Footnotes to organizational competitiveness

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to enhance our understanding of evolution of the concept of competitiveness: how it developed and changed over time. The intention is to review three theoretical and practical reasons that explains why it remains such an important and elusive concept in the same time. First, competitive advantage in particular area or activity will always coexist with relative competitive disadvantage of an organization. Second, organizations can attain competitive advantage in many different ways, also by luck, and it is very difficult empirically to differentiate one from another. Third, many of the complications in studies of organizational competitiveness are results of growing multidimensionality, complexity and fuzziness of organization-environment relationships.