BQM&T 5,4 304 Competitive priorities, process innovations and time-based competition in the manufacturing sectors of industrialising economies The case of Turkey T.F. Burgess University of Leeds, Leeds, UK H.K. Gules University of Selcuk, Selcuk, Turkey J.N.D. Gupta Ball State University, Indiana, USA and M. Tekin University of Selcuk, Selcuk, Turkey Introduction A key concern of manufacturing strategy centres on the evolving relationship between what are termed by many writers as “competitive priorities”. Generally these competitive priorities, or capabilities, are identified as quality, cost, time and flexibility. The relative ascendancy of these four dimensions is claimed to change over time, with quality figuring recently as the important issue. More latterly some authors have advocated that time, as manifested in aspects such as time to introduce new products to the market, is the dominant capability. T his interest in competitive priorities has stimulated various surveys of manufacturing industry. Such empirical work has concentrated mainly on large firms in advanced industrialised economies while asserting the applicability of findings to other regions of the global economy. T he emergence of Eastern European states into the global capitalist economy has added to the value of studying the situation in industrialising economies. In this paper we report the results of a survey of small to medium-sized manufacturers in a newly industrialising country, Turkey. The survey explores key aspects of firms including competitive priorities, levels of process innovations, and performance. The links between these key areas are scrutinised, in particular to check for any evidence for time-based competition. The first part of this paper reviews briefly the literature and outlines the theoretical perspective adopted in the research. Then some comments are made Benchmarking for Quality Management & Technology, Vol. 5 No. 4, 1998, pp. 304-316. © MCB University Press, 1351-3036