Size Distributions and Polarisation of Construction Firms and Markets

Abstract

The belief of many casual users of statistical data is that statistical distributions always show a central tendency, so that the average figure provides the best summary of the data. This is, however, not always the case in construction. The proposition of this chapter is that in fact, if anything, there are often spreads in the data which lead to bi-modal distributions. In other words, in some areas there are tendencies towards polarisation. These tendencies can be explained to some extent by the social, political, and cultural environment in which firms trade, the social structure of accumulation (see Chapter 1, social structure of the economy; social structure of production).