Birgonul, M T and Ozdogan, I D (2000) Competitiveness of Turkish contractors in international markets. In: Akintoye, A (ed.) Proceedings of 16th Annual ARCOM Conference, 6-8 September 2000, Glasgow, UK.
Abstract
After 1990, there has been a huge growth in the volume of international construction services of Turkish contractors, which may be explained by the serious recession in the domestic construction market. As of 2000, Turkish contractors have been working in 49 countries in 4 continents. The aim of this paper is to present findings of a survey conducted to investigate mainly, the sources of competitive advantage and globalisation strategies of Turkish contractors in international markets. 61 construction companies, majority of which are members of the Union of International Contractors (UIC) responded the aforementioned survey. The survey results demonstrate that Turkish contractors have limited geographical diversification and they achieve competitive advantage by a focus strategy based on low factor costs. Cultural, lingual and religious familiarity also constitutes a major national comparative advantage in target markets. Their risk taking abilities and references based on prior success as well as low cost of labour constitute their major strengths. However, advantages due to basic costs are often easy to imitate and some innovative strategies are compulsory to sustain competitive advantage. Within the scope of this paper, better financial engineering, diversification and effective risk mitigation strategies such as forming strategic alliances are proposed as ways to differentiate construction services in international markets.
| Item Type: | Conference Paper (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | competitive advantage; global construction; Turkish contractors; international market |
| Index terms: | markets, risk mitigation, diversification, global construction, international construction, international market, globalization, competitiveness, strategy, strategic alliance, low cost, domestic construction, survey, construction company, risk taking, competitive advantage, recession |
| Subjects: | economic analysis, bidding, organization, data collection methods, strategic management, construction type, economic factors, partnership management, market analysis, development economics, financial risk, decision-making and reasoning, management |
| Topics: | International Construction, Cost Management, Business Strategy, Research Practice, Stakeholder Management, Procurement, Construction Technology |
| Descriptive scope: | 3 PCE |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here