Competitive strategy and the role of narrative infrastructure: The case of Turkish contractors

Recent years have witnessed the increasing acceptance of the 'narrative turn' in the study of strategy. Such approaches accentuate the socially constructed and discursive nature of competitive strategy. However, as yet little attention has been given to narrative approaches within the context of construction management. The central argument of the narrative perspective is that individuals make sense of the world by telling stories. However, narratives do not emerge just as individual stories; there are also composite narratives reflecting more formal and institutionalized macro stories. Such multi-level and many-voiced stories aggregate over time and constitute a narrative infrastructure drawing from broader narrative building blocks. Connecting the past, present and future temporally, narratives of competitive strategy constitute an overall sense of direction in present day decision-making and generate possibilities for further actions. Drawing on the twin concepts of 'narrative infrastructure' and 'narrative building blocks', the described research aims to deconstruct the formal sector-level narrative of Turkish contractors. The rationale for focusing on Turkish contractors is that they have consistently demonstrated a high propensity for risk by operating in markets, which others perceive to be politically instable and hostile.The empirical data comprises governmental and institutional level strategy texts that portrays the strategic development of Turkish contractors in international contracting. Especially important are the publications of Turkish Contractors Association (TCA), which constitutes the strongest voice at the sectorial level and serves a continual point of reference for contracting firms. The strategy texts produced by the TCA demonstrate the internationalization of Turkish contractors as an epic story, in which managers are depicted as quasi-heroic characters striving to establish their firms in emerging markets. Empirical analysis will deconstruct the emplotment and genre structure of such strategy texts. The findings will illustrate how such narrative framing enable the discourse of direction and what narrative building blocks are mobilized to constitute the narrative infrastructure for contracting firms.