Analysis of organisational routines to understand change in construction: the case of Turkish construction industry

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2011
Daneshvar, Maryam
Surrounding business environment, opportunities and requirements of organizations are under constant change. According to the evolutionary economics, organizations continuously make efforts to adapt themselves in line with changing circumstances of environments where they operate. In exploration of organizational change, organizational routines are recognized as the key analysis units. It is because when a change plan is required, routines undergo design or redesign processes. The construction industry literature is quite limited in terms of explorations regarding to organizational routines evolution. In this study, an attempt has been made to support the arguments, which claim; organizations react to external pressures through modifying their organizational routines. The objective is fulfilled by demonstrating original evidences of adaptation processes of two organizational routines of Turkish construction firms‘, which were influenced by Turkish construction industry environmental evolution over the past twenty years.Within this context, a questionnaire survey was administered to three Turkish construction professionals, in order to detect industry change drivers and events and their impact of organizational performance features. Business development and claim management routines were identified by industry survey respondents, as the two mostly changed routines over the past twenty years. Conducting further interviews with two Turkish Construction firms, the organizational evolutionary processes of these two routines, which were born as the reflection to the detected main industry change events, are mapped and investigated. Research findings detected the principle change drivers of Turkish construction industry over the past twenty years as ―Political‖, ―Economic Conditions‖ and ―Socio-Cultural Conditions‖ factors. "The markets, where companies operate" and ―The internationalization of Turkish contractors‖ are also recognized as the major determinants of organizational change of Turkish construction firms over the past twenty years. It is observed that the construction industry evolution influenced business development routine of the case study A, by making changes in ―market focus‖, ―types of clients‖, ―strategy making‖, ―company experience acquisition‖,‖ ways of finding job opportunities‖ and ―marketing opportunities‖. In the case study B, on the other hand, industry evolution changed its claim management routine by adding more steps to its processes; in order to meet the continuously increasing expectations of clients‘ in different markets.

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Citation Formats
M. Daneshvar, “Analysis of organisational routines to understand change in construction: the case of Turkish construction industry,” M.S. - Master of Science, Middle East Technical University, 2011.