Competitive priorities in operations management

Identifying manufacturers' competitive priorities has long been considered a key element in manufacturing strategy research. However, relatively littl e effort has been devoted to measurement of these constructs in published r esearch. In this study we develop scales for commonly accepted competitive priorities, cost importance, quality importance, delivery-time importance, and flexibility importance. We assess how well the scales capture the const ructs that they represent using data collected from 114 manufacturing plant s in the United States. The findings suggest that the instrument developed can provide reliable data and that the constructs measured are valid. In ad dition, comparisons between pairs of informants representing the same busin ess indicate that the perceptual measures of competitive priorities are as reliable as point estimates of routine, seemingly objective information.