In the economic and sport management literature, there is no clear conceptualisation of the term competitiveness. In elite sport studies, competitiveness is used to describe personal characteristics of athletes (Corrado, Basso & Schiavon et al., 2005), the dominant position of teams in national or international competition (Bar-Eli, Galily & Israeli, 2008) or the growing internationalisation of international competitions (De Bosscher, Du Bois & Heyndels, accepted; Digel, 2002; Du Bois & Heyndels, 2008). Referring to elite sporting success itself, competitiveness is related to the output of the process, a perspective that encompasses the throughput or production process of elite success. The increase in medal-winning capability of countries in international competition is explained by an increasing number of nations taking a more strategic approach to the development of medal-winning elites (De Bosscher, 2007; Green & Oakley, 2001; Houlihan & Green, 2008; Oakley & Green, 2001). What's more, despite the extensive scientific focus on elite development systems, there is a lack of studies on elite sport development at sport specific level (Sotariadou & Shillbury, 2009) that describe and measure specific practices at organisational level. Within economic research, the resource-based-view conceptualises competitiveness starting from the relationship between internal resources of an industry and its performances (an inside-out perspective). Precisely these internal resources and more especially, the policy dimensions in elite athletics and their contribution to nation`s competitiveness in athletics are the focal point of attention in this paper.
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