On the Appropriateness of Using the Concept of «Competitiveness»

Abstract

Changes happening in the internal and external business environment in the 21st century intensify the need for improving approaches to the evaluation of effectiveness of economic entities on different levels of economic analysis: micro, meso and macro. Although there is a significant theoretical background, the most common category for an assessment of the condition of an economic entity in the economic theory is «competitiveness», which was proposed by Adam Smith. Starting from the second half of the 20th century, specialists have been using this term for characterizing efficiency of individuals, cities, industries, regions and countries. Today, academics have developed unique ideas about the content of this category: methods of assessment of the reached level; factors which influence the category on different levels of economic analysis. However, the paradox is that the theoretical foundation cannot solve practical problems and answer relevant questions. In the article, the authors try to show that making the term «competitiveness» unified is unreasonable, it is based on factual material and opinions of national and foreign researchers. The authors formulate a hypothesis about the necessity of terminological disintegration while making multiple factor analysis: identifying independent groups of phenomena all of which are responsible for a specific condition type of a subject / object.