Strategies for enhancing the competitiveness of industrial firms

Globalization has reached high levels in the last decades, expanding the strategic map of economies of sectors and companies globally, while also emphasizing the importance of competitiveness for a favorable position thereof. Firms in general, and those in the industrial sector in Romania, went down winding roads, characterized by high vulnerability due to an enhanced turbulence of the environment. Therefore, focusing on the determinants of maintaining, increasing or recovering the effects of competitiveness becomes a requirement for fixing the economic and social strategy of any country or region. In the new conditions,the old models of industrial development based on increasing production capacities are being replaced with models of development capabilities, i.e. those factors that are able to increase competitiveness: innovation, specialization, sustainable development and social inclusion. The structural and systemic change of these paradigms results in the development of new organizational structures of design, production, research, development, innovation, and new types of companies based on strategic alliances,company networks, clusters.