Dominican Republic's Quest for Success : An Analysis of the Structural Factors that Explain Varying Levels of Industry Performance

Why do certain industries in a country succeed while other industries underperform or fail? In this study, we explore four industries in the Dominican Republic: Tourism & Hospitality, Agriculture, Power & Electricity, and Education. Michael Porter's (1990) framework of national competitive advantage serves as the theoretical base of the research. Both primary qualitative data from field research in Dominican Republic and secondary quantitative data are examined for the aforementioned industries. The Tourism & Hospitality and Agriculture industries are successful in Dominican Republic because of strongly favorable factor conditions and demand conditions, as well as moderately favorable related & supporting industries and reasonably intense industry rivalry. However, the Power & Electricity and Education industries underperform because of the lack of proper factor conditions, demand conditions, related and supporting industries and monopolized industry structure. The pattern of success versus failure in these industries becomes evident and ultimately begs the question: Will a nation use this information to improve its overall national competitiveness?