterprise competitiveness components are categorized into forming and affecting factors [19].

Better competitiveness is achieved through the main determinants including juridical fairness, social responsibility, competence building, and intelligence employment to develop smart patterns. Rojek [20] found that international systemic competitiveness depends on factors like government integrity, tax burdens, and investment freedom.

5. Different levels of competitiveness terminology

Competitiveness is measured at three levels in research studies: country (national), industry, and enterprise (organization/company).

National competitiveness: it refers to the ability of a national economy growth. To measure it, the factors like policies and institutions, which are determining a country’s productivity, are useful. As national competitiveness is related to national economy, it should be placed in the foreign field [10]. To support countries or groups to distinguish the competitive advantage because of specific factors available to them, the National Diamond Model was presented by Porter [10] in order to assess national competitiveness. Haj Youssef et al. [21] showed that managerial discretion directly forecasts national competitiveness through providing Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) capacity with a wide range of actions to innovate and develop the firm’s performance, which ultimately results in a nation’s competitiveness.

Industry competitiveness: at this level, competitiveness is described as the potential of a country’s businesses in attaining persistency compared to the foreign competitors, without any protection or subsidies [10]. To assess competitiveness at industrial level, there are some criteria such as total profitability of the country’s companies in the specified industry, the trade balance of the country in that industry, the balance of outcoming and incoming foreign direct investment(s), and the direct cost-related variables and the quality at industrial level. Kalim et al. [22] concluded that competitiveness can develop agriculture and industry sectors more than their current positions.

Danaei Fard et al. [23] claimed that the industry competitiveness nature is nearly similar to that of national and enterprise competitiveness. Mehri and Khodadad Hoseini [24] revealed that the effective factors in making their competitive advantage model contain competitive intelligence and organizational, environmental, and communicational capabilities, respectively.

Enterprise competitiveness: it is related to the competitiveness of the product, efficiency, financial posture, and the effectiveness of the firm as to restructuring, sales, and demand stimulus. The competitiveness at enterprise level is related to its capacity via nonstop renewal and advancement to devise and maintain sustainable competitive advantages that lead to higher long-term economic performance [25]. To assess the competitive environment, Porter’s five competitive factors, resource-based approach, and value chain assessment are applied [26].

6. The dimensions of competitiveness

As stated in Section 2 of this chapter, there are many competitiveness definitions, frameworks, and proposals, but we can group them in five main dimensions: (1) Performance that comprises standard financial measures such as earnings, growth, or profitability [27]; (2) Quality that not only refers to the quality of products and services, but also to the ability of satisfying customer expectations [28]; (3) Productivity that refers to higher production with lower usage of resources [17]; (4) Innovation that refers to having novelty in products, services, and management processes [29]; and (5) Image that focuses on corporate branding including building trust and reputation in relationship with stakeholders [30].

The dimensions of competitiveness recommend that consciousness of the effects of neglected dimension of competitiveness, accompanied by appropriate corrective action, can improve corporate and national performance significantly. While considering the diversity of more conventional international competitiveness dimensions, Lester et al. [31] challenge many established tenets through outlining a quantity of policy prescriptions and considering some of the main distributive and infrastructural roles in improving international competitiveness such as facilitating labor, capital mobility and providing efficient transport systems.

Even then, because of the variety and changeability of the potential and actual aims of the units under study and the analytical approaches adopted, defining the dimensions of competitiveness may lead to interpretative issues. Therefore, competitiveness encompasses many dimensions. For instance, we can consider it in static terms, when we want to govern the position of an assumed object in relation to its peers. The assessment of the advantages or gaps, hence, is a kind of snapshot of competitiveness. We follow up the changes of competitiveness over time in the dynamic approach. Besides the static and dynamic perspectives, in the spatial approach, eight spatial aspects, which are very important in the context of the balanced paradigm and sustainable development, are analyzed. Another thing, especially in the normative approach, which should also be considered is analyzing competitiveness in terms of institutional solutions and instruments of public authorities at many levels. Competitiveness, in the simplest terms, is the capacity to survive and grow under imposed pressure from competitors. This property may characterize individual agents, companies, noncorporate organizations, sectors, economies, and regional integration groupings. The impact of rivalry in this viewpoint is to achieve a higher result than that of the competitors. Competitiveness, therefore, defined a concept without designate, which makes it a difficult object of study. Its multidimensional feature, which has already been emphasized, needs an interdisciplinary research method that offers a foundation to consider a plentiful set of factors and sources of competitiveness, as well as to interweave the numerous perspectives and attitudes in the analysis. The question regarding the cause of the ‘wealth of nations’, by Porter [10], has remained current and fundamentally seeks the answer to the sources of competitiveness. These sources encompass the spatial and temporal spatial dimensions. It is also important that contemporary economic processes are considered through changes in the types and the order of the sources of countries’ competitiveness. In the current status of globalization, the foreground is encompassed by knowledge, its expansion, diffusion, and the capacity to translate it into process and product innovations, through supplying the resources as the background.

