Barriers to the growth of indigenous construction firms in Nigeria

Purpose: Studies focusing on the growth of indigenous construction firms (ICFs) are getting dated, and unreflective of recent policy changes in developing countries. This study sought to analyze critical barriers to the growth of ICFs and obtain an unsupervised parsimonious grouping of the barriers for policy improvements. Design/methodology/approach: A mix of quantitative and qualitative research methods was adopted for the study. ICFs in Nigeria were cross-sectionally surveyed based on a set of firm growth barriers obtained from literature and refined by focus group discussion. Descriptive (means, standard deviations, percentages) and inferential (Kruskal-Wallice and Mann-Whitney U test) statistics were used in the analyses of the data. Factor analysis was used to group the variables. Findings: Results showed that "declining" ICFs are more negatively impacted by low construction mechanization/use of labor intensive methods, inadequate geographical reach of operations, and inadequate flow of jobs/low demand than "stunted" and "growing" ICFs. The three main domains of critical barriers to the growth of ICFs were identified in descending order of importance as low patronage, difficulty accessing funds, and business management incapacity. Research limitations/implications: The study recommends improvements in access to funds for ICFs by increasing the percentage of advance payments, and creating a pool of equipment for easy hire by ICFs. ICFs are advised to seek information on tendering opportunities outside their regions of domicile in order to increase their patronage. Originality/value: This study reveals differences in the impacts of growth barriers on ICFs at different growth levels. This study also clarifies persisting barriers to the growth of ICFs [primarily construction micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs)] from a developing country perspective using a longer list of variables.