Competitiveness of Iranian Enterprises

Competitiveness is considered as a key criterion for appraising the degree of success for countries, industries and enterprises in the political, economic and commercial competition areas. Research findings show that competitiveness has been discussed in three levels of national, industry and enterprise (organization or company). Among all these levels, the enterprise level seems to be more considerable. In this study enterprise competitiveness has been viewed from two main perspectives: construct and behavioral. According to construct perspective, competitiveness includes two groups of factors which are composing and affecting factors. Based on behavioral perspective an enterprise faces two types of factors in its decisions and actions which are strategic and operational ones. As a result of literature review, summarization and complementary edition, totally 28 factors have been identified as competitiveness factors ({16 composing f. and 12 affecting f.} and {15 strategic f. and 13 operational f.}). A questionnaire has also been developed based on these factors. The findings show that in Iranian business context, all competitiveness factors of enterprises are highly important but very weak