In the twenty-first century what moves competition is innovation, broadly defined, and in some areas of activity transforms it into hypercompetition. However, when the political environment changes and the competition for political and economic control over crucial supplies of strategic resources increases, this situation may change, also, when emerging economic authorities, through increasing their political and military leverage, decide to complement their measurable economic success [32]. These all combined with a new phenomenon known as post-COVID era, which changed many rules and procedures of competition. Innovation and sensitivity to private hygiene of customers and staffs are much more important variables in this period.

Also, the relationship between two significant features of the financial sector, competitiveness and stability, is important. In the new globalized and integrated economy, it is important to fortify both the competitiveness and stability of the financial sector. To do so, considering the interrelationship between these two groups is also important. We can assess the mezzo-dimension of competitiveness through describing the asymmetric information mechanism and then use a co-integration and impulse-response method. Through clusters we can analyze the micro-level dimension of competitiveness and explore competition as an attribute of clusters. This is because of the concept of clusters, which seems to be misused both through practitioners and in the academic literature [32].

In this chapter, we use two dimensions of competitiveness, which are classified as:

Inter-organizational Impressive Factors: organizational structure including concentration, complexity, formality, expertism, etc., system, strategy, management style, employees, culture, sensitivity to customer culture, external communication, solidarity and collaboration with other companies, five constructive factors of industry, innovation, organizational learning and imaging, and competitive knowledge management [33]. Hernández-Linares et al. [34] concluded that the family business context encourages the learning orientation-entrepreneurial orientation link, explaining why some companies are more entrepreneurially oriented than other firms are.

Constructive Factors: customer value, market and soft culture effects and specific activities, tangible and intangible performance, competitive rates, market-based definition and conceptualization of goods, customer recognition, brand sustainability, cost reduction, meeting customer expectations, gaining knowledge from competitors and market, reputation, productivity, technology, learning organization, information technology application, sales, market share, profitability, etc. [33].

The above-mentioned list of constructive and impressive variables of competitiveness confirms the similarity, frequency, and repetition of these factors. Constructive Factors are those that play a crucial role in the enterprise competitiveness. The enterprise competitiveness might be incomplete and the enterprise would be unable to compete if Constructive Factors are ignored or eliminated. The Impressive Factors are complementary, not the main factors. They can afford favorite and promising results to develop the competitiveness or vice versa, i.e., opposed and hindering results.

Accordingly, since this chapter seeks to design a competitive advantage model, we explain the concept of competitive advantage more in the next sections of this chapter.

7. Definitions of competitive advantage

Over the recent years, competitive advantage is one of the most important concepts addressed in the strategic management and the literature on marketing. Incidentally, there exist several perspectives regarding constructive and impressive factors, where the industrial organization researchers study the environmental factors as the determinants of competitive advantage. The first researcher who stated his point of view in 1968 was Bain; however, the eminent character of this field is Michael Porter. In the model presented by Porter, the analysis level is the industry in which the profitability of the enterprises depends on the industry’s potentials and their relative situation in the industry. Based on this model, the core competencies would pave the path for excellence and result in competitive advantage for the organization if the organization adopts a different strategy than those of competitors. Schoemaker and Amit [35] developed the other theory according to which the profitability of the enterprise depended on the degree of consistency between strategic assets and strategic factors of the industry; therefore, the base of competitive advantage is founded on the industrial organization and competency approach interaction [35]. The most significant empirical contributions measuring the competitive advantages are gained through the firms placed in industrial districts via the district effect [36].

