Competing Strategies in the Built Environment Sector

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Table of Contents

Contemporary Thinking and Theories on Strategy
Application of Strategic Theories in Built Environmental Sector
References

Contemporary Thinking and Theories on Strategy

The strategic management theory helps in analyzing a company’s relationship with the environment (Barca 2003), that is, the market. Senior management is therefore tasked with studying the market, which involves how industrial stakeholders (employees, consumers, retailers, competitors, regulators, and government authorities) could affect company performance. After learning that, the management goes ahead with planning winning strategies that will satisfy its stakeholders in different ways: employees get excellent working conditions and remunerations: consumers get high-quality products at reasonable prices; suppliers get paid in time for their supplies; and shareholders get good value for their investment. When all that goes right, the company is able to out-compete other firms in that industry, and thus become the market leader.

According to Wan and Yiu (1999), the strategic theory has its roots in Greek Empire’s military conquests, which used various strategies during its conquests. However, the business application and its presence in academic literature did not happen until mid 20^th century. It is during this period that academicians started researching and writing on the connection between organizations’ strategies and structures, which tended to bring about weaknesses and strengths of different entities.

The successes achieved by organizations with strong links between the laid down strategies and governance structures were the magnet that attracted other parties into copying such techniques. That cycle has been going on rapidly to an extent that it has become commonplace in today’s organizational management. Strategic theories theoretical framework has been undergoing some serious developmental stages since its founding. The first development came from Michael Porter’s industrial organization (Wan and Yiu1999). Porter induced the thinking of strategic groups and competitive dynamics into the strategic theory.

This led to the new thinking that the use of strategic management in organizations increases competition within internal groups of companies and within firms participating in the same market. The current developments stage involves research on the contribution of company resources, leadership, decision making, and knowledge in the process of developing executing, and executing individual company’s management strategies.

The increased use of strategic management in companies and in academic literature has been producing more managers who have consistently helped companies to use the theory in their operations. It has also produced many theorists who are making an important contribution to the field. Results produced by strategic theory’s contribution to company management are a testament to its importance in today’s business world.

The increased popularity of the theory in academia has produced different viewpoints that have enriched it to unimaginable depths (Kalpic 2002). In fact, there currently exists close to a dozen schools of thought regarding management strategy theory. The main difference in the schools’ beliefs is the processes used to create company strategies to be used in management. The ten schools are detailed below:

Design school

This school holds that the process of creating a management strategy for any organization should be deliberate and centrally controlled. That is, there is one center of command that controls the development and implementation of the strategy. In most instances, the central command happens to the most senior manager in a company, a CEO for instance. The best example for strategy developed through design school mindset is the SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis.

Planning school

This school agrees with design beliefs of the process being deliberate and centrally controlled. However, it emphasizes the use of elaborate steps during both development and implementation stages. This is meant to allow other contributors to air their inputs, which helps the central figure in making final decisions.

Positioning school

This school agrees with both design and planning schools in using central commands to control the development and implementation of management strategies. It, however, seeks to use a qualified analyst to help organizations in both processes. This is because developing strategies is regarded as a complicated process that must involve some experts.

Entrepreneurial school

This school disagrees with the above three on grounds that formal and deliberate processes cannot deliver the best strategy needed by the said organization. The school prefers the use of the individual mental process to develop strategies and can only be done by individuals that could demonstrate amicable skills and visionary leadership.

Cognitive school

This school claims that developing company strategies is mostly an individual process. It should therefore be left to individuals to choose the best management strategies they could come up with; forming groups for strategic purposes does not help much—could actually lead to confusion as individual interests collide. The school prefers people to shave their ideas and present them during discussions, but not the other way round.

Learning school

This school relies on personal experiences to develop management strategies. It claims that developing strategies is a tough process that cannot be planned. Instead, one has to have some background on what works in the company and what does not. What works is therefore used to make strategies to be used in the future. Thus according to the Learning school, experience breeds strategies.

