Changing paradigms in construction competitiveness research

Duman, D U and Giritli, H (2014) Changing paradigms in construction competitiveness research. In: Raiden, A and Aboagye-Nimo, E (eds.) Proceedings of 30th Annual ARCOM Conference, 1-3 September 2014, Portsmouth, UK.

Abstract

In the construction industry, every company has to apply some kind of strategic solutions in order to maintain their competitiveness. Although there are variety of discussions of what is the meaning of "competitiveness" and "strategy" keywords, in generic terms while the competitiveness means gaining advantage against rivals, strategy refers the actions that provide competitiveness. Construction management literature is abundant in researches, which evaluate the competitiveness strategies of construction industry organizations, however, they approach the "competitiveness" concept from variety of theoretical backgrounds and methodological perspectives. There is a requirement for a systematic summary of the literature in order to demonstrate the changing paradigms in competitiveness research. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to analyse and identify the changing paradigms in construction competitiveness research by utilizing meta-analysis methodology to six leading construction management journals from 2000 to 2014. Findings of the research will clarify how the research focus, level of analysis, sources of information, contribution of papers, author orientation and utilization of different schools of thoughts have changed in time and how future directions could be designed in construction competitiveness research.

Item Type: Conference Paper (Paper)
Uncontrolled Keywords: competitiveness; corporate strategy; meta-analysis
Index terms: competitiveness, paradigm, methodology, construction industry, corporate strategy, meta-analysis, journal, strategy, meaning
Subjects: business, research dissemination and communication, research methods, education and knowledge transfer, management, industry analysis, sociology, market analysis, research evaluation and metrics
Topics: Governance, Business Strategy, Research Practice
Descriptive scope: 3 CTA

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