This dissertation investigates the latent but critical effects of risk attitude on
competitive success in construction applying an evolutionary approach. The approach
considers contractors as individual entities competing with each other for common job
opportunities, and competition as an evolutionary process in the market.
In construction, competitive bidding is the major mechanism of competition.
Bidding itself is an important managerial function in a construction organization while it
is risky since the actual cost of a job is unknown. Therefore, contractors' risk-taking in
competition is an essential element in the construction business.
Individuals may behave differently in competition depending on their own risk
attitude which defines what risks can be accepted or not in an organization. Depending
on the differences in risk-taking, the result of a competition varies. How contractors
compete, that is, how they take risks in competition affects the competition among
themselves. Also, contractors' performance is differentiated through competition to decide successful firms and unsuccessful firms. The current study investigates the
effects of risk attitude, which is the latent basis for contractors' different behaviors in
competition.
The current investigation is unique in that it combines: 1) an evolutionary
approach; 2) behavioral decision-making under uncertainty; 3) multi-level analyses from
the individual to the aggregate; and 4) a long-term perspective on firms' success and
life-cycles (birth, death, survival, growth, contraction, and market diversification). The
developed evolutionary model simulates and analyzes competition among contractors in
the competitive bidding environment. A new method is proposed to represent
contractors' different risk-taking behaviors depending on their own risk attitude. The
analysis accounts for contractors' differences in risk-taking, their performances through
competition, and corresponding organizational changes in life-cycles at the individual
level, and aggregate patterns evolving at the population level as resultants of competition
over long time periods.
The study finds that risk attitude is a latent but dominant competitive
characteristic of contractors by identifying the critical effects of risk attitude on
competitive success. The results provide new insights on competition and
recommendations for contractors' competitive success, which are not available using
conventional approaches.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2009-08-822 |
| Date | 2009 August 1900 |
| Creators | Kim, Hyung Jin |
| Contributors | Reinschmidt, Kenneth |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Dissertation, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
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