The competitive advantage of enterprises in the conditions of market economy is not generated merely by ensuring high quality products and services. Therefore, in their strategies, they need to involve elements such as corporate social responsibility. The aim of the paper is to identify the key sources of competitive advantage of large enterprises. In the empirical research, the hypothesis has been tested to determine if the application of corporate social responsibility by enterprises has a statistically significant effect on gaining competitive advantage in the market. The hypothesis is verified on the basis of the authors’ study of 253 large enterprises operating in Poland by means of exploratory factor analysis, the statistical method of reducing the number of classifying empirical variables, i.e. of discovering a structure in their interrelations. The procedure enabled the selection of the factors with the greatest statistical shares in explaining variability. To this end, the input space was rotated in accordance with the Varimax criterion, with the number of determined factors specified by means of the Kaiser criterion and Cattell’s scree test. The application of an exploratory factor analysis enabled the authors to construct an original factor model of sources of enterprise competitive advantage, with three factors identified: marketing, innovation activity and corporate social responsibility. This indicates that marketing activities, innovation activities and the application of corporate social responsibility are the key sources of competitive advantage in large enterprises operating in the market.
Purpose: Study impact of business activities on selection of sources of enterprises' competitive advantage. The research hypothesis is advanced as H1: scope of business objects (sector) is a factor differentiating selection of sources of competitive advantage by enterprises. The concept and essence of competitiveness are discussed, methods of building competitive advantage by enterprises are detailed. Design/Methodology/Approach: The theoretical section follows a comprehensive review of leading specialist literature. The hypothesis is verified in the empirical section by means of position measures (arithmetic mean, median) and variability measures (standard deviation, coefficient of variability). Kruskal-Wallis test is also used to verify the research hypothesis. Findings: The paper contains results of a survey of 253 large Polish enterprises. Kruskal-Wallis test serves to determine impact of a sector on selection of sources of enterprise competitive advantage. Sector has no effect on choice of such sources as: quality management system, cost reduction, advertising, public relations, enterprise image, highly qualified managerial staff, knowledge and skills of employees, new technologies, or customer trust. Practical Implications: The results can be utilised by enterprises as guidelines for selection of sources of competitive advantage. Originality/Value: The paper contains an original study of a representative group of large enterprises that can be generalised to the whole population assuming a confidence level α=95% and maximum error β=6%.
Humanitarian workers operate in complex environments with various challenges and demanding working conditions. These challenges put aid workers in a range of risks and under the pressure. However, human resources are crucial for success of humanitarian operations in general. At the same time, each humanitarian operation is reliant on logistics and logistics activities are always connected with logistic staff. Understanding what motivates logisticians to join the humanitarian sector is essential information for humanitarian organizations and for recruiters within. Also, knowing which factors influence motivation and job satisfaction of humanitarian logisticians could help the organizations to struggle with the extremely turnover they have to face. Up to this moment, needed skills and the performance of humanitarian logisticians were examined. Also, the motivators of humanitarian workers are covered in previous research. Therefore, the additional aim of this research is to extend the knowledge about the human resources in humanitarian sector as well.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.