Understanding the Relationship Between Manufacturing Strategy and Competitiveness: Towards a Dynamic Approach

Manufacturing firms are facing a "competitive gridlock" despite implementing strategic organizational and technological changes. Building on the product-process matrix and developments in organizational learning, we develop a two-level model that focuses on balancing the decisions related to the short-term and long-term organizational activities at both the firm and manufacturing levels dynamically. The model indicates that the system behavior is likely to be dynamically robust as environmental uncertainty increases, suggesting that the set of drivers (practices and capabilities) of competitiveness tends to be bounded; the elements of this set are likely to be closely integrated across the two levels.