Changing paradigms in construction competitiveness research

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.