Competitiveness has now become a buzzword like globalization. It has received attention from researchers, governments and business organizations because of its close association with the success of an entity. In the past decades, many works on competitiveness with different perspectives have been published. But competitiveness is yet an elusive concept, the relevance of which is changing with time. There is a need for a comprehensive review of extant literature on the subject. This review article presents the state-of-the-art development of competitiveness research. To begin with, the article lays the foundation for basic understanding on competitiveness at various levels, such as nation, industry and the firm. After elaborating on the theories of competitiveness that have evolved over the years, it gives insight on the measurement models. The plethora of studies that signify different approaches to measure competitiveness are discussed at length. The future direction of competitiveness research is also suggested.

Hindustan Machine Tools (HMT) Limited was incorporated in 1953 by the Government of India as a machine tool manufacturing company. In the later years, the company diversified into other products including watches. Its watch division, known as the HMT Watches Limited, started in 1961 with the support of Japan’s Citizen Watch Company. Over the years, HMT made tremendous progress in all business dimensions to emerge as a market leader in the Indian watch industry. The company also earned the reputation of ‘the time keeper of the nation’ for its profound impact on the country’s watch business. Hindustan Machine Tools established itself as a strong brand in the Indian market. However, post-liberalization in 1991, HMT’s performance started dwindling. The policies of liberalization, privatization and globalization paved the way for the entry of many private brands, both domestic and foreign, into the Indian watch market that became hyper-competitive. The HMT management did not show enough agility to make necessary changes in its business models to cope with the changing business environment. Gradually, HMT lost its numero uno position to Titan Watches of the Tata Group. Hindustan Machine Tools inability to understand the needs of modern-day customers and its less-than-adequate attention towards new product development made things even worse for the organization. With losses accumulating over the years, HMT became financially unviable. After several failed attempts to turn around, the government finally closed down HMT Watches in early 2016. With this, HMT became a brand of the bygone era. This case portrays the long and eventful journey of HMT Watches and then analyzes the major reasons behind its failure. It implies a few important strategic lessons for the management students.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide a quantitative approach to measure industry clusters competitiveness. Design/methodology/approach An attempt has been made to construct a composite indicator backed up by a conceptually grounded framework, by means of Analytical Hierarchical Process technique. Four industry clusters from auto sector in India are chosen for manifestation of the methodology. Findings The proposed methodology sufficiently emphasises on the order of significance of the factors/indicators that make a cluster competitive. The study demonstrates the comparative competitiveness performance of four select industry clusters from India. Research limitations/implications The methodology only focusses on auto clusters from India, application of the model/methodology needs to be extended to other set of industries that follows tier structure, or belong to other developing nations to corroborate the findings. Practical implications The proposed approach is a useful tool to provide guidance to policy-makers and in monitoring industry clusters progress. Originality/value The paper offers an empirical approach for measuring competitiveness of industry clusters. So far there has been only a minuscule research on cluster competitiveness using empirical methods specifically in case of developing countries like India. Because of the heterogeneity of actors in industry clusters and absence of cluster relevant databases, its performance has been mostly captured via means of case studies. This study is one of its kind that renders comparison of competitiveness across industry clusters by combining secondary data with the perception of cluster actors.

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2012),"Daiichi Sankyo's generic (mis) adventure: the Ranbaxy takeover", Emerald Emerging Markets Case Studies, Vol. 2 Iss 8 pp. 1-10 http://dx.If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -The purpose of this paper is to examine the rationale and synergies of a Japanese firm's acquisition of India's leading pharmaceutical firm, Ranbaxy, and to answer the following pertinent questions: could Ranbaxy have been able to survive and succeed, had the firm not gone for this strategic sale to a foreign firm? What is the rationale for this strategic sale immediately after undertaking many major acquisitions during the previous two-year period? For what strategic reasons did a Japanese firm pay a premium price for this international acquisition? Design/methodology/approach -An exploratory method was used in this study to analyze the rationale and synergies of the acquisition. The method of case writing has been followed as a design (case situation first, then goes back to the past, then comes back to the current situation). Findings -The findings confirm that Ranbaxy got a premium price for agreeing to be acquired for their share (much higher price than the market price). Japanese firm Dai-Ichi got greater market access and control of Ranbaxy, which were driving factors for them to pay a higher share price for Ranbaxy. Originality/value -This original study gives insight into the points to be taken into consideration while thinking about international acquisitions.