Organizations' competitiveness is an effect of their current strategic and tactical movements and also a cause, a driver of future performance. This paper aims to analyze competitiveness in dynamics, by taking into account the impact of organizations' potential of competitiveness on their current actions, which of course will lead to a higher or lower level of competitiveness in future.organizations, potential of competitiveness, sustained competitive advantage, strategy, management, dynamics

BADEA FLORICA

GRIGORE ANA-MARIA

RADU CATALINA

English

Research Papers in Economics

  997 
THE IMPACT OF ORGANIZATIONS’ POTENTIAL OF COMPETITIVENESS 
ON THEIR CURRENT STRATEGIC AND TACTICAL MOVEMENTS 
Radu C￿t￿lina 
Academy of Economic Studies, Faculty of Management, Bucharest 
Grigore Ana Maria 
Academy of Economic Studies, Faculty of Management, Bucharest 
Badea Florica 
Academy of Economic Studies, Faculty of Management, Bucharest 
 
Organizations’ competitiveness is an effect of their current strategic and tactical movements and 
also a cause, a driver of future performance. This paper aims to analyze competitiveness in 
dynamics, by taking into account the impact of organizations’ potential of competitiveness on 
their current actions, which of course will lead to a higher or lower level of competitiveness in 
future. 
 
Keywords:  organizations,  potential  of  competitiveness,  sustained  competitive  advantage, 
strategy, management, dynamics 
 
JEL classification: L14, L21, L25, M16 
 
Introduction 
Any organization should try to be competitive and, moreover, any organization’s performance is 
directly related to the quality of its strategic and tactical movements. Therefore these movements 
deserve  special  attention.  However,  they  are  partly  the  result  of  the  organization’s  current 
potential of competitiveness and we will explain our view in the following pages. 
 
Literature review 
Competitiveness – a dynamic concept 
Competiveness clearly implies dynamics, by being a time-dependent structure (if an organization 
is currently competitive, this does not mean it will also be competitive in the future). 
We define competitiveness as the capability to successfully compete, to provide products and 
services as or more effectively and efficiently than relevant competitors for a specific time frame 
(Radu, 2009).  
There are many theories and models that try to explain why some organizations perform 
better than others. These theories and models can be grouped in three categories: the 
internal  perspective,  which  concentrates  on  resources  and  capabilities,  the  external 
perspective, which focuses on the structure of industries and the dynamic perspective, 
which  bridges  the  internal  and  external  perspectives  and  explain  why  competitive 
advantages do not typically last over long periods of time (Carpenter and Sanders, 2007). 
In order to have a good vision regarding a company’s future, a careful analysis of the whole 
system a company is part of and the ability of the company to achieve future growth are clearly 
necessary  (Woodhead  and  McCuish,  2003).  It  is  clear  that  current  competitive  position  and 
potential influence the future level through company’s current responses (actions). However, an 
incorrect assessment of the current situation may lead to two errors: an under-response (in terms 
of  relative  competitive  force) should  result in deteriorating  relative  competitive  position;  the 
over-response is also a problem, as it can result in wasted resources with little gain in advantage 
(Oliva, Day and Macmillan, 1988).   998
A company’s long term adaptation is actually produced by a series of strategic behaviors and 
organizational innovations. Therefore the organization’s capability to develop effective strategic 
behaviors and organizational structure is critical for any company’s growth (Kuwada, 1998). 
Strategic decision speed is very important; it matters for companies’ growth (competitiveness as 
a result). Therefore, companies need to master fast decision-making (Baum and Wally, 2003). 
 
The potential of competitiveness 
In practice, when we analyze competitiveness dynamically, we refer less to specific strengths or 
weaknesses, and more to “a potential of competitiveness”, a response capacity, and adaptation to 
various evolutions in the environment in which a company activates (Radu, Grigore and C￿t￿ne￿, 
2009). The difficulty of dynamical analysis consists of the variable certainty of the predictions 
(regarding the environment), as well as the difficulty of obtaining relevant information, which 
many  times  happens  to  be  confidential.  However,  the  potential  of  competitiveness  may  be 
analyzed in dynamics, by using an extended Porter’s model in dynamics (Radu, Grigore and 
C￿t￿ne￿, 2009), a dynamic analysis of the five competitive forces and of the macro-environment. 
The  idea  is  to  identify  the  organization’s  responses  to  the  main  evolution  trends  regarding 
competition,  potential  competitors,  substitute  products,  custom  ers,  suppliers  and  general 
environment. In this way we obtain a response capacity of the company to the evolution of its 
environment, which we considered to be “the potential of competitiveness”. 
 
Evaluation of organizations’ current strategic and tactical movements 
It is not easy at all to evaluate organizations’ current actions, strategic and tactical movements. 
Respondents to our questionnaire would not have answered to specific questions (or perhaps they 
would have answered, but not sincerely). However, we understood that the main points to be 
attained refer to cost, time and quality in an extended view (Radu, 2009) and these aspects could 
be pursued in our questionnaire. With respect to cost, we were particularly interested in analyzing 
the cost of actions seen as use of resources and tendencies towards outsourcing or not non-core 
activities. With respect to time, we followed to rapidity of organizations in adapting to various 
new  conditions  (flexibility).  Last  but  not  least,  with  respect  to  quality,  we  looked  for 
organizations’ focus on customer.  
 