Political school

The main belief in this school holds that the development and implementation of management strategies are successful when done through bargaining and negotiations, and compromising. These are attempts to ensure that thoughts of all parties in the organization are represented, analyzed and the best ones agreed upon. Individuals whose thoughts are not incorporated into strategies are encouraged to compromise, that is, agree to support and abide by conclusions made in those deliberations.

Cultural school

This school holds that strategies should be modeled according to the beliefs shared by the people in the group. Thus the school does not sit down to start to meditate and discuss the strategies to be developed and implemented; it asks how the cultural beliefs held commonly by its members can be used to create strategies to govern managerial activations.

Configurational school

Strategies that are developed through this school is highly influenced by the behavior of the dominant group. A keen observer can thus argue that this school is tantamount to democracy; it is the numbers that count, not the arguments made by different members of the drafting group. The school’s thoughts are useful in situations where participants can easily reach decisions.

Environmental school

This school holds that the surrounding environment has a great influence on the strategies developed by an organization. This, it is claimed, helps companies to fit into the market they participate in as well as keeping all stakeholders satisfied. However, the outside forces that influence strategy development do not take part in the process.

The management strategy has become an organization’s way to coordinate their activities both internally and externally (Phelam & Lewin 1999). This is because of its success in helping companies study their environment and understand what could be done to make good use of the information collected. Companies have also used management strategies to develop internal mechanisms to develop processes that have led to higher job satisfaction among employees, which has led to increased productivity. As a result, employees are staying with companies for a long period of time, which increases their usefulness.

Such successes have made strategic theory an integral part of organizations. Failure to implement it could be the beginning of failure for companies in the market. Some observers have even referred to these strategies as some of the greatest techniques and philosophies that have contributed to the rapid adaptation of companies to quickly changing global business demands (Balji 2006). This is because of the organizational cultures that have cropped up from management strategies.

Application of Strategic Theories in Built Environmental Sector

The management strategy has a big role to play in the built environment sector. The strategy will actually be helpful in the industry because it will help players to develop ways of dealing with the quickly changing environment in their industry. This will prepare firms to realign their operations with the changing times, so they can sustain competitiveness. Companies in the industry must however understand that few strategies could see operations through good and bad times. It is therefore important to develop strategies that will serve the company well when the industry is experiencing an upswing and others that help the company sail through downturns in the industry or the economy. Bottom-line: different economic times call for different strategic measures for the company to succeed (Clegg, Kornberger & Pitsis 2005, p. 89).

Companies should further understand that though they all participate in the same industry, that is, the built environment sector, there is no single strategy that can serve them all in the same way. This is because successes and failures in any strategy are caused by the internal mechanism inside the company. As a result, the individual company should develop their own strategies that will see them become competitive in the industry, as well as improving internal conditions cordial to employees. This could include clear communication channels within the company. Such a strategy will ensure that senior management, employee, and shareholder are all on one page when it comes to thinking of ways to deliver quality goods and services to clients.

The built environment industry comprises many professions brought together during project development and implementation. It is therefore important to utilize the management strategy of decentralizing decision-making to the lowest team possible. This gives teams working on certain are of project power to make a quality decision that will lead to a quality environment. This also saves senior project managers time; they concentrate on major decisions affecting the entire organization other than dealing with petty issues that could be solved efficiently at lower levels of management.

This strategy lets specialization and division of labor thrive throughout organizations or projects’ lifespan. In a nutshell, accounting decisions should be left to accountants, engineering to engineers and driving to drivers. This lifespans efficiency and productivity within organisations. This results to employees in the industry, becoming more conversant with their roles. They therefore become more prod organizations the projects thin organizations participate in. The industry thus ends up producing quality, services, in their localities. By specialisation in their areas, the employees end up being satisfied with the job.

Being good in their jobs makes it possible for the specialization refers in other fields. These skills also become helpful when they decide to leave their current employer and establish their own companies in the same built environment sector. Their wide expertise brings forth new firms that will provide great services, and thus increase the sector’s reputation. The high quality workforce in the industry is helps when there is need for combined efforts on certain projects.

