The Impact of Sustainability to Strengthen the Competitiveness of Industrial Companies

Abstract

This paper deals with the sustainability dimension as one of the contemporary strategic tools in evaluating the industrial companies performance. Also, this study explores the application of sustainability dimension  and its impact on achieving the success in the competitive field of industrial companies. Coping with the growing dynamics of the competitive society in which companies operate and ensuring the strengthening of the competitiveness of the companies have become challenging issues.Despite significant research interest in the field of sustainability, an extensive review of the literature revealed no substantive evidence of attention being paid to the impact of sustainability to strengthen the competitiveness of industrial companies. In addition,  there has been little work done in this field of study.This study contributes to knowledge concerning the impact of sustainability on competiveness. It does this by improving understanding of industrial companies roles and responsibilities and how this intersects with stakeholders expectations.The research problem can be formulated in the following question: Does the application of the sustainability dimension affect strengthening the competitiveness?".This paper depends on an exploratory study by scanning the field for several companies in the engineering industries sector in Syria by using a questionnaire to determine the impact of sustainability performance on strengthening competitiveness.

The most important findings of the research are:

- There is a very good positive and direct correlation between the sustainability and enhancing cost advantage.

- There is a strong positive and direct correlation between the sustainability and enhancing quality advantage.

- There is a good positive and direct correlation between the sustainability and enhancing environmental advantage.

Keywords: Sustainability dimension, environmental advantage, competitive advantage, quality advantage, cost advantage