Competitiveness
Competitiveness can be understood as a feature, attribute, outcome, or result of competition or as a process of competing. The process leads to achieving the feature, attribute, outcome, or result of competitiveness.
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Competitiveness is most often considered in relation to economic issues. Competitiveness is a concept pertaining to a market economy. The essence of this economy lies in the fact that economic participants = actors, compete with each other on various levels.
The concept of competitiveness belongs to the so-called theoretical concepts. The theoretical nature of this concept means that it does not represent any specific thing, person, or anything we imagine as a thing or person. It does not have directly identifiable designations. To explain what this concept means, it is necessary to decompose it, which here means distinguishing the dimensions of competitiveness.
In simplification, it can be assumed that competitiveness means the ability to compete. What exactly assumes acting for surviving in a competitive environment.
Competitiveness in process concept
In process concept, processual (operational) competitiveness is inseparably linked to attribute (resultant) competitiveness. Processual competitiveness leads to achieving attributes of competitiveness.
This understanding of competitiveness can be applied to various levels of economic existence. Competitiveness is not an absolute feature. It always relates to to a given economic subsystem and assumes some relation to the features of other subsystems, some type of relation connecting the given subsystem with other subsystems.
Even if one can imagine a scale for measuring competitiveness, it always involves an element of referencing the features of the object whose competitiveness is being examined to the features of other objects it competes with.
Competitiveness is a relative feature. It means one whose meaning assumes some type of relation connecting the object being described with some other objects. Competitiveness should be categorized among relative features referred to as comparative properties. Comparative properties of objects involve attributing certain properties as a result of comparing them with other objects or some standard of comparison, for example, the average for the entire population.
Competitiveness on various economic systems
Competitiveness can be related to various levels of economic existence (system). In economics, there are generally six main levels of economic system hierarchy: micro-micro, micro, meso, macro, regional (in relation to groups of countries), and global.
The micro-micro level is the lowest and refers to individual consumers, individual entrepreneurs, and individual employees. This is the basic level of analysis in economic sciences. The unit of analysis here is the economic aspects of human behavior.
The micro level includes enterprises (not single-person ones) and households consisting of more than one consumer. Formally speaking, this level includes enterprises of very varied sizes, which undoubtedly complicates making generalizations.
The meso level is the mid-level. It is most often referred to industries, sectors, branches, and other similar components of the national economy. These are thus subjectively and/or objectively distinct fragments of a country’s economy. The meso level is also sometimes referred to territorially distinct fragments of a country’s economy (e.g., voivodeships, provinces, states, etc.).
The macro level concerns the national (country) economies of individual states. It should be noted that this level includes objects (subsystems) of very varied sizes. The regional level, in the sense adopted here, refers to groups of countries (national economies). For example, it may include integration groups of various states.
Finally, the global level refers to the economy of the entire globe.
It should also be added that the territorial (spatial) aspect is increasingly being raised in competitiveness studies. There is talk of the competitiveness of municipalities, counties, voivodeships, regions, macroregions, etc. – these are spatially distinct fragments of the national economy. Thus, it can be said that this is a certain type of mesosystem of the economy, for which a geographical criterion is used to outline its boundaries.
The feature of competitiveness can apply to most, but not all, levels of economic existence. If competitiveness is a relative feature, it can apply to the micro-micro, micro, meso, regional, and macro levels, but not to the global level. One can talk about the competitiveness of a single worker (e.g., managerial skills of a manager, work efficiency of a physical worker, etc.), the competitiveness of an enterprise (e.g., changes in market share), the competitiveness of an industry (e.g., changes in gross domestic product share), and the competitiveness of the national economy (e.g., the ability for sustainable economic growth). However, in the case of the global level (world economy), it would be impossible to speak of its competitiveness because there is no reference point, dependencies, interactions, and context with which the features of the world economy could be compared.
An important observation may also be that when conducting competitiveness research and analysis, one must remember to compare comparable quantities, i.e., objects belonging to the same category. It is difficult to compare the competitiveness of a worker with the competitiveness of industry x or region y.
Additionally, it should be noted that competitiveness research related to different levels has generally been conducted in an autonomous manner, often disconnected from each other, resulting in a lack of a uniform terminology for describing competitiveness at different levels.
Competitiveness can be viewed dynamically and statically
Considering the passage of time, competitiveness can be viewed dynamically and statically. When talking about an object possessing the attribute of competitiveness, we usually refer to a specific moment in which we consider and compare competitiveness. Competitiveness understood statically is like a photograph of a set of features of an object that describe its competitiveness.
Competitiveness in a dynamic sense, on the other hand, is a set, sequence, and sequence of states that encompass the static aspect. A dynamic approach to competitiveness thus assumes an understanding of its development over time. In light of the earlier comments, it can be observed that static competitiveness corresponds to the feature, attribute, result, outcome, and thus attribute (resultant) competitiveness.
Conversely, competitiveness viewed from a dynamic perspective corresponds to processual competitiveness, that is, the process of achieving a certain state of competitiveness.
It is proposed that regardless of the level at which competitiveness research is conducted, the following terminological convention should be adopted:
Strategy of competitiveness refers to the future (prospective) competitive position. It is determined, among other things, by the relative (compared to rivals’ skills) ability of an object to compete in the future, that is, by its competitive potential.
In other words, it is attribute (resultant) competitiveness that can be realized in the future. The construction and subsequent utilization of competitive potential are described by a planned or intended competitive strategy.
The competitive strategy of an object participating in the competition process is an analytical category that enables the transition from competitive potential, i.e., potential (ex ante) competitiveness, to actual, realized (ex post) competitiveness.
Competitive advantage
Competitive strategies are employed so that the competing object can achieve the best possible competitive position. Achieving the desired competitive position, i.e., a competitive advantage in terms of the occupied position, is conditioned by having a competitive advantage in terms of potential and/or competitive strategy.
In other words, having a competitive advantage in terms of potential and/or strategy is a necessary condition for achieving a good competitive position.
A competitive advantage in terms of competitive position is the result of applying a set of competition instruments, which are components of the competition strategy. If the object whose competitiveness is being considered is, for example, an enterprise, the set of competition instruments may include components such as product quality, price, uniqueness of the offered products, flexibility in adapting products to customer needs, more frequent introduction of new products to the market, etc.
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