Micro-Economic Competitiveness: A Research on Manufacturing Firms Operating in TRB1region

Since competitiveness is believed that mapping the competitive environment of an organization helps to form a sound basis for business strategy development, the study of competitiveness has become extremely popular with management theorists and practitioners in recent years (Li et al., 2009:568). As an attempt to map the competitive environment of TRB1 region, in this study it is aimed to determine the competitiveness of small, medium and large sized manufacturing firms operating in TRB1 region including Malatya, Elazığ, Bingöl and Tunceli. As a measurement of competitiveness of the manufacturing firms in the region, predominantly accepted and commonly used in both micro-economic and macro-economic competitiveness surveys in the literature, Porter's (1990) Diamond Model was used. According to survey results, it is found that while more than half of the manufacturing firms’ competitiveness is at an average level; only a small proportion is highly competitive.