Tansey P, M X C D (2013) A critical review of response strategies adopted by construction companies during an economic recession. In: Smith, S D and Ahiaga-Dagbui, D D (eds.) Proceedings of 29th Annual ARCOM Conference, 2-4 September 2013, Reading, UK.
Abstract
During a recession, companies are forced to restructure and to move quickly to reduce employment, costs, and debt, in order to ensure their survival. In the construction industry, recessions have the effect of reducing resources available to companies as clients procure less, financiers reduce lending and competition increases. Despite an increase of research in the area of strategic management in the last decade, little has been documented on what response strategies construction companies adopt as a result of an economic recession. From a thorough review of previous studies, two key issues became apparent: (1) very few offered a comprehensive and systematic overview and (2) limited connections were made to theoretical typologies such as Porter’s generic strategies, which are a widely accepted typology of strategic options for companies. The objective of the paper is to fill this knowledge gap by: (1) critically reviewing the literature on response strategies in the construction industry; (2) developing a taxonomy of response strategies relative to Porter’s generic strategies of cost leadership, differentiation and focus; and (3) using the taxonomy framework to critically evaluate the response strategies of Irish and UK construction contractors by drawing on qualitative data from the pilot case studies of an on-going PhD study. The results from the critical review show that the majority of construction companies adopt differentiation strategies in order to survive an economic recession.
| Item Type: | Conference Paper (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | business strategy; corporate strategy; strategic management; recession; response strategy |
| Index terms: | construction company, business strategy, strategy, employment, drawing, corporate strategy, case study, recession, option, survival, construction contractor, differentiation, taxonomy, construction industry, competition, strategic management |
| Subjects: | management, industry analysis, decision analysis, market analysis, practitioner, business, organization, data collection methods, economic analysis, environmental science, data analysis and analytics, technical documentation |
| Topics: | Organizational Design, Design Practice, Human Resources, Roles and Professions, Risk Management, Governance, Sustainability, Business Strategy, Research Practice |
| Descriptive scope: | 5 PCTEA |
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