Agility, Flexibility, Responsiveness and Competitiveness – the Challenge to Define the Difference

The contemporary financial and economic situation, and especially the post-covid 19 realities combined with current drop of economic activity in certain European countries, pose the need to do more research in the field of the structure and performance of the enterprises. The dynamic ecosystem, the global uncertain political situation and the war in the Ukraine are challenging the enterprises worldwide. There is a rising need to increase to sustainability of the enterprises. There is no sufficient scientific work done to find out the meaning of the core terms used to analyze the dynamic state of production enterprises. This paper attempts to define the differences between the terms of agility, flexibility, responsiveness and competitiveness with the idea to distinguish each of them from the others and how they interact with each other. The agility of the enterprises offers possibilities to survive and evolve pushing the production capacities to their limits in this highly dynamic business reality. The agility of the enterprise uses the dynamics of the ecosystem to enhance its competitiveness. Flexibility is the ability to change the state of the enterprise within its existing configuration, whereas responsiveness is the propensity for a purposeful and timely change in behavior of the enterprise in the presence of modulating stimuli. This work makes a scientific contribution by clarifying the above-mentioned terms.