Sustainable Competitiveness of Companies: It Is Difficult to Maintain, Easy to Lose

The loss of competitiveness by global companies that held leading positions in their industries and had significant core competencies for a very long time highlights a need for the analysis of such a phenomenon as long-term competitiveness. The aim of the research is to discover major causes of the loss of competitiveness. The goals include the detection of breaking points that force companies to remold their business activities aswell as the determination of factors that bring about the emergence of breaking points. The subject of sustainable competitiveness relates to both economics and management. That is why numerous theories including the neoclassical one, the institutional one etc. are applied to the study. The research methods include the case-study method as well as structural and comparative analysis. The study of 33 companies (from the USA, Canada, Germany, Sweden, China, South Korea and Japan) in five industries helps to reveal the most common breaking points as well as to determine and classify the internal and external factors that lead to them. The internal factors include crises of growth, diversification crises, innovation crises, reputation crises etc. The external ones include political, technological, economic and natural problems. The authors of the paper reach the conclusion that the loss of competitiveness by a company happens as a result of combined influence of internal and external factors.