THE ROLE OF FINANCIAL TOOLS IN ENHANCING THE COMPETITIVENESS OF RUSSIAN BUSINESS

Abstract

The article provides an overview of the evidence and argument on increasing the country’s competitiveness as well as the competitiveness of its sectoral markets and companies to fulfill the task set in the documents of the Government of the Russian Federation as one of national priorities. For many years the problem of increasing competitiveness remains an area of high interest for the scientific community, however despite the great deal of attention it is mainly studied by marketers. In Russian literature there are only a few publications devoted to the financial aspect of competitiveness factors and competitive advantages. Meanwhile, the financial tools allow to evaluate many sustainable competitive advantages associated with the business reputation, human capital, designs and developments, know-how, long-term relationships with customers. The article interprets competitiveness as a complex synthetic concept which involves not only multilevel research subjects, but also various research angles. The authors reviewed and systematized the available financial tools to enhance the competitiveness of the modern Russian business, verbally formulated its financial model and illustrated with empirical data its strengths and weaknesses. The conducted analysis allowed to identify significant financial determinants of competitiveness of Russian business and tools to enhance it at the micro level. This article was prepared as part of research conducted in the framework of the State task for the Financial University in 2014. Materials can be used by Russian state bodies to determine the directions for institutional development of the business environment as well as by large Russian businesses to improve their competitiveness on the national and global markets.