Predicting Construction Company Decline

The main goal of this research is to develop a model that construction company executives can use to determine whether their company is healthy, whether decline is setting in, or whether decline has reached an advanced stage. The construction company decline model is a statistical model that was developed by making use of nonfinancial data collected from construction companies that have filed bankruptcy under Chapter 11 and construction companies that have been functioning without bankruptcy protection. The company profile survey provided information about 21 organizational, human capital, and strategic posture characteristics of construction companies. Factor analysis was used to reduce the number of variables. The factors obtained by performing factor analysis were regressed against decline ratings using multinomial logistic regression. The model allows a user to determine the condition of a company relative to decline. The model was validated by testing it using randomly selected data from the sample. The paper is of relevance to researchers because it contributes to the rather slim body of research in this area. It is of relevance to practitioners too as it provides them with an early warning tool that allows them to conduct a timely turnaround in case their company is in decline.     

Prediction of Organizational Effectiveness in Construction Companies

Investigation of literature on organizational effectiveness (OE) reveals that the researchers have been in consensus for the difficulty of defining, modeling, and measuring OE, which is important for attaining high performance. Major focuses of this paper are, therefore, to construct a conceptual framework to model OE, to derive major determinants of OE from this framework, and to measure OE by constructing prediction models based on artificial neural network (ANN) and multiple regression (MR) techniques. Based on the proposed framework that investigates OE from the perspectives of organization and its subsystems, business, and macroenvironments, the most significant variables that determine OE have been collected and used as inputs for the two prediction models, which have been constructed by using the information associated with 116 Turkish construction companies obtained from a designed survey. According to the prediction results and comparative study, ANN slightly outperformed the MR model in terms of errors, correlations between desired versus actual outputs, and relations between input-output parameters. The ANN model is proposed for use as a tool to assess company effectiveness and to guide decision makers about the major determinants of OE to increase firm performance.     

Dissemination and adoption of innovative psychosocial interventions.

Discusses the limitations of traditional methods such as journal articles and conferences in disseminating innovative programs and describes 3 examples of successful utilization: the behavior analysis and modification project (R. P. Lieberman et al, 1976); the teaching family model for group home treatment of deviant adolescents (E. L. Phillips et al, 1974); and the Fairweather hospital–community treatment program (G. W. Fairweather, 1964). Interpersonal contact between potential adopters and those knowledgeable about innovations, outside consultation on the adoption process, organizational support for innovation, persistent championship by agency staff, adaptability of the innovation, and availability of credible evidence of success were the 6 main factors that appeared to promote utilization in these 3 examples. These factors are consistent with findings from the larger literature on utilization, and most are relevant to adoption of innovations by individual psychotherapists as well. (43 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Comparable Performance Measurement System for Construction Companies

The construction industry has mainly relied on financially focused performance measurements, and studies on performance measurement systems (PMSs) have been carried out at the project level. However, recently, the demand for performance evaluation and management at the company level has increased. A few previous efforts have aimed to develop a conceptual framework for company performance, but there have been few follow-up studies. From this perspective, we have developed an implementation model and practical methodology to measure and compare the performance of construction companies. First, our thorough qualitative and quantitative analysis was used to develop a set of indicators for performance measurement, and an analysis of the relative weightings of the indicators was carried out. Second, we calculated the performance score of construction companies using a study of 34 Korean construction companies. Finally, we carried out a performance evaluation and system analysis using the calculated performance scores and identified practical issues for the implementation of our PMS. Using the results of our analytical processes identified in this work, further research is suggested.     

Performance Evaluating Model for Construction Companies: Egyptian Case Study

The dynamic nature of today’s construction industry compels construction partners to seek strategies in order to improve performance. Current research introduces a performance evaluation model for construction companies in order to provide a proper tool for a company’s managers, owners, shareholders, and funding agencies to evaluate the performance of construction companies. The model developed helps a company’s management to make the right decisions. Financial, economical, and industrial data are collected from Egyptian construction companies for nine consecutive years (1992–2000). Five indices (models) are developed: company performance score, economy performance score, industry performance score, performance index, and performance grade. The models developed consider companies in four construction sectors: general building, heavy, special trade, and real estate. These models accommodate the effect of macroeconomic and industry related factors and company size on the performance evaluation. The final outcome of current research is a performance grade, which provides the performance of a construction company. The developed model is validated, which shows robust results.     

