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Purpose -- Exploration of the policy reforms necessary to strengthen Canada's competitiveness among world trading economies. The paper aims to compare Canada's competitiveness with two economic partners, the USA and the UK, and two emerging economies, China and India. Design/methodology/approach -- Data from the annual Global Competitiveness Reports (GCRs) were used to compare Canada with the other countries. Findings -- Canada requires a national strategy to create a generation of Canadian innovators, entrepreneurs and executives with a global mindset. Research limitations/implications -- Although Canada has many global trading partners, the paper compares Canadian competitiveness with only two economic partners and two emerging economics. Also, only data from the GCRs are used. Other measures of competitiveness need to be taken into consideration to better understand Canada's global and business competitiveness. Originality/value -- This paper provides new insights into Canada's lack of global competitiveness. The main reasons for this lack of competitiveness are analysed and recommendations are provided for Canadian policy makers to enhance competitiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to present how the construct of relationship value (RV) has the potential to help suppliers understand how to create superior value in their customer relationships and ultimately improve their competitiveness. Nowhere is this truer than in the Canadian wood products industry, where sales to its most important market, the USA, have recently been dwindling. The paper seeks to present how RV was adapted in this research context and extended over elements of scope, range of potential applications, scale of measurement, and computational techniques. Design/methodology/approach - A multiple-case study was undertaken and consisted of the evaluation of 58 customer relationships for three wood products manufacturers. Findings - Findings highlight the necessary distinction between "value for" and "value of" customers when measuring relationship value from a supply perspective, Based on the value and orientation of exchange, a new segmentation of customer relationships emerges which differentiates "questionable", "supportive", "promising", and "strategic" relationships. Originality/value - The case study will serve in the development of value-driven relationship management approaches, which are likely to become a major source of competitive advantage, not only in the wood products industry, but in business in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The main objective of this paper is to develop a deeper understanding of high growth and rapid internationalization characteristics in terms of: empirically characterizing growth deriving the profile of high-growth enterprises, exploring influential factors in high-growth, pointing out the factors that stimulate internationalization, presenting the combined influence of these factors in both the high-growth and early internationalizing enterprises, and formulating research-based policy recommendation for longer and higher growth rates and for decreasing the chances of demise in such younger firms. Design/methodology/approach – The authors have built a longitudinal sample of more than 1,140 micro, small and medium-sized enterprises that have grown at exceptionally high rates for at least five years at the earlier stages of their life-cycle, and even from inception in some cases. The data-base's origin is a popular Canadian business publication, the Canadian Business Magazine, which annually identifies and ranks growing firms in order to publish an annual list called "Profit 100: Canada's 200 fastest-growing companies". Findings – The findings of this analysis point to a rich population of high-growth enterprises with diverse ages, locations, sizes and revenues that manage to achieve high domestic and international growth for much longer and in ways not explained by the extant literature across time and industries. Research limitations/implications – This research carries the limitations of secondary data. In spite of its richness in terms of the high growth rates, annual lists offer a limited number of attributes per firm. It would be highly recommendable to use case studies in future research and broadly based surveys are necessary for deeper understanding of both the high and rapid growth and internationalization as well as the influential factors, including the internal characteristics of its agents, especially the management. Practical implications – This research indicates that rapid growing enterprises (RGEs) and rapid internationalizing enterprises (RIEs) are distinctive firms and are primarily small and medium-sized enterprises. Although the relative frequency of the appearance of various firm size-categories varies over time, RGEs are found across all the size and age categories. Although their total number as a proportion of all continuing firms in the economy is small, they are among the highly prominent and contributing corporate citizens. Social implications – This topic deserves the attention of scholars for the remarkable potential it offers to uncover the puzzle of growth, which is a time-dependent phenomenon. HGEs attain higher growths in shorter times; thus requiring a relatively shorter tracing of the growing firms. The topic also deserves the special attention of policy makers as HGEs generate employment, income, social benefits, taxes and wealth at much higher and faster rates than an average growing firm. Originality/value – The attractive features of HGEs' and RIEs' high-growth phenomenon compelled the authors to explore the topic in more depth than initially intended. By examining rapidly-growing smaller and younger enterprises, this study covers a wide gap in the extant literature of growth pertaining to the internationalization of smaller firms and thereby contributes the interaction of the two fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - The paper's aim is to analyze changes in the relative importance of Canada as a supplier for its home markets; and, the rising importance of China versus other Canadian trading partners. Design/methodology/approach The market overlap measure (MOM) statistic, developed by Sawchuk and Yerger is used to analyze the Canadian home market shares for Canada and every other nation with sales in the Canadian market for each of 61 different NAIC sectors (56 at the four-digit NAIC level and five at the three-digit NAIC level). Findings The USA remains the most important foreign supplier to Canadian markets with a weighted average 23.6 percent market share as of 2003 (Canadian-based production having a 63.0 percent market share), US market share, however, has been declining by nearly a percentage point per year since 2000. Approximately, half of the lost US' market share has been captured by Canadian-based firms and approximateIy a quarter has been captured by Chinese production. China's growth in Canadian market share places it second behind only the USA in terms of Canadian-based farms' home market competitive exposure. Research limitations/implications - The work does not include an analysis of service sector trade flows due to inadequate data. Practical implications The MOM statistic is shown to be a useful diagnostic tool for analyzing the level of, trends in, and industries driving the competitive exposure a nation's firms have on sales in a specified market. Originality/value The MOM statistic is shown to yield better insights regarding the actual degree of competitive exposure than does the more commonly used similarity indices such as Finger-Kreinen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]