Strategic planning in construction firms: Perceptions and personal characteristics of the manager, strategic planning behaviour, and subjective performance in a large scale survey of the canadian construction industry

This study investigates the relationships amongst the biographical and cognitive aspects of small business managers in the Canadian construction industry, their goals, environmental perceptions, strategic behaviour and performance. It is based on pilot interviews and responses to a questionnaire survey. This industry is distinct from either manufacturing or services. It has characteristics contrary to many underlying assumptions of the strategic management literature such as a lack of economies of scale, of barriers to entry, or of the competitive advantages of product differentiation. The characteristics of the entrepreneur forms the basis of a model of small business performance. A Jungian classification of cognitive characteristics is used, and goals of the individual are analysed using metric multidimensional scaling of preference weights. Factor analysis is used to assess perceptions of environmental uncertainty. An attempt is made, through factor analysis, to identify a substantive progression of strategic behaviour in small firms incorporating planning aspects such as focus and futurity. Although resource allocation is not as important a strategic variable in construction as in other industries, a typology of strategic choice can be identified through cluster analysis which is similar to Porter's generic strategies. This is significant because it is empirically derived and in an uncharacteristic industry. Regression analysis, ANOVA and other parametric and non-parametric procedures are used to show that associations exist amongst biographical and cognitive characteristics, goals, and perceptions of environmental uncertainty. Furthermore, there are relationships shown amongst the personal characteristics of the individual, the strategic process and choice of strategy. Finally, firm performance is measured using a multi-attribute evaluation model involving subjective measures of goal attainment and an eigenvector solution of a paired choice response matrix to determine attribute weights. Performance is seen to be related to the characteristics of the small business manager, the perception of uncertainty and strategic choice, but only weakly with the strategic process.