Contrary to this perspective, in search of competitive advantage, some scholars focus on the more critical role of internal factors of the organization (resource-based and dynamic-capability perspectives). In the resource-based approach, organizations are considered as groups of resources and it is believed that the competitive advantage of an organization stems from its resources, if they are advocated by scarcity, being valuable, scarce substitution, and unimitability or difficulty in modeling. Otherwise, the resources of the organization are the sources of competitive advantage and it will be sustainable if the resources meet these four conditions [28].

In the dynamic-capability perspective, the source of competitive advantage is considered as unique processes. Accordingly, the term ‘dynamic’ implies the potential of the firm in rebuilding the competencies consistent with the changing business environment. The term ‘capabilities’ refers to the critical role of strategic management in coordinating, integrating, and reconfiguring the organization’s competencies, assets, and strategies to cope with the requirements of the changing environment. Also, as to this approach, achieving the dynamic capabilities of the market is not possible simply since it requires inter-organizational dynamic management processes. Based on Sachitra and Chong [37], resources and dynamic capabilities include 89.3% of the variation of competitive advantage in which 82% belonged to the resources, indicating the significance of resources in attaining competitive advantage.

In sum, the analysis level in environmental approaches is the industry; however, the analysis level in resource-based, dynamic capabilities approaches and core competency approach is the enterprise. The current chapter is going to develop the mentioned approaches and provide an inclusive model through the combination of these perspectives to establish a national, industrial, and organizational model. The key definitions of competitive advantage have been shown in Table 2.

Definition	Reference	Year
A value provided by an organization to its customers, as it is not provided by current and existing competitors	Miguel and Roderigrez	2002
An enterprise has the competitive advantage when it possesses tools at its disposal to eliminate those competitors who seek to attract its customers	Christensen, DeWitt, and Mayer Bofam	2001
Competitive advantage is the unique feature of each enterprise, which makes it more capable of serving customers better than competitors.	Hao Ma	2000
Competitive advantage is the values provided by an enterprise to its customers so that these values exceed the customer costs.	Porter [10]	1990

Table 2.

The key definitions of competitive advantage from different perspectives.

8. The conceptual framework of competitive advantage

The ability of enterprises in responding to the threats and opportunities in their industrial environment results in their success in competing with the competitors. Though there exist several competitive advantage models in the literature, we, as to our objectives, point out the model presented by Sami Sultan [38]. In Figure 1, the competitive advantage framework covers the macro and micro economic environment, Porter’s five factors of competitiveness, value chain, strategy, information technology, and competitive advantage in a special industry.

Figure 1.

Conceptual framework of competitive advantage [38].

Macro environment: to respond to the changes of environment, an enterprise should analyze the environment through PESTLE, a proper tool to scrutinize the macro environment, including Political, Economic, Social, Technological, and Legal factors [39].

Micro environment: it comprises the factors that affect the activities of the organization directly. The constructive factors of micro environment contain governments, stakeholders, shareholders, workers’ associations, suppliers, competitors, customers, trade associations, and creditors.

Porter’s five factors of competition: it refers to the factors that affect the competition among the companies within an industry including the competition among existing competitors, threat of potential competitors or new entrants, threat of substitutions, bargaining power of buyers, and bargaining power of suppliers [40].

Generic strategies: introduced by Porter [40, 41], it refers to three generic strategies: cost leadership that implies reducing costs to reach the economy of scale. Differentiation strategy that focuses on producing specific goods/services through differentiating them from those of competitors in terms of factors such as quality, services positioning, and so on. And concentration strategy that concentrates on niche markets for avoiding direct rivalry with huge competitors.

Value chain: presented by Porter in the 1980s, it includes infrastructural activities containing human and capital assets, and supporting activities comprising marketing, delivery, etc. It refers to a strategic management framework that analyzes the activities of a company to detect its competitive advantage.

According to Porter [10], the competitive advantage of a country in a specific industry is related to the capabilities of the country to encourage its firms to exploit their country as a platform for businesses. A country, given its specific features, can make an environment where the local enterprises are encouraged to create competitive advantage (according to this definition); thereby, it empowers the firms to produce and export goods that guarantee their constant growth. Porter also argues that the nations’ competitive advantage is derived from the interaction of these four factors:

Factor conditions that refer to a large group of experts, technological innovation, infrastructure, and capital.

Demand conditions: the volume and the nature of customer demands for products that drive innovation and product development.

