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How Do Top Construction Companies Diversify in the International Construction Market?

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Proceedings of the 20th International Symposium on Advancement of Construction Management and Real Estate

Abstract

Globalization has created an international market that allows construction companies transcend traditional national boundaries and conduct business overseas. With new opportunities being brought to contractors, competition also grows exponentially in this market. Diversification is frequently adopted by these contractors as a strategy by the contractors for either growth, or risk management, or both in this competitive environment. However, the pattern of diversification has not been well measured, mapped, and analyzed. The aim of this research is to develop a Diversify Index (DI) and examine international contractors’ diversification pattern. The data is from the Top 225 International Contractors’ reports ranked by ENR (Engineering News-Record) from 1995 to 2014. Distributions of the DI were explored first and then case studies were used to investigate the specific diversification strategies adopted by the top international contractors. It is discovered that a downward trend of DI with subsequent changes in rankings expresses that larger contractors increasingly adopt various diversification strategies in international competition. The results provide valuable sights on the relationship between the competitive success and their diversification strategies as well as the tendency of diversification strategies adopted by top international contractors in different regions.

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Acknowledgements

The work is supported by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council (RGC) General Research Fund (GRF) (Project No.: HKU 749312B).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Real Estate and Construction, Faculty of Architecture, University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong, China

    Meng Ye & Weisheng Lu

  2. Faculty of Construction Management and Real Estate, Chongqing University, 400045, Chongqing, China

    Kunhui Ye

  3. School of Construction Management and Engineering, University of Reading, Reading, RG6 6AW, UK

    Roger Flanagan

Authors
  1. Meng Ye
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  2. Weisheng Lu
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  3. Kunhui Ye
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  4. Roger Flanagan
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Meng Ye .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Land Management, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China

    Yuzhe Wu

  2. Department of Land Management, Zhejiang University Department of Land Management, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China

    Sheng Zheng

  3. Department of Land Management, Zhejiang University , Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China

    Jiaojiao Luo

  4. Department of Land Management, Zhejiang University , Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China

    Wei Wang

  5. Department of Land Management, Zhejiang University , Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China

    Zhibin Mo

  6. Department of Land Management, Zhejiang University , Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China

    Liping Shan

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© 2017 Springer Science+Business Media Singapore

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Ye, M., Lu, W., Ye, K., Flanagan, R. (2017). How Do Top Construction Companies Diversify in the International Construction Market?. In: Wu, Y., Zheng, S., Luo, J., Wang, W., Mo, Z., Shan, L. (eds) Proceedings of the 20th International Symposium on Advancement of Construction Management and Real Estate. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0855-9_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0855-9_9

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-10-0854-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-10-0855-9

  • eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)

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