Vistas of strategy-making within Northern Ireland construction firms: How sme's differ from large firms

The Northern Ireland (NI) construction sector endured a more austere deterioration from the 2007 economic recession, compared to the rest of Great Britain (GB). Indeed, the sector experienced a consistent downward trajectory in output from 2007 to 2013, with a moderate recovery ensuing during 2014 and 2015. Consequently, construction firms, both large and small, responded to this cacophony of environmental change; scrambling to capture market power and preserve competitive advantage. Extant empirical research has shown that the pressure on chances of survival in an industry is far greater for smaller firms than for larger ones, and furthermore, that start-up firms fail at a higher rate than their larger rivals. Within the general management domain, only a modest amount of research investigating episodes of strategy-making of small and large firms, during a period of economic contraction and growth, exist; hence the emergence of this topic. To address this research gap, two comparative case studies were used to examine episodes of strategy-making within Northern Ireland construction firms during the period 2007 - 2015. Magnetising under the strategizing praxis umbrella, the results show that larger firms whom were already operating internationally, tended to retract from cash-hungry international operations; while in contrast, SME firms tended to diversify into mainland GB markets, such as England and Scotland. Introspectively, large firms were found to freeze salaries for a short period of time, and refuted from partaking in below-cost tendering. On the other hand, SME firms froze salaries for longer periods, and gravitated towards below-cost tendering in order to survive. Given that both case firms achieved 'turnaround success', the findings provide valuable guidance for business managers in navigating future storms of economic turbulence.