The related and supporting industries: the upstream and downstream industries that encourage innovation through exchanging ideas.

The firm strategy, structure, and rivalry: it refers to the fundamental reality that production developments and new innovations are the effects of competition.

9. Methodology

Given the qualitative nature of this study, we used Grounded theory strategy to analyze the data. The data analysis is conducted at two core dimensions in the Grounded theory: textual and conceptual dimensions. The textual dimension includes segmenting and organizing of data files, data encoding, and writing notes but the conceptual dimension focuses on model structure including code linking and network construction.

In this study, we used targeted sampling and the number of samples ended with regard to theoretical saturation. We gathered the data through in-depth semi-structured interviews. The process was run through three steps: First, we ran some in-depth interviews with some top managers of the firms that have competitive advantage in their industries and, also, with some university professors in the field of marketing and strategy. Therefore, in this step, the sources of competitive advantage were distinguished and the required data for the second step were prepared.

Since in the targeted sampling method, the big size of the sample is not a research challenge [42], we used a statistical sample. During the interviews, we asked the respondents to state their opinions regarding the core questions of the research including causal conditions, environmental conditions and contexts, intervening factors, strategies, and the consequences of competitive advantage. Because the respondents worked at the top levels of their firms and were aware of their firms’ formation and ups and downs, the accuracy of their responses was reliable. Subsequently, we achieved the competitive advantage indexes and, therefore, we compared each interview with previous ones with the purpose of finding out whether or not new data would appear. By increasing the number of interviews, the answers came closer together and the data saturation occurred. Therefore, we did not carry out any more interviews.

To judge the reliability of the interviews and the questionnaire, we applied the cross-checks that one performs when the primary coding of the research done by one coder is cross-checked by other expert coders. Also, we used the audit trail which acts when other auditors who know the Grounded Theory Method (GTM), audits the research decisions and its methodology and analysis to confirm the results. We applied the peer review method to check the validity where all concepts, categories, and codes were discoursed with experts and the process continued until achieving the same implications for all of the aforementioned concepts, categories, and codes.

There are several approaches about Grounded Theory Method [43]: Traditional approach, Systematic GTM, Constructive GTM, Situation analyses GTM, and Dimension analysis. Since in this study the systematic approach was applied, other approaches have not been described here.

Systematic Grounded Theory is applied systematically, as data are provided in several steps as follows: the main variable, causes, strategies, specific contexts, mediating factors, and outcomes.

In this study, we used Strauss and Corbin’s [44] paradigm model (systematic model) in analyzing data to perform axial coding. The paradigm model emphasizes three analytical constituents including conditions, actions/reactions, and consequences. There are three kinds of conditions in the Grounded theory: the causal conditions representing events or incidents that directly affect the category or the phenomenon and cause or develop the phenomenon. Causal conditions are mostly stated in the data along with terms such as ‘because’, ‘as’, ‘since’, ‘while’, and ‘when’. Second, intervening conditions specify events that modify the intensity of the causal effects. These conditions are integrally contingent and unexpected. Therefore, how to respond to this kind of situation? It is also depending on the situation. Lastly, contextual conditions are sustainable models along with a special time and place and make a set of situations under which individuals and organizations interact/respond. The contextual conditions of a phenomenon are essentially specific to the same phenomenon [44].

10. The relationship between impressive and constructive dimensions of competitiveness and competitive advantage

Farhikhteh et al. [1] showed that both micro and macro competitiveness factors lead to competitive advantage but micro competitiveness factors are more contributive, including: customer relationship management (CRM), goods/services features and knowledge management, the sales forces, sales promotion, the quality of goods, and advertisement. In sum, the most effective factors in achieving competitive advantage, which are classified as three impressive factors, include capabilities of firms, strategies, and macro factors.

Also, Farhikhteh et al. [1] identified four competitiveness factors leading to competitive advantage:

Environmental Factors: supplier availability, the performance of the competitors’ goods, and increased competition.

Inter-Organizational Factors: organizational culture, responsibility to the law, personal characteristics of the top manager, and providence and long-term planning.

Productivity Factors: The growth of innovation and research and development (R&D), low-cost production, strong marketing and sales management, and the high quality of good/service.

The firm’s capitals: financial capital, human capital, and innovation and high-tech productions.