Conceptual framework 
It is clear that any organization’s potential of competitiveness will impact its future level of 
competitiveness. However, this influence is not a direct one.  The main idea is actually one 
hypothesis  we  were  interested  to  test:  The  potential  of  competitiveness  has  a  direct  and 
positive influence on organization’s current actions.  
 
Methodology 
In order to test our hypothesis, we developed a questionnaire of 54 questions that was applied in 
two periods of time (June – September 2007 and June – September 2009), in order to see the 
causal relationships and the transformations over time. Almost half of the questions were actually 
translated  and  adapted  after  a  standard  questionnaire  developed  by  European  Foundation  of 
Quality Management (EFQA) and used to assess business excellence. 
223 questionnaires were distributed to managers of different Romanian organizations (7 of them 
non-profit organizations, the rest of them companies of different scales and from different fields 
of activity). Our final analysis was limited to 98 organizations. 
 
Main findings 
After processing the completed questionnaires we analyzed the average scores for each company 
regarding  both  the  potential  of  competitiveness  and  their  current  strategic  and  tactical 
movements.  Therefore  we  could  analyze  the  distribution  of  results  and  also  to  perform  a   999 
regression analysis in order to test our hypothesis. The following figure shows the distribution of 
average scores for organizations’ potential of competitiveness: 
 
 
 
Figure 1. Distribution of average scores for potential of competitiveness 
 
With respect to the average scores obtained for the potential of competitiveness, the distribution 
is quite uniform. Most of organizations have an average score between 5 and 6 (24 out of 98, 
which corresponds to 24.49%). The averages scores are between 4 and 5 for 16 organizations, 
between 6 and 7 for 17 organizations, between 7 and 8 again for 17 organizations, between 8 and 
9 for 14 organizations. 3 organizations have very low scores (under 4), and 7 very good scores 
(above 9). 
Figure 2 shows the distribution of average scores for organizations’ current strategic and tactical 
movements: 
 
 
 
Figure 2. Distribution of average scores for current strategic and tactical movements 
 
Most of organizations that participated in the questionnaire led to a distribution with the highest 
proportion of results between 6 and 7 (approximately one quarter – 24 out of 98 organizations, 
meaning 24.49%). The distribution is quite uniform, and there is no organization with a lower 
score than 4. We can also notice that the number of organizations with a score between 4 and 5 is 
the same with the one with scores above 9 (11 organizations).  
0
5
10
15
20
25
Number of organizations 3 16 24 17 17 14 7
under 4
between 
4 and 5
between 
5 and 6
between 
6 and 7
between 
7 and 8
between 
8 and 9
above 9
0
5
10
15
20
25
Number of organizations 0 11 19 24 17 16 11
under 4
between 
4 and 5
between 
5 and 6
between 
6 and 7
between 
7 and 8
between 
8 and 9
above 9  1000
Although distribution of average scores indicates some elements, for our analysis what happened 
with each organization in part is more important. In order to test this hypothesis we used the 
simple linear regression. The graph that shows the dependency relationship is the following: 
 
Figure 3. Regression line – “Potential of competitiveness – Organization’s current actions” 
 
The coefficient of determination R
2 has a high value (0.7403). Linear relationship of dependence 
between the two variables is strong, as it can be seen from the figure, as there are quite few 
distant points (outliers). F test and p value show that the model is valid:  
 
Table 1. Information regarding the regression line 
 
Regression line:  y = 0.8221 ·  x + 1.6001 
Coefficient of determination (R
2):  0.7403 
Standard error:  0.76 
F test (Fisher):  273.7224 
p-value:  7.32 · 10 
– 30  
 
Conclusion 
We can validate our hypothesis. Indeed, the potential of competitiveness has a direct and positive 
influence on organization’s current actions.  
 
References 
1. Baum, R. and Wally, S. (2003) “Strategic decision speed and firm performance”, Strategic 
Management Journal, 24, pp. 1107-1129 
2. Carpenter, M.A. and Sanders, W.G. (2007) “Strategic management, a dynamic perspective”, 
Pearson Education, New Jersey 
3. Kuwada, K (1998) “Strategic learning: the continuous side of discontinuous strategic change”, 
Organizational Science, Vol. 9, No. 6, pp. 719-736 
4. Oliva, T., Day, D. and Macmilan, I. (1988) “A generic model of competitive dynamics”, 
Academy of Management Review, Vol. 13, No. 3, pp. 374-389 
5.  Radu,  C.  (2009)  “Modalit￿￿i  de  cre￿tere  a  competitivit￿￿ii  organiza￿iilor  în  contextul 
exigen￿elor  actuale  ale  mediului  concuren￿ial”,  PhD  thesis,  Academy  of  Economic  Studies, 
Bucure￿ti 
6.  Radu,  C.,  Grigore,  A.M.  and  C￿t￿ne￿,  A. (2009)  “An integrative  competitiveness  model”, 
Proceedings of the 4
th International Conference on Business Excellence, Vol. 2, pp. 153-156 
y = 0.8221x + 1.6001
R
2 = 0.7403
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7. Woodhead, R. and McCuish, J. (2003) “Achieving results: how to create value”, Thomas 
Telford, London 
   

THE IMPACT OF ORGANIZATIONS' POTENTIAL OF COMPETITIVENESS ON THEIR CURRENT STRATEGIC AND TACTICAL MOVEMENTS

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THE IMPACT OF ORGANIZATIONS' POTENTIAL OF COMPETITIVENESS ON THEIR CURRENT STRATEGIC AND TACTICAL MOVEMENTS

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