Carrillo, P M (1998) Acquisition or divestment: UK contractors changing business portfolio. Journal of Financial Management of Property and Construction, 3(3), pp. 49-70. ISSN 1366-4387
Abstract
Within the last decade the nature of contracting activities in the UK has changed dramatically. Instead of construction services being offered, contractors now get involved with a much wider range of activities from providing finance, design, construction, operation and maintenance. The construction business is one of high risks and low profitability and contractors are being forced to adopt strategic management techniques to maintain competitiveness and profitability. This paper investigates how companies devise corporate strategy, develop their business portfolio and judge their subsequent performance with case studies from three major UK contractors. The results show that whilst corporate strategy is given serious attention, even the top UK contractors still have not implemented the use of business portfolio analysis and performance measures advocated by the rest of the business world.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | contractors strategy, corporate strategy, portfolio analysis performance, UK contractors |
| Index terms: | operation and maintenance, strategic management, acquisition, strategy, profitability, corporate strategy, case study, competitiveness, performance measure |
| Subjects: | economic analysis, business, data collection methods, management, performance measurement, market analysis, maintenance engineering |
| Topics: | Governance, Quality Management, Business Strategy, Research Practice |
| 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