Competing Beyond Borders: Identifying Strategic and Sustainability-Driven Success Factors for Apparel Firms in Global Markets

The international apparel market is becoming more complex and competitive, but the multidimensional, human-centred capabilities that underpin export success in institutionally constrained markets are not well understood. This paper discusses the strategies used by export-oriented apparel companies in Pakistan. The study uses an interpretivist qualitative approach, which includes a PRISMA-guided systematic literature review and semi-structured interviews with senior managers from ten top apparel companies. Data from the interviews were analysed in NVivo using the Gioia methodology. The results show that sustainability-oriented innovation, digital capabilities, operational agility and institutional adaptation are not stand-alone capabilities but rather a capability system that increases the relational trust, boosts buyer confidence and consequently contributes to sustainable export competitiveness. The study introduces an industry-specific critical success factor framework based on the resource-based view (RBV) that posits that the interaction between internal capability configuration and institutional compliance alignment creates long-term competitive advantage. The results also indicate that managers should consider sustainability as a strategic issue, not a compliance issue; invest in supply-chain visibility, analytics and international quality standards; and use multidimensional performance measures to balance global standardization with local adaptation.