The cultural dimension as a variable in international construction
marketing: a competitive advantage perspective.
Mark Hall
The author
is a member of the Agile Construction research team at The School of Management,
University of Bath.
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Proofs and communications to be sent to Dr Mark Hall,
School of Management, University of Bath, BATH, BA2 7AY, U.K.
e-mail: M.Hall@bath.ac.uk
The cultural dimension as a variable in international
construction marketing: a competitive advantage perspective
Keywords: international construction
marketing; national cultures; competitive advantage.
Abstract
Marketing of overseas operations has become an increasingly
important activity for international construction enterprises.
With a changing client base and increasing levels of competition from
organisations from both developed and developing nations, construction enterprises
have to vigorously promote their services and products both at home and abroad.
When marketing their services and products internationally,
successful enterprises must form a strategy that allows for cultural differences.
This is because the products and services they promote comprise tacit
knowledge. Tacit knowledge provides a competitive advantage
but its successful application is complicated by cultural differences.
This paper sought to establish how construction enterprises marketed
their services in culturally different environments.
Drawing on data from interviews with key decision-makers
in a diverse range of UK-based construction enterprises (both contractors
and consultants) with international interests, it was found that marketing
was considered to be a very important issue for all the companies.
Further, the cultural dimension was recognised as an important variable
and it was found that cultural differences were tackled in a variety of ways. The main strategy was to avoid local cultural
problems by careful client targeting and forming close relationships with
local partners. This cultural avoidance
(or ethnocentric) approach fails to harness organisations’ full potential
as it fails to place competitive advantage within a cultural context.
Introduction
Marketing has now become a high profile activity for
construction organisations everywhere. Recast
as more than mere advertising and promotion, it now has an important place
in many construction corporations’ strategic policies, and is seen generally
as contributing directly to corporate performance (Narver and Slater, 1990).
At a basic level, international marketing simply refers to a company
operating in more than one country whose marketing strategy in each has been
deliberately chosen (van Mesdag, 2000). Indeed,
Hand (1998, p. 55) suggests that until recently, ‘marketing’, as a separate
business activity, was largely an unnecessary:
“[a] well known name and a good estimating department was basically
all that was required to win international construction work”. Today, however,
the international construction client base has changed. Clients are less likely
to be multi-lateral funding bodies and government organisations and more likely
to include developers, financial organisations and other construction enterprises
(Chapman, 1998). Additionally, the
market is no longer the preserve of firms from the developed world. Construction companies from developing and ‘emerging’
regions of the world have firmly established themselves in the international
marketplace and are vigorously competing for their own market shares.
In this increasingly competitive global environment,
with a changing client base, marketing is about promoting corporate competitive
advantage (Porter, 1986). Competitive
advantage derives from many sources but can be reduced to the effective application
of knowledge (Bender and Fish, 2000). Given that knowledge is ‘culturally bound’ (Hofstede,
1991), it would seem necessary for construction enterprises operating internationally
to design and implement marketing strategies that accounted for the cultural
differences they encounter. This paper reports on, the extent to which culture
was considered an important variable when British construction enterprises
formulated their marketing strategy for their international services.
The ways in which construction enterprises accommodate this factor
within their international marketing strategies is also explored.
The aim was to seek common aspects of marketing strategies employed
by British construction companies operating internationally with particular
reference to the cultural dimension as it impinged ion their projection of
competitive advantage.
The cultural dimension as a variable in competitive
advantage
Successful international operations depend upon the ability
to transfer competitive advantage (Bender and Fish, 2000; Porter, 1986).
International construction enterprises have traditionally relied on
the exploitation of, for example, superior technical expertise, historic market
connections and tied inward investment and aid packages (Linder, 1994; Strassman
and Wells, 1988; Drewer, 1990). However,
Yates (1994) observed that these traditional competitive advantages were being
rapidly eroded. As they diminish, those construction enterprises
that wish to maintain their market share will have to seek, transfer, promote
and exploit different, less traditional competitive advantages (Bon, 1997).
