Systemic competitiveness: A new challenge for firms and for government

This article analyses the concept of systemic competitiveness by examining its determining factors and the way in which they interrelate. The author puts forward the view that industrial competitiveness is the product of the complex and dynamic interaction between four social and economic levels in a national system, namely: the micro level, consisting of enterprises, many of them interlinked in mutual assistance networks, which aim to achieve simultaneously efficiency, quality, flexibility and speed of response; the meso level, corresponding to the State and social actors, which develop specific support policies, promote the establishment of structures and coordinate learning processes at the level of society; the macro level, where pressure is exerted on the enterprises through performance requirements; and finally, the level referred to in this article as the “meta” level, which is made up of solid basic patterns of legal, political and economic organization, an adequate social capacity for organization and integration, and the capacity of the actors to achieve strategic integration.