Factors of competitiveness in Polish companies in the Silesian Region in 2014–2016

Research background: A lot of companies in the market create a variety of situations in which they compete with one another. At the same time companies crave for the same pool of demand, and in fact the money held by the buyers. Attempts to define the notion of com-petitiveness of the company appear frequently in scientific publications and in the research conducted by various institutions in different countries. The concept of competitiveness is used to determine the ratio of enterprise characteristics to these of its competitors, resulting from many internal features and the ability to deal with an external environment. Purpose of the article: The purpose of this article is to present results of the Company Competitiveness Barometer, conducted in 2014, 2015 and 2016 on a group of more than 600 Polish companies. The Barometer is a theoretical basis for the integrated model of competi-tiveness designed by the authors of the article. The specific objectives of this article are: to provide an overview of the research methodology, to present the results of empirical studies of more than 600 Polish companies, to create an outline of the future direction of the research on competitiveness of enterprises by means of the Company Competitiveness Barometer. Methods: The questionnaire used in the Company Competitiveness Barometer is built of 48 questions. 45 of them are related to the characteristics of the company that are affecting its competitiveness, and 3 questions are metric questions. The questionnaire can be found on the www.sensorium24.com website. Findings & Value added: The research carried out from the point of view of the company’s employees, offer an opportunity to reflect and think about the competitiveness of their own organization and factors that are shaping it. The IT tool used makes it possible to compare own results with other companies participating in the survey.