Clusters and competitive ability of enterprises in the textile industry: Case of Iraqi companies

Recently, Iraqi companies have faced many challenges due to the new economic reform. They started adopting different strategies to stay in the market and compete with international companies. As one of these strategies, the textile companies in Iraq decided to merge. They merged in 2017 and become one huge company. Their goal then in the merger is to enhance their competitive ability. This study aims to evaluate the role of companies' mergers (CM) in enhancing the companies' competitive abilities (CA) in Iraqi textile companies. The contribution of this study is that it provides statistical analysis to specify the effects of CM on CA in Iraq. The study hypothesis is that the CM has a significant effect on CA. The sample population was 900. A random sample method was used to draw a sample. The sample size used in this study is 270. The questionnaire was used to collect data for this study. The regression model results revealed that the Post-Merge Activihaves has a significant impact on the Supplement of Resources. The results also showed that the Turnover of Employees has no significant impact on the Supplement of Resources. The results revealed that the Post-Merge Activities has also a positive and significant impact on the Concentration of Resources. The results also showed that Turnover of the Employees has a positive and significant impact on the Concentration of Resources. The study concludes that the positive effect of post-merge supplementing of resources and concentration of resources is due to applying good plans, strategies, and finance by the new (merged) company. The study concludes that the positive effect of Turnover of Employees on the concentration of resources is due to hiring good-fit managers and employees and firing the bad employees. The study concludes that the results are in line with the literature.