There are many sources of competitive
advantage that companies can enjoy. They
can be classified, for example, in terms of the activities and functions of
the firm’s value chain, types of assets (resources), types of skills (capabilities),
order-winning criteria, generic strategies adopted by the firm and so forth
(Hymer, 1976). Hu and Warner (1996),
however, collect these into two broad groups. Firstly, there are those which lie at the interface
between the company and it’s customers. These include price, product quality and range,
reputation, speed and timeliness of delivery and financing. Secondly, there may be advantages associated
with the company itself: “what it is, what it does and what it has” (p. 379). These include specific attributes, activities,
assets, skills and internal and external relationships. At both levels, cultural factors can impinge
on the company. For example (p. 380),
national … culture affects
both the quality and speed of service, it effects the way the firm sees itself
and does things and it also affects the speed and frequency with which new
products and processes are brought to fruition and then to market.
In industries characterised by rapid technological progress
it is internal, company-specific factors that matter most. However, where that company operates in an industry
characterised by relatively slow technological change, the interface with
the customer is correspondingly more important. It is in these industries that marketing is
vital to continued survival and growth. According
to Ball (1988, p. 27-28) construction enterprises would fall into this latter
category as: “[t]he building industry does not correspond to the environment
of a factory and, as a result, it is concluded that the building industry
is doomed to relative technical stagnation” (see also Yates, 1994).
The nature of the competitive
advantage is overlaid by the fact that many of the advantages have a cultural
component, or can be recast in terms of culture (Joynt and Warner, 1996).
Moreover, because culture differs between different societies, its importance
in international competition is particularly pronounced (Hill, 1998).
In the case of the construction industry, this is implicitly linked
to the interface with the customer and, thus, it is on the nature of competitive
advantage that attention must focus.
Specifically, a distinction can be made between competitive
advantage derived from ‘codified’ knowledge and that derived from ‘tacit’
knowledge. Codified knowledge is that
which can easily be expressed in terms of procedure. Thus, mechanics, engineering and construction
technology is codifiable. Tacit knowledge
is that which is less easy to express as formulae or procedure and typically
includes aspects such as skills, managerial ability in general, people management
policies specifically, and the use and understanding of technological concepts
(Gyekye, 1995). Codifiable knowledge
(such as operating instructions, standard procedures, computer programmes,
predictive models, formulae or blueprints) is relatively easy to transfer,
as it tends to be less ‘culture-dependent’ than tacit knowledge (that is person-
or institution-embodied knowledge). This is because employee and consumer behaviour
is effected by cultural values and tacit knowledge is dependent on that behaviour
and those values – in other words, it is ‘culture-bound’ (Hofstede, 1991).
Hu and Warner (1996) characterise codified knowledge as approaching
‘zero-transfer cost’. Tacit knowledge, on the other hand is difficult
and costly to transfer because (p. 387-388):
·
Tacit knowledge is complex (because, by definition, it involves the ability
to deal with complexity). Furthermore,
it is context-dependent and, if the background is not understood, it is difficult
to interpret.
·
Tacit knowledge is acquired through experience and ‘trial and error’.
Thus, it may take many years and a great deal of human capital in order
to accumulate tacit knowledge.
·
Tacit knowledge is taught (and learnt) through demonstration, observation,
imitation, practice and feedback. This
requires close personal contact over a prolonged period of time which, in
turn, presupposes linguistic and cultural affinity and geographical proximity
(Maffesoli, 1996).
·
Organisational learning and the tacit knowledge that results is often
collective in nature. Because it does
not reside in a single person, transfer becomes even more problematic.
·
The tacit knowledge being transferred may not be static but continuously
evolving.
However, for many industries,
sustainable competitive advantage lies in the area of tacit knowledge.