These employees will do a high-quality understanding of what is going on in help fields in the sector, which will make it easy for companies to collaborate in certain efforts. The resulting product when these companies collaborate becomes of high quality. Further, companies will fell confident when hiring competitors’ employees, because they would have testified their abilities to work together and produce good results. Such strategic alliances, argues Wisnieski & Dowling (1997), guarantee stability and steady flow of productive resources in industries and their respective sectors.

However, for these benefits to happen, industry players must take to understand the environment (sector) their respective organizations are participating in (Yarger 2006), so they can strategize how to compete with each other by striving to provide the best services to clients and preserving their industry’s standing in regional and national economies. Failure to do that could mean unhealthy contribution among players, where some could be using crude ways that might lead to exposing the entire industry to bad light.

The reputation of their industry and its contribution to the economy could be hurt by the lack of vision that strategic management helps create. Individual companies in the built environment sector should take the information regarding the industry to develop internal mechanisms that will produce superior products than other players in the industry.

This will mean understanding what the market wants, which is followed by asking themselves whether they have what it talked to supply the market at better prices compared to the competition. After self-evaluation, these individual players should develop management strategies that will make good use of internal resources, especially labor. This calls for employee participation in the process of making strategies because they are central to the realization of organizational goals.

Developing management strategies and preparing stakeholders for their implementation could be a hard task for the senior managers, especially those who have never taken part in the process. IT is therefore important for organizations to seek the help of experienced consultants. There exist many consultancy firms offering services in strategy development areas, and sure there are some who offer specialized services to the built environment sector.

Organizations can therefore present to the consulting firms their needs, that is, what they want their newly-to-be-acquired strategies to play in managerial activities. Organizations can further be advised on how to develop strategies on their own because there will always come a time that new conditions demand new strategies. This experience will educate senior management and other employees to take part in the process, which is a great investment for the organization.

The resulting management strategies will further help senior management develop internal organizational culture, which will cultivate a new and long-lasting identity for the company. The organizational culture will help align all stakeholders’ goals to those of the company, which means they will all be working towards the accomplishment of the relevant company’s mission, vision, and values. This will lead to the establishment of team culture and personal culture, which both help the sector increase productivity in each player their employees (Khan 2005). The two types of culture are discussed below:

Task Cultures

This form of culture develops when individuals work in groups to complete assigned tasks. This is important because it will enhance teamwork within in built environment sector. The culture has a higher propensity of improving creativity within the team and the organization because members are supposed to make important contributions during team discussions Task culture will end up increasing productivity in sectors’ organizations, because individuals with skill and experience will be working together. Such arrangements will increase the speed at which projects are accomplished; also the quality of the job done by each team member and the group as a whole.

Person Culture

This form of culture is the one that allows individuals in any organization the liberty to express themselves fully. It also has a higher propensity for productivity and creativity because employees will most likely undertake the assigned projects using the most efficient means. It could be used together with Task Culture, especially when teams assign duties to each member during group projects. Such a combination will bring forth employees who work effectively within teams and efficiently with minimal supervision.

References

Balji, M. 2006. ‘Strategic Management Theories: A Revisit,’ The ICFAI Journal of Business Strategy, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 22-34.

Barca, M. 2003. Economic Foundations of Strategic Management, Ashgate, London.

Clegg, Kornberger, M. & Pitsis, T. 2005. Managing and Organisations: An Introduction to Theory and Practice, Sage, London.

Khan, A. 2005. Matching People with Organizational Culture, Business Management Group, Newport Beach.

Kalpic, B. 2002. Strategic Management Theory and Application, Queensland, Griffith University.

Phelam, S. & Lewin, P. 1999. Arriving At a Strategic Theory of the Firm, Texas, University of Texas at Dallas.

Wan, W. & Yiu, 1999. ‘Theory and Research in Strategic Management: Swings of a Pendulum.’ Journal of Management, Vol. 25, No. 3, 417-456.

Wisnieski, J. & Dowling M. 1997. “Strategic Alliances in New Ventures: Does Governance Structure Affect New Venture Performance?”. Web.

Yarger, H. 2006. Strategic Theory for the 21st Century: The Little Book on Big Strategy, Strategic Studies Institute, Pennsylvania.

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