Structural and infrastructural practices as elements of content operations strategy. The effect on a firm's competitiveness

Some extant theoretical studies and different empirical results have demonstrated that a firm's behaviour explains several notable competitiveness microeconomic foundations, based on a wide bundle of elements. Firms can directly control most of these elements; in this paper, we will focus on those related to operations management. Therefore, products, processes, technology, equipments or quality control systems will centre our attention. These, and some additional elements, constitute decisions within the operations management area that must be included in the content of operations strategy. Operations strategy can be conceptualized as a set of decisions or practices with regard to structure and infrastructure variables. On the one hand, these strategic decisions influence a firm's abilities successfully to reach some competitive priorities such as cost, quality, delivery and flexibility, and, on the other hand, to obtain the expected performance. This research analyzes which are the main structural and infrastructural practices that constitute operations strategies in manufacturing companies, and investigates the effect of these decisions on some firm competitiveness indicators.