Teo, Ai Lin Evelyn (1997) Strategic market positioning in the construction industry: Models for evaluating mobility and diversification. PhD thesis, University of New South Wales, Australia.
Abstract
In the Building Industry, current workloads do not guarantee future work. Construction organisations will have to live, if necessary learn to live, with fluctuating demand for its services. When doing do, the successful contractor will recognise that he is in a position to bring about change, in the environment, changes which will result in what Schumpter called 'creative destruction'. In the process, the contractor will forge new markets and new customers. Faced with declining workloads, construction firms have had only three options: (1) accept real declines in output; (2) fight for a bigger share of a declining market; (3) diversify into new markets. The objectives of this study are (1) to investigate the effect of the environment (both internal and external) and complexity of projects on the output of construction organisations when planning a move to a new market; (2) to identify factors that affect the ability of contractors to use diversification as a strategy; and (3) to identify the areas of improvement to meet the requirements of new market/s. Very little is known about markets in the building industry or the possibilities of diversification, and there is a need for methods to assist firms in combining company strength with analyses of potential markets for a company to develop survival strategies. To do this, the thesis develops several models designed to assist construction firms to identify and diversify into new markets. The empirical support is derived from a survey of 108 building companies within Sydney. The data were obtained by face-to-face interviews and telephone interviews on issues related to organisational structure, resources, techniques, marketing and management strategies. Data analysis by coefficient alpha and ranking methods were carried out to determine the important variables of diversification, mobility and the rest. The results suggest that by strategically matching the firm's resources, environment and its competitors; using the models, the mobility of construction firms from one market to another is enhanced.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | complexity; construction firms; diversification; market; marketing; markets; organisational structure |
| Index terms: | option, survival, markets, construction industry, marketing, diversification, building industry, mobility, construction organization, management strategy, complexity, workload, construction firm, survey, face, strategy, guarantee, data analysis, market positioning, organizational structure, interview |
| Subjects: | contract structure, management, sociology, decision analysis, industry analysis, infrastructure and transport systems, systems engineering, data collection methods, business, data analysis and analytics, market analysis, organization, psychology, environmental science, economic analysis |
| Topics: | Engineering Principles, Sustainability, Procurement, Risk Management, Research Practice, Business Strategy, Human Resources, Urban Studies, Organizational Design |
| 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