Research On The Effects Of Construction Enterprise Dynamic Capabilities On Sustainable Competitive Advantages

Construction industry has been one of the backbones of Chinese traditional economy for several decades.On the basis of factors like the development of investment in fixed assets,the promotion of urbanization and the population bonus,construction industry is now in a booming development period.With the high pace of industry development,Chinese construction enterprises are now also experiencing a positive development trend,which,to be noticed,mainly comes from the increasing growth of Chinese economy,the pulling effect of macro strategic policy of the country and low-cost investment in resources and labors.However,from the end of the "12th five-year"period,Chinese economy came in a "new normal" stage-which means the economic growth of the country has slowed down-and construction industry is now developing towards a more globalized market,the traditional competitive advantages from"scaled-economy" of Chinese construction enterprises have been and will be eroded gradually.More and more Chinese construction enterprises are now searching for a new strategic path with new motivation,and transformation and upgrading has become a new theme of those enterprises.To be noticed,for now the transformation and upgrading process of construction enterprises are not so successfully promoted,and there exist a lot of examples of failure in this process.The reason of these failures is that under the effect of path-dependent(PD),these enterprises could not find a new stategic path properly to adapt to the changing environment,thereby not forming new competitive advantages.The theory of Dynamic Capabilities(DC)is to solve such problem,but the researches on DC are now mainly focused on the empirical analysis of the relationship between DC and competitive advantages,and the true interaction mechanism is still contained in a "black box".The core topic of this dissertation,therefore,comes from this extented thought.In this dissertation,the development history of Chinese construction enterprises are reviewed firstly,in which process the property of PD in every developing stage are refined in three aspects,namely management system,management mechanism and corporate culture,and the common reasons are put forward that the negative effect of PD came from the DC of Chinese construction enterprises not being strong enough.Secondly,the cycle of strategic path evolution that how competitive advantages are formed on the logical time dimension is deeply analyzed,and the main constitution dimensions of DC which being activated in every stage are put forward during the description of how dynamic capabilities could overcome the invalid PD,based on which the five-dimension system of dynamic capabilities including Sensing,Absorbing,Matching,Utility and Flexiblity is founded.The validity of this system is simulated and tested using the method of System Dynamics.Thirdly,because of the existence of subjective environmental uncertainty and the irrational conditions in strategc decisions in the evolution process,the assumption is given that DCs on the calender time dimension could cause harmful effect to competitive advantages of Chinese enterprises,therefore the hypotheses of linear relationships between DC,PD and sustainable competitive advantages are put forward,the inverted U-shape relationship hypotheses between several of dimensions of DC and sustainable competitive advantages are proposed as well.At the same time,the hypothesis of moderate effect of environmental uncertainty is also put forward based on the subjective environmental uncertainty factor.Moreover,integrating the characteristic elements of the construction enterprises and existing measuring tool of related variables,a scale is designed and questionnaire survey is conducted.After 6 times of Structural Equation Model(SEM)test with different conditions and relationships,the best model is chosen by comparing the Goodness of Fit of each model,based on which the final conclusions on the calender time dimension given as followed.1)The main effect on sustainable competitive advantages of the five dimension of dynamic capabilities are different from each other.Absorbing and Flexibility both have positive linear effect on sustainable competitive advantages of construction enterprises;Sensing and Utility both have a quadratic promoting effect on competitive advantages instead of the linear effect or inverted U-shape effect;and Matching has an inverted U-shape effect on competitive advantages.2)PD works as a mediating variable in the relationship between DC and sustainable competitive advantages,which means that on the level of calendar time dimension,the basic logic that dynamic capabilities maintaining sustainable competitive advantages through breaking up the invalid path-dependent is founded.The main innovation points of this dissertation are as followed.1)Used a new logic view to study the DC of construction enterprises.From the basic concept of sustainable competitive advantages,this dissertation processes along two logic principal line.On the logical time level,the form of competitive advantages is studied from the view of strategic path evolution,and on the calendar time level the maitainance of sustainable competitive advantages is further studied.This combination of two level studies is brand new in the study area of dynamic capabilities.2)Discovered the non-linear relationships between several dimensions of DC and sustainable competitive advantages.In this dissertation hypotheses about three kinds of capabilities of DC could have non-linear effect on sustainable competitive advantages based on the analysis of irrational factors in strategic decisions and environmental uncertainty,thereby these hypotheses passed the test through method of SEM.This discovery could broaden the research prospect of dynamic capabilities.3)Clarified the timing of DC in promoting the strategic path evolution.Using the concepts of expected performance gap,gap threshold and so on,the formula of strategic decision is concluded,clarifying the timing of the DC.This filled up a big gap in the research of dynamic capabilities.4)Clarified the mechanism of DC in promoting the strategic path evolution.The property of path-dependent has not been noticed so important in researches of dynamic capabilities up to date.In this dissertation the PD is seen as a penetration point,and is treated as important as it should has been.From the analysis of relationships of PD and competitive advantages,the logical principal line comes out,and the five-dimension system of dynamic capabilities is therefore established by analyzing the path evolution cycle.The whole reseach is in fact extented from the deep-seated problem of path-dependent,and this new view can enrich the research perspectives of dynamic capabilities and the application study of dynamic capabilities in the construction industry.