Firm strategy, structure and rivalry
With regard to the last determinant, which Poter(1990) calls “Firm strategy, structure and rivalry,” two major issues arise.
The first one is that entrepreneurial and managerial skills are amongst the leading assets of the Turkish firms, for almost all industries studied.
The second issue relates to the other element included in this category: the intense domestic rivalry in the internationally competitive industries of the nation, which is one of the strongest conclusions reached in Porter study.
This is indeed the case for the Turkish construction and leather clothes industries. The easy life the uncompetitive Turkish automobile industry enjoyed until very recently is also in line with this argument.
The Turkish glass and fiat steel industries however, pose a challenge to this hypothesis since we have two internationally competitive industries, where there is virtually no domestic rivalry.
The implications of this observation for Porter’s study will be covered in section 3.2