Though the findings are not exactly compatible with each other, it can be seen that factors 1, 2, and 3 are found in Figure 2 and despite its differences, factor 4 is highly related to infra-structural factors of the figure and, therefore, we can conclude that the findings support each other.

Figure 2.

The model of the research.

The newest findings by Farhikhteh and colleagues [1] classified all of the variables identified as competitiveness dimensions as shown in Figure 2.

Context conditions (infrastructural factors): Infrastructure is the central category because it must be created in order to achieve competitive advantage. In other words, causal conditions are not exclusively sufficient to achieve competitive advantage; however, causal conditions and infrastructure help to achieve competitive advantage in the organization. Infrastructure is affected by the competition growth. In other words, competition growth, which includes increased competition, the necessity of optimal raw material management, technological advancements, the growth of innovation, and research and development, has a great impact on infrastructure. Infrastructure is an integral part of any organization. Without proper infrastructure, it is impossible to develop such companies; hence, infrastructure development needs to be driven by increasing competition, technological advances, growth of novelty, and research and development that are moving forward daily.

Causal conditions (competition growth): Conditions that lead to the emergence or expansion of a pivotal phenomenon or class. Competition growth, leading to increased competition, necessity of optimal raw material management, technological advancements, growth of innovation and research and development, was assumed as causal conditions.

Strategies: The strategies are targeted behaviors, actions, and interactions that are the consequences of the pivotal category and influenced by the intervening conditions. These categories are also referred to as strategies and encompass management style and strategies, future planning, and long-term planning.

Intervening conditions: Intra- and extra-organizational factors are generic conditions that constitute a set of mediating variables and are influenced by interactions and actions. In this study, these factors are divided into two categories: internal factors and external factors. Internal factors include internal intervening conditions (intra-organizational factors): organizational culture, adherence to moral values, accountability to the law, and managerial features. Behúnová et al. [45] confirmed that not only financial indicators affect the competitiveness of enterprises but also internal factors within the enterprise affect it.

External intervening conditions (Extra-Organizational Factors): Existence of suppliers, relationship with the micro and macro environment, function of competing devices in the market, and existence of supporting industries.

Consequences (competitive advantage): Some categories represent the results and consequences of adopting specific strategies. In the present model, competitive advantage is the result of mechanisms and influenced by the pivotal category, dominant context, and internal intervening conditions such as high quality of goods and services, innovation and production of advanced devices, low-cost production, and well-known business brand.

As Figure 2 shows, organizational strategies are influenced by the internal organizational components and infrastructure. That is, the development of an enterprise’s infrastructure is a prerequisite for organizational strategies. Internal intervening factors (inter-organizational factors) influence the strategies of the enterprises. Also, the strategies of the enterprises directly affect extra-organizational factors, including the existence of suppliers, relationship with the micro and macro environment, functioning of competing devices in the market, and existence of supporting industries. Ultimately, the strategies of companies, which are influenced by both internal and external intervening components and infrastructure, have consequences such as a variety of commodity portfolios, high quality of goods and services, innovation and production of advanced devices, low-cost production, and well-known business brand.

Based on the aforementioned discussion, we can conclude that Impressive Factors embrace five parts of Figure 2 including Causal conditions, Context conditions, Inner-Intervening conditions, Outer-Intervening conditions, and Strategies. Also, Constructive Factors comprise just one part of the model, the consequences, which in this chapter is competitive advantage. Impressive Factors finally result in Constructive Factors and Constructive Factors result in competitive advantage. On the other hand, all of the five Impressive Factors finally result in Constructive Factors.

11. Conclusion

With increasing environmental uncertainty, it is of paramount importance to reconsider how to achieve competitive advantage. In other words, the mere adoption of management tools, such as cost leadership, differentiation, and other definitions of competitive strategies, cannot account for incremental changes; however, a generic framework is required to address the causes, context, strategies, and intervening factors.

Infrastructure is an integral part of any organization. Without proper infrastructure, it is impossible to develop such companies; hence, infrastructure development needs to be driven by increasing competition, technological advances, growth of novelty, and research and development that are moving forward daily. To achieve competitive advantage, the intervening factors, especially external intervening factors such as economic fluctuations and political conflicts, must be examined because these factors can undermine the role of infrastructure, even if they are favorable. Causal conditions, increasing competition, are also one of the driving forces that ultimately lead to competitive advantage.