Competitiveness 2013 - Special Issue on: "Competitiveness Assessment and Enhancement for Virtual Organisations"

Int. J. of Technology Management
Special Issue on: "Competitiveness Assessment and Enhancement for Virtual Organisations"
Competitiveness is the ability and performance of a firm, sub-sector or country to sell or supply goods or services in a given market. Competitiveness engineering is a systematic procedure, including a series of activities that assess and enhance competitiveness. Michael Porter wrote of five forces that influence the competitiveness of an enterprise: the threat of substitute products, the threat of established rivals, the threat of new entrants, the bargaining power of suppliers, and the bargaining power of customers. However, these invisible forces mostly come from outside the company, and it is difficult to assess their impact. Nevertheless, non-imitable and non-substitutable organisational capabilities (and resources) have been noted to be a key source of inter-firm performance differences.
There have been some relevant references in this field, but most of them have focused on exploring the factors affecting competitiveness (such as cost, quality, customer satisfaction, technical competence, etc.) and ways to improve competitiveness (such as balanced scorecards, blue ocean strategies, lean production, green supply chains, learning organisations, etc.). Although competitiveness is represented as a critical issue, nothing is said about what quantitatively constitutes a high or low level of competitiveness.
In today’s era of global markets, virtual organisations, including e-businesses, virtual enterprises and supply/demand chains, are forms of alliance that have been proven to be more efficient. In addition, the following topics have also appeared in this field:
1. Green competitiveness: applying strategy to achieve productivity and overall socioeconomic development while reaching the goal of sustainable development.
2. Sustainable competitiveness: Foxconn’s pay increase in 2010 led to continued improvements to the Chinese wage level; this made it more difficult to obtain low-cost human resources. Many companies began to migrate to regions with lower wage levels to maintain their competitive edge.
3. Competitiveness versus productivity: thinking in terms of competitiveness could lead to wasteful spending, while in the context of factories, productivity is what matters.
This special issue is intended to provide details of developing advanced methodologies and their applications to the assessment and enhancement of competitiveness for virtual organisations. It will feature a balance between state-of-the-art research and usually reported applications. The issue will also provide a forum for researchers and practitioners to review and disseminate quality research work on advanced methodologies and their applications in the context of competitiveness assessment and enhancement for virtual organisations, and to identify critical issues for further developments.
Subject Coverage
Suitable topics include but are not limited to:
Competitiveness assessment
Competitiveness assessment and enhancement for a virtual enterprise
Competitiveness assessment and enhancement for an e-business
Competitiveness assessment and enhancement for a supply chain
Competitiveness assessment and enhancement for a demand chain
Maintaining competitiveness through strategic alliances
Meta-performances of competitiveness
Competitiveness planning, e.g. the balanced scoreboard
Competitiveness enhancement strategy
Blue ocean strategy
Lean production
Green supply chains
Value chain
Learning organisations
Innovation sourcing
Green competitiveness
Sustainable competitiveness
Competitiveness impacts of changes and policies
Notes for Prospective Authors
Submitted papers should not have been previously published nor be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere. (N.B. Conference papers may only be submitted if the paper was not originally copyrighted and if it has been completely re-written).
All papers are refereed through a peer review process. A guide for authors, sample copies and other relevant information for submitting papers are available on the Author Guidelines page.
Important Dates
Submission deadline: 31 August, 2013
Notification of the initial decision: 31 October, 2013
Notification of acceptance: 30 November, 2013
Editors and Notes
All papers must be submitted online. To submit a paper, please go to Online Submissions of Papers. If you experience any problems submitting your paper online, please contact submissions-AT-inderscience.com, describing the exact problem you experience. Please include in your submission the title of the Special Issue, the title of the Journal and the names of the Guest Editors
Lead Guest Editor: Tin-Chih Toly Chen (tolychen-AT-ms37.hinet.net), Feng Chia University