Innovation in top management teams.

A longitudinal study of the functioning of top management teams in 27 hospitals examined relationships between group and organizational factors and team innovation. A model of group inputs, processes, and outputs was used, and it was predicted that group size, resources, team tenure, group processes, and proportion of innovative team members would affect the level and quality of team innovation. The results suggested that group processes best predict the overall level of team innovation, whereas the proportion of innovative team members predicts the rated radicalness of innovations introduced. Resources available to teams do not predict overall team innovation. The quality of team innovation (radicalness, magnitude, and novelty) may be determined primarily by the composition of the team, but overall level of innovation may be more a consequence of the team's characteristic social processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Strategic Perspective of Turkish Construction Companies

Whether extensively planned or not, all companies have a strategic perspective which is analogous to the personality of an individual. However, a clear strategic perspective is a must to achieve strategic integration that further leads to competitive advantage. In order to define a strategic perspective, four determinants should be put together: objectives, strategies; competencies; and competitive rules. There are two way linkages among objectives, strategies, and competencies that are affected from competitive forces acting on the market and these interrelations change with respect to company characteristics like size, age, major client, etc. The objective of this paper is to propose a conceptual framework for the analysis of a strategic perspective and present results of a questionnaire carried out to explore the strategic perspectives of Turkish contractors. Objectives, strategies, and competencies of Turkish contractors are analyzed together with competitive rules prevailing in the Turkish construction industry. The determinants of strategic perspective can further be used as a guide for setting a strategic agenda for construction companies with different characteristics and operating in different submarkets.     

矿山企业技术创新能力综合评价研究

技术创新能力是矿山企业形成核心竞争力、实施可持续发展战略的关键因素。文中在定义概念的基础上,应用系统论的思想,分析了矿山企业技术创新能力的主要影响因素,构建了矿山企业技术创新能力的二级综合评价指标模型,提出技术创新能力模糊综合评价方案;并以紫金矿业为例对其进行了实证研究。评价结果表明,该企业技术创新能力较高。该研究对于开展矿山企业技术创新能力评价及制定矿业相关政策具有一定的现实意义和参考价值。     

Influences on Innovation Benefits during Implementation: Client’s Perspective

This study investigates critical factors that significantly affect the benefits of an innovation to the clients and the project as a whole during implementation from the perspective of construction clients. A survey was conducted in Hong Kong, and data from 35 projects that had adopted innovations were collected via mailed questionnaires from project clients. The questionnaire requested respondents to provide specific data about their projects, the type of innovations adopted, and the enablers and barriers to innovation. We found that innovative solutions were particularly beneficial if they were mainly intended to solve technical difficulties in projects and if they were implemented by forming separate implementation teams and by establishing coordination and monitoring mechanisms at the project level. Moreover, we found that the construction clients’ technical capabilities, provision of special training opportunities, and management interests before and after the innovation was implemented were also factors in attaining innovation benefits.     

Analysis of Factors Influencing Productivity Using Craftsmen Questionnaires: Case Study in a Chilean Construction Company

Improvement of productivity in construction has been a major industry challenge, given its high impact on project results. It has received increased attention from construction researchers promoting different enhancement actions, since analyzing factors affecting labor productivity is an instrumental part in this process. This paper focuses on identifying and understanding the productivity factors affecting projects in a Chilean construction company on the basis of questionnaires administered to both direct workers and midlevel employees. Analysis of the questionnaire results helped to determine organizational and managerial weaknesses and facilitated comparison of the findings with previous productivity studies. The results proved to be useful in developing recommendations for productivity improvements. The main findings indicate that the critical areas affecting construction productivity were related to materials, tools, rework, equipment, truck availability, and the workers’ motivational dynamics. These results are similar to those obtained in previous studies in the United States and in Chile. Salary expectations were found to be the main reason for turnover in the studied company, which was an aspect not mentioned in previous studies. Finally, additional analyses seem to show that some factors affecting productivity are common to construction projects across boundaries, therefore validating data aggregation and the possibility of learning from experiences in different locations and even separated in time of occurrence.     

