Search Results (18)

National competitiveness has become a central policy concern for resource-dependent economies pursuing structural transformation. Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 represents a comprehensive national strategy aimed at diversifying the economy, upgrading productivity, and strengthening institutional capacity. Despite extensive discussion of individual reforms, there remains a lack of integrated, theory-guided analysis that explains how these changes interact systemically at the national level. This study addresses this gap by applying Porter’s Diamond Model as a conceptual descriptive analytical framework to examine Saudi Arabia’s economic transformation. The analysis treats the Diamond determinants—factor conditions, demand conditions, related and supporting industries, and firm strategy, structure, and rivalry—as an interconnected system shaped by government intervention. Drawing on secondary data from official policy documents, international competitiveness indicators, (including the Global Innovation Index, IMD World Competitiveness Rankings, Logistics Performance Index, and Worldwide Governance Indicators), and institutional reports, the study maps key reform dynamics onto each determinant and examines their cross-determinant interactions and feedback loops. The findings suggest that Saudi Arabia has made substantial progress in upgrading factor conditions and generating sophisticated domestic demand, while systemic challenges remain in firm level rivalry and innovation ecosystem depth. The study highlights that sustainable national competitiveness depends on coordinated upgrading across all determinants rather than isolated reforms. By reframing Porter’s Diamond as a dynamic, systems-oriented analytical tool, this paper contributes to the literature on national competitiveness in transformation economies and provides policy relevant insights for advancing productivity driven growth under Vision 2030. Full article

Against the backdrop of great power strategic games, countries around the world have been continuously intensifying their control over the trade of critical metals, including tungsten, in order to seize the commanding heights of scientific, technological, and economic development, which has led to increasingly fierce competition in the global tungsten industry chain and supply chain. Although China is endowed with abundant tungsten ore reserves, its tungsten industry chain remains dominated by mid-to-low-end products, with low added value and limited pricing power in the international market. Therefore, it is of great significance to clarify the export competitiveness level of China in each link of the tungsten industry chain and to identify the influencing factors for improving the overall competitiveness of the industrial chain, which will enhance China’s international status and assist in formulating sustainable tungsten resource management strategies. Based on the industrial chain perspective and the trade data of typical products at various stages of the tungsten industry chain from 2008 to 2022, this study first selects the World Market Share Index, Trade Competitive Advantage Index, and Revealed Comparative Advantage Index to quantitatively depict the export competitiveness of the overall, upstream, midstream, and downstream sectors of China’s tungsten industry chain, and a horizontal comparison is conducted with major global tungsten resource trading countries. Secondly, the entropy weight method is adopted to further comprehensively evaluate the competitiveness level of various countries. Finally, the potential influencing factors of the overall export competitiveness of the tungsten industry chain are explored in accordance with Porter’s Diamond Model, and a fixed-effect model is used to perform regression analysis on the panel data. The research findings show that China has strong export competitiveness in the midstream and downstream sectors of the tungsten industry chain, while its export competitiveness in the upstream tungsten ore sector is relatively weak. The level of education, human capital, educational expenditure, gross national product, and trade openness all have a significant positive impact on the export competitiveness of tungsten resources. Greater efforts should be made in China to cultivate high-end talents in the tungsten industry. Moreover, innovation in green technologies and products should be encouraged, and international cooperation should be deepened, to improve the efficiency of the entire industrial chain so that stable and green long-term competitiveness in the tungsten industry can be achieved. Full article

The burgeoning economic relationship between Türkiye and Poland, marked by a targeted $10 billion trade volume, has catalyzed significant Turkish engagement in the Polish construction sector. Ranked second globally in international contracting, Turkish firms are increasingly undertaking complex infrastructure projects in Poland, making it a critical European market to analyze. This study develops a comprehensive framework to identify and evaluate the sources of sustainable competitive advantage for Turkish contractors operating in this dynamic environment. The research adopts a qualitative, single-case study methodology, centered on the extensive project portfolio of a leading Turkish firm in Poland. The analytical approach is twofold. First, it employs Porter’s Diamond Framework to deconstruct the existing competitive advantages, revealing a shift from traditional low-cost models to a sophisticated synergy of superior labor management capabilities, strategic local partnerships, and expertise in complex project delivery. These strengths are shown to align directly with Poland’s critical needs, particularly its skilled labor shortage and ambitious infrastructure agenda. Second, a Foresight Analysis is conducted to map plausible future scenarios through 2035, addressing key uncertainties such as geopolitical shifts and the pace of technological adoption. The findings demonstrate that the sustained success of Turkish contractors hinges on their ability to deliver targeted value. The study concludes by proposing a set of “no-regrets” strategies—including accelerated ESG and digital up-skilling, forging deep local partnerships, and developing financial engineering capabilities—designed to secure and enhance their competitive positioning. The results provide an actionable roadmap for industry practitioners and valuable insights for policymakers fostering bilateral economic collaboration. Full article

Background: The Port of Santa Marta, located on Colombia’s northern Caribbean coast, plays a vital role in the country’s maritime trade, particularly in the export of agricultural and perishable goods. This raises the question: how competitive is Santa Marta’s container terminal compared to national and regional ports, and what strategic factors shape its performance within the Colombia and Latin American maritime logistics system? Methods: This study evaluates the port’s competitiveness by applying Porter’s Extended Diamond Model. A mixed-methods ap-proach was employed, combining structured surveys and interviews with port stakeholders and operational data analysis. A competitiveness matrix was developed and examined using standardized residuals and L1 regression to identify critical performance gaps and strengths. Results: The analysis reveals several competitive advantages, including the port’s strategic location, natural deep-water access, and advanced infrastructure for refrigerated cargo. It also benefits from skilled labour and proximity to global shipping routes, such as the Panama Canal. Nonetheless, challenges remain in storage capacity, limited road connectivity, and insufficient public investment in hinterland infrastructure. Conclusions: While the Port of Santa Marta shows strong maritime capabilities and spe-cialized services, addressing its land-side and institutional constraints is essential for positioning it as a resilient, competitive logistics hub in the Latin American and Caribbean region. Full article

Rural tourism has emerged as a significant option to meet the people’s growing needs for a better life in the new era. Evaluating the competitiveness of the rural tourism industry plays a crucial role in promoting rural revitalization. This article is based on a modified Porter’s diamond model. This study focuses on representative rural tourism demonstration areas in the upper, middle, and lower reaches of the Yangtze River Economic Belt, specifically Wenjiang District in Chengdu, Huangpi District in Wuhan, and Jiangning District in Nanjing. The Delphi method and the Analytic Hierarchy Process were employed to construct a competitiveness evaluation index system for rural tourism and to assign weights. This article evaluates and compares the competitiveness of the rural tourism industry in the case study regions. This research reveals that the competitiveness of the rural tourism industry in the Yangtze River Economic Belt exhibits a pattern of strong competitiveness in the middle reaches, weaker competitiveness in the upper reaches, and moderate competitiveness in the lower reaches. These differences are significantly influenced by the region’s tourism resource endowments, tourism infrastructure, and market scale. Huangpi District demonstrates strong competitiveness in its rural tourism industry. This strength is attributed to its well-developed rural tourism supply system. Jiangning District has moderate competitiveness in its rural tourism industry. This is supported by a strong market demand and a relatively complete tourism support system. Wenjiang District shows weaker competitiveness in its rural tourism industry. This weakness results from a fragile rural tourism supply system and a sluggish market demand. This article concludes with recommendations for enhancing the competitiveness of rural tourism in the Yangtze River Economic Belt. Full article

Industrial Organization, the Resource-Based View, and the Relational View are some classical, well-established, and widely accepted theories in the strategic management domain regarding the understanding, explanation, and prediction of competitive advantage of firms and above-average firm performance. Recent evidence of economic geography and regional economics added to this stream of research new perspectives like cluster theory and microeconomic competitiveness. Despite the high enthusiasm with which companies and policymakers embraced the new advancements, there is some contradictory evidence regarding the positive effect of local conditions on firm performance. Thus, in this paper, we aim to empirically test some aspects of a modern regional development theory, proposed mainly by Michael Porter and collaborators, and the impact of these aspects on firm performance. External determinants considered at three levels of analysis (local economy, local clusters, and industry) will be investigated in relation to firm performance. We will analyze empirical data through detailed correlational analyses and by building multilinear regression models. After the statistical analysis of the answers provided directly by 67 medium and large manufacturing companies operating in Romania, we will provide empirical support for some external determinants, while for other determinants, we will show that the data rejected the proposed associations. The main conclusion derived from this study is that different combinations of external determinants, considered at all three levels of analysis, have a positive and significant effect on different measures of firm performance. The findings in our paper are important for both regional economics and the strategic management literature, suggesting the importance of creating local or urban conditions depending on the type of performance that the firms in the local economy are underperforming. Full article

To reduce the impact of safety risks on assembled buildings, this paper explores the factors affecting the safety risks of constructed buildings from the perspective of linkage between the design and construction phases. The method identifies 10 first-level risk indicators and 25 s-level safety risk indicators in five dimensions of prefabricated components, personnel, management, environment, and technology in both the design and construction phases, utilizing literature induction, expert interviews, questionnaire surveys, and Porter’s diamond model. The structural equation model was used to quantify the weights of the 25 s-level safety risk indicators to highlight the safety risk analysis of the assembled building and avoid risk. The results of the study show that it is important to analyze the safety risk linkage between the design phase and construction phase of the assembled building; from the perspective of the design-construction phase linkage, controlling the safety risk in the design phase can effectively reduce the safety risk in the construction phase. Full article

In the face of the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0 era), in order to cope with the various crises that may come, countries around the world are accelerating the research and development of cutting-edge technologies and promoting and deploying the Industries of the Future in order to seize the high ground in the new round of strategic competition in science and technology. Therefore, entrepreneurship in Industries of the Future has become an urgent problem for governments and enterprises to solve. Entrepreneurship in Industries of the Future is a systematic project with uncertainties, which is dynamically influenced by many factors and has different levels of division among them. Inspired by the form of Porter’s diamond model, this paper constructs a diamond model of the driving mechanism of entrepreneurship in Industries of the Future. Using the DEMATEL-ISM analysis method, each critical factor and influence mechanism of entrepreneurship in Industries of the Future is explored, and a multi-level structural model is established. The study found eight critical factors affecting entrepreneurship in Industries of the Future, among which technology, creation, need, and aspiration are the critical factors, and relevant enterprises and governments should prioritize these influencing factors and deal with them. Full article

Intelligent construction (IC) integrates intelligent technologies with the construction industry to improve efficiency and sustainability. IC development involves many driving factors, but only the critical factors play essential roles. Thus, it is necessary to identify these key factors to understand and promote IC development thoroughly. Although there are many studies on IC-related technologies, a focus on identifying the driving factors of IC is lacking. We aimed to identify the key driving factors for IC development, analyze the relationship between the key factors and IC, and then produce general laws to guide IC by conducting an empirical study in China. We employed a five-stage research design and proposed the following general laws of how the key factors drive the development of IC: (1) initially, there exits the opportunity that drives companies to generate IC; (2) subsequently, the planning and pressure of a firm strategy, structure, and rivalry further drive companies to try to develop IC; (3) afterward, government policy vigorously promotes IC practices of the participating companies and accelerates the development of IC; and (4) finally, the market forces begin to play a leading role, and companies spontaneously carry out IC activities when the policy effect reaches a certain level. The findings indicate that policies to promote IC development should be consistent with its development stage, and the key driving factors of different stages should be paid attention to. Although the context of this study is China, the findings can provide references for IC’s development globally. Full article

The fourth industrial revolution (4IR) is bringing about enormous changes in various aspects of the construction industry. This influence is emerging as a smart technology and is regarded as a productivity innovation in the construction industry. In addition, several countries are attempting policies to diffuse technological innovation into various industries, such as those related to legal systems, investments, and additional markets. These policies commonly have the intention to encourage various industrial factors that are related to smart-construction competitiveness. Therefore, this study analyzed the competitiveness from an industrial perspective to revitalize smart technologies in the construction industry. For this purpose, the acceptance of innovation within the Korean construction industry (KCI) was reviewed through diffusion-innovation theory, and then competitiveness factors were driven by the literature, based on Porter’s diamond model. Factors are measured by the contractors who utilize smart technologies, analyzing the competitiveness priority and differences between them. The main finding is that the “Demand Condition” is the most important industrial competitiveness for embedding smart technology in the early stage of construction industry. Moreover, to reduce the risks related to developing technologies, it suggested that distinct policies are required in accordance with the contractors. These findings are going to be helpful for policy makers as references for developing policies to embed smart technology in the construction industry. Full article

Tourism has been seen and adopted as a vital means for achieving rural economic and social revitalization worldwide without harming sustainable development principles. For China, the evaluation of rural tourism competitiveness at the township level is essential for planning and developing the tourism industry as a basic administration and economic unit, but there is not enough research due to the lack of applicable data and systematic methods. Therefore, this study constructed a town-level rural tourism competitiveness evaluation and development mode classification model based on the modified Michael Porter’s Diamond Model using integrated multi-source data. By taking the 1806 township units in Henan Province, China as examples, we conclude four different modes based on the level of the comprehensive score and industrial internal balance (i.e., balanced development mode with multiple advantages, related and supporting industries driving mode, ecological resource-led mode, and rural landscape experience mode). Policy suggestions for the optimization of the rural tourism industry for Henan are discussed based on the results. Full article

The vegetable sector plays an important role in ensuring food security. Vegetable trade flows in Romania have become a major concern due to constant trade balance deficits despite the country’s agricultural potential. Taking into account the paradox between what could be considered an abundance of factor endowments and poor trade balance results, the objective of this research was to study the linkage between vegetable trade flows and chain competitiveness. Spatial panel econometric methods were used to study the impact of the international vegetable market on the demand in Romania, while the Balassa index and Porter’s diamond modelling techniques were used to study the competitiveness of the vegetable chain at both county and national levels. By applying the spatial regression method to the international trade and national production panel data, it was found that an increase in the quantity of vegetables imported into Romania would cause an even greater decrease in national vegetable production. The results show that Romanian vegetable production is highly and negatively influenced by the growing appetite for imports—therefore leading to a national dependence on the global vegetable chain. Porter’s diamond model results confirm that: (a) growing vegetables is profitable in Romania and the average profit margin is higher in this economic sector than in many others; (b) there is a lack of competitiveness caused by the post-communist excessively fragmented agrarian land structure and poor performance of the irrigation, warehousing, and transportation sectors; (c) the national production of vegetables is generally self-sufficient with the exception of three counties that resort to importing and account for more than 70% of Romania’s total vegetable imports; (d) factor endowments cannot be fully harnessed, and this contributes to the deepening of the trade balance deficits. Improvement is possible by fostering competitiveness through increasing the performance of supporting industries and the logistics infrastructure, as well as removing market access barriers for the many small farmers. Full article

Countries participating in the international division of labor each try to occupy the industrial highlands, obtain competitive advantages, and promote sustainability of economic development. Based on Porter’s Diamond model, it is widely believed that producer services are vital to support the manufacturing industry. Consequently, this paper selects samples of 55 countries and uses data from 2010 to 2017 to empirically test the impact of producer service’s opening on the export competitiveness of the manufacturing industry. The results show that the opening of producer services in a country promotes the improvement of international competitiveness of manufacturing industry, and the improvement effect is more significant in developed countries than in developing countries. Additionally, the negative impact of foreign capital access restrictions on the export competitiveness of the manufacturing industry is greater than the positive impact of service trade opening. It is also found that the restrictions on foreign capital’s opening in the financial sector have the biggest negative impact on manufacturing exports than that of other divisions of the producer service industry. To improve national competitiveness, it is suggested that the integration of service and manufacturing industries should be enhanced and to decrease FDI access to financial and transportation services restrictions. Full article

The animation industry is a crucial part of cultural and creative industries and has formed a huge consumer market all over the world and even become a pillar industry in developed countries. However, in China, the animation industry is still in its infancy, and its development is relatively backward. The main reason is that there is no sustainable development model in the industry. Thus, how to carry out sustainable development has become an important research topic for the Chinese animation industry. This study probed into the challenges and problems faced by China’s animation industry, and based on Porter’s Diamond Model, analyzed the current situation of China’s animation industry from six aspects: production factors, demand conditions, industrial chain, enterprise strategy, cultural factors, and government policies, clarifies the key direction for industrial development, and puts forward relatively comprehensive reference strategies to promote the formation of a sustainable development model for the animation industry. The research shows that the sustainable development of the animation industry must be completed by integrating resources within the industry, improving the chain, upgrading the enterprises, technological innovations, cultural embedding, external personnel training, government support, legal protection, and other aspects. Full article

The development of the regional economy cannot be separated from the support of regional logistics, as the scientific decisions of regional logistics are helpful to promote the healthy development of the regional economy. The comprehensive evaluation of regional logistics competitiveness is the premise and foundation of regional logistics scientific decision-making; the evaluation index system, evaluation data, and index weight are the key links affecting a comprehensive evaluation. In order to improve the quality of a comprehensive evaluation, the study aims at addressing problems such as the evaluation index system of regional logistics competitiveness being complex and scattered, the normalized distribution of the evaluation data being extremely asymmetric and seriously deviating from the normal distribution, and the logic of calculating index weights by the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) not being accurate. To do this, a triangle model of regional logistics competitiveness is constructed based on Porter’s diamond model, and the evaluation index system of regional logistics competitiveness is refined from the three dimensions of resource supply, logistics service, and market demand. Based on the concept of symmetry theory, a normalization method of segmental mapping with quartiles as multiple reference points is proposed, which improves the distribution rationality, symmetry, and distance discrimination of normalized data. The dynamic index scale is used to determine the scale of the analytic hierarchy process, and the evaluation matrix is constructed based on the importance level grading table; the index weights are directly solved without a consistency check, which improves the logical accuracy of a subjective evaluation. Based on the data of segment mapping, the comprehensive evaluation value of the evaluation object is calculated, and the competitiveness of regional logistics is compared and ranked, which improves the differentiation and consistency of the results. Through the comparative analysis of the calculation results, it was proven that the improvement of the data standardization method is necessary when the range is too large. The method in this paper can make the distribution of data standardization with a range too large closer to the normal distribution. It was found that the ranking of regional logistics competitiveness is highly consistent with the total social logistics, and that the total amount of regional logistics has an important reference value for the competitiveness of regional logistics. The ranking calculated by the indicators and methods in this paper has a certain reference value for regional logistics decision-making. Full article