While knowledge is far from the only competitive advantage which is
transferable (for example, the ability to provide finance or a market for
the finished product is also important) it often features prominently and
is certainly the main reason expatriate staff are required (Bender and Fish,
2000). This would seem to be the case
within the international construction industry.
Here, Western construction professionals are valued in developing countries
as much for their ability to introduce novel procurement and managerial solutions
to construction projects and for their ‘professionalism’ as for their technical
ability (although this too is often highly valued) (Hall and Jaggar, 1998;
Stallworthy and Kharbanda, 1985; Elton, 1985; Bidgood, 1980).
Construction marketing using cultural synergy
As tacit knowledge forms a prominent part of their
competitive advantage, construction enterprises must find ways to overcome
the inherent culture-bound nature of that knowledge if they wish to transfer
and market it in a useful form in different cultural environments. Adler (1983) outlined three approaches a firm
could adopt when faced with a culturally diverse situation. These are outlined in Table 1 below and provide
a useful typology for describing a specific organisation’s or individual’s
attitude when confronted with the dynamics of a culturally diverse scenario.
Thus, in attempting to market a construction firm’s
tacit knowledge overseas, an ethnocentric approach would be to codify as much
knowledge as possible. However, “[a]dvantages based on skills, competences,
capabilities, know-how, technology, expertise and so on cannot be reduced
entirely to codified knowledge or information” (Hu and Warner, 1996, p. 387).
Therefore, a more effective approach might be to consider which advantages
would transfer best to what cultural environments. This synergistic balancing of tacit competitive
advantage with cultural profile would provide construction enterprises with
a strategic basis for deciding in which countries they market their operations.
Table 1 A typology
for cultural perceptions
Thus, if their company reputation were well-known in
a given country but all other aspects of operation would be prohibitively
difficult, a construction organisation might just licence it’s name to an
indigenous company operating in broadly the same field and markets. Similarly, that same company may find many of
its domestic competitive advantages readily transferable to a different country
where the culture is less distant. Here
they may wish to set up a regional office and recruit and train local staff.
Thus, what has relevance in one cultural environment may have little
or no relevance in another. Clearly, such a ‘competitive advantage’ perspective
has important implications for the marketing of construction services within
different cultural environments. At its most basic, marketing entails matching
the company offerings to an identified need (Morgan, 1990). But where the company offerings are modified
and changed by cultural differences, the marketing approach must be sensitive
to such changes.
Research question and methodology
In light of the above argument, when marketing their
services beyond their domestic base, successful construction enterprises would
have to give careful consideration to the cultural dimension. However, it would seem that this is unlikely
to be the case. Shaw (2000), in a large
study of German companies, found that the general strategic approach, for
both successful and less successful companies, to marketing operations and
activities in another country was likely to be ethnocentric in character. Anecdotal evidence suggesting that this is
also true for the construction industry. This
paper set out to explore the proposition that construction enterprises adopt
an ethnocentric approach in marketing their services internationally.
Beyond this, however, the research sought to ascertain a detailed understanding
of exactly how construction enterprises regarded marketing at the international
level, the extent to which cultural issues were considered to be important
and how they impinged upon the marketing function.
With this goal, the methodology had to be explorative rather than deductive
in nature. To this end, it was decided
to adopt a methodology similar to that used by Merrilees and Tiessen (1999),
who sought to build generalizable theories of international marketing from
depth case studies (see also Eisenhardt, 1989).
A multiple-case design was chosen, with the units of
analysis being semi-structured interviews with 14 key decision-makers. The cases were a number of diverse, UK-based
construction enterprises (see Table 2). The interviews had, as their focus,
the issue of culture generally within the international construction environment.
It emerged that a major aspect for the interviewees was that of marketing
internationally. The cases were selected specifically with
cultural differences. Where marketing policy and strategy did allow
for cultural differences, this was implicit rather than explicit. Examples of implicitly allowing for cultural
differences within marketing strategies included:
·
pursuing work that was funded by ‘reliable’ sources,
·