Comparison of Cultures in Construction and Manufacturing Industries

This paper investigates and compares the culture found in a construction company with that found in two manufacturing companies because large differences in culture might reduce the potential for the construction sector to adopt management tools developed in the manufacturing sector. For the comparisons to be valid, the culture within the physical production process was observed. The results were obtained by use of questionnaires and intensive interviews with individual members of staff using a U.K. government sponsored questionnaire. A vertical section of each company was sampled such that equivalent organizational levels could be directly compared. The main findings are that the culture existing in construction has significant differences to that found within the manufacturing industries. It will not be possible to transfer management tools from one industrial sector to the other without substantial redesign. The culture within construction was found to be a “project culture” in comparison to manufacturing, which was found to be a “company culture.”     

Assessing Infrastructure Project Innovation Potential as a Function of Procurement Mode

The delivery of infrastructure projects as long-term capital investments is impacted in most cases by critical issues of budget constraints, program delays, quality and safety concerns, and an increasingly complex stakeholder environment. Innovation, as it relates to the physical, process, organizational/contractual, and financial/revenue dimensions of a project, has a central role to play in not only contributing to the requirements set for a wide variety of project performance metrics but also improving upon them. Proposed in this paper is a theory in the form of a set of factors (drivers/inhibitors to innovation) and related state values that influence the potential for the identification and adoption of innovations that improve project efficiency or offer increased value. This theory is embedded in a supporting assessment framework to assist with selecting and structuring a project’s procurement mode to enhance the innovation potential of a project from the perspective of a government agency tasked with such decisions. The framework was developed in response to a lack of tools to help practitioners with tasks relating to innovation assessment, especially in regard to conducting a public sector comparator analysis when a public–private partnership procurement mode is being considered among others; and aligning terms and conditions in bid documents, requests for proposals, and concession agreements in a way that fosters beneficial innovations to the extent that factor states can be controlled. The framework provides the project evaluation process with a means of assessing project innovation potential at the very front end of the procurement mode selection process, and is meant to be comprehensive yet simple and easy to use in practice. It can also be used by researchers to help analyze on a postproject basis reasons why innovations were or were not adopted for a specific project context. The framework is applied to case studies on two infrastructure projects in Scandinavia and the United States to demonstrate its application and to assess the role that choice of procurement mode had in influencing the innovations used.     

Capturing Knowledge in Construction Projects: Knowledge Platform for Contractors

Managing knowledge effectively is critical to the survival and advance of a company, especially in project-based industries such as construction. However, capturing knowledge in construction projects is a tedious task, as knowledge is usually experience based, tacit, and hard to pass on to others. In this study, a survey was carried out among eight leading Turkish construction contractors that are operating within the international construction market. The specific objectives of this survey are to find out how the tacit and explicit knowledge are captured, stored, shared, and used in forthcoming projects, as well as major drivers and barriers for knowledge management. Based on the survey, it was determined that most of these firms do not have a knowledge management strategy and a systematic way of capturing and storing tacit knowledge. A conceptual framework is proposed to formalize the knowledge-capturing process within construction companies. To demonstrate how the conceptual framework can be implemented in practice, a Web-based system, namely, Knowledge Platform for Contractors (KPfC) is presented. It is hypothesized that KPfC can be used to manage both tacit and explicit knowledge effectively in construction projects.     

Benchmarking of Construction Productivity

Construction productivity has been a cause of great concern in both the construction industry and academia. Even though many companies have developed their own productivity tracking systems based on their experiences and accounting systems, none have been successful in establishing common definitions and developing a survey tool that collects standard productivity data at the appropriate levels. This research was initiated to establish a common set of construction productivity metrics and their corresponding definitions. As a result of this research effort, the Construction Productivity Metrics System (CPMS), which contain a list of direct and indirect accounts and 56 data elements grouped into seven major categories, was developed. The Construction Productivity Metrics System is a standard construction productivity data collection tool and provides a framework to report industry norms to benchmark construction productivity. Input from 73 industry experts was used in determining the 56 measuring elements and their corresponding definitions. Preliminary findings from initial sample of 16 industrial projects indicate that the productivity metrics can be produced and should be meaningful for construction productivity benchmarking. Because of the small sample size, more than general preliminary conclusion would be inappropriate. Based on the analyses, the developed CPMS is believed to be a reasonable productivity data collection tool and when sufficient data are available should be capable of producing reasonable industry benchmarks.     

Top management team characteristics and innovation in nursing homes

This study examines how the demographic characteristics of the top management team in 236 nursing homes can affect the adoption of innovations. The computerization of the Minimum Data Set (MDS) is the innovation we examine, and tenure, education, and involvement in a professional society are the demographic characteristics investigated. Controlling for 10 organizational and environmental factors, the results are generally significant for each of these demographic factors. However, the results for top managers of nonchain nursing homes show a greater association between these demographic factors and innovation than the results for top managers of nursing homes belonging to a chain. We discuss these results in terms of their significance for innovation research, nursing homes, and top management.     

Safety Management in Construction: Best Practices in Hong Kong

Safety issues have gained vital importance throughout the construction industry. Many construction companies around the world are implementing safety, health, and environmental management systems to reduce injuries, eliminate illness, and to provide a safe work environment in their construction sites. This paper describes an exploratory study of site safety management in construction sites’ environments. It explains a successful, modern safety, health and environmental management system for a leading construction company based in Hong Kong. A typical site-specific safety plan was utilized to provide safety guidance throughout the construction project. A safety management survey was conducted to determine the status of safety in the construction sites. All employees of the company and its subcontractors participated in the survey from 20 construction projects. In total, 1,022 valid records were obtained from the construction sites. The analysis provided useful information on eight aspects of construction safety, including safety policy and standards, safety organization, safety training, inspecting hazardous conditions, personal protection program, plant and equipment, safety promotion, and management behavior. The findings of the survey provide practical knowledge to construction project managers and construction safety practitioners in order to make their sites safer. Insights and discussions are given in this paper.     

论制度创新与中国铜工业的发展

中国是世界产铜大国但并不是铜的强国。主要原因是铜工业发展严重受到铜企业规则、组织和经营制度的制约。要彻底改变中国铜工业现状 ,就必须依据国际一流铜企业制度的范式来加速我国铜企业的制度创新 ,以降低制度成本费用 ;重新构建国有铜企业组织结构 ;进一步理顺政府与企业之间的关系 ,加快企业经营制度改革步代。     

Impact of Resources and Strategies on Construction Company Performance

Globalized competition and customer needs forced construction companies to measure their performance beyond the financial measures such as profitability, turnover, etc. As qualitative determinants were added to measurement systems, their investigation and evaluation became a major area of research. In this study, the impact of “resources and capabilities,” “strategic decisions,” “project management competencies,” and “strength of relationships with other parties” on “company performance” was investigated. A questionnaire survey was administered to 73 Turkish contractors and the results of the survey were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The findings indicate that, as expected, resources and capabilities and strategic decisions have an important and direct impact on company performance, whereas project management competencies and strength of relationships with other parties impact company performance only indirectly, through their impact on companies’ resources and capabilities and strategic decisions.     

Empiricist Framework for TQM Implementation in Construction Companies

As a management philosophy, total quality management (TQM) is implemented differently in firms. This study investigates the implementation level and the types of TQM practices adopted in construction companies. Eight elements had been identified from both organizational-/management- and construction-related studies to represent the TQM spirit. These elements are top management leadership, customer management, people management, supplier management, quality information management, process management, organizational learning, and continual improvement. A questionnaire survey was conducted to solicit the implementation level of the identified TQM elements. The survey findings indicate that customer, process management, and top management leadership were implemented at a higher level than the remaining elements with quality information management implemented at the lowest level. Important practices that constitute each element were also identified. Based on the findings, we propose a TQM implementation framework for construction companies.     

Neural Network Model to Support International Market Entry Decisions

Bidding for international construction projects is a critical decision for companies that aim to position themselves in the global construction market. Determination of attractive projects and markets where the competitive advantage of a company is high requires extensive environmental scanning, forecasting, and learning from the experience of competitors in international markets. In this paper, a neuronet model has been developed as a decision support tool that can classify international projects with respect to attractiveness and competitiveness based on the experiences of Turkish contractors in overseas markets. The model can be used to guide decision makers on which type of data should be collected during international business development and further help them to prepare priority lists during strategic planning. Information derived from the model demonstrates that the most important factors that increase attractiveness of an international project are availability of funds, market volume, economic prosperity, contract type, and country risk rating. Similarly, level of competition, attitude of host government, existence of strict quality requirements, country risk rating, and cultural/religious similarities are the most important factors that affect competitiveness of Turkish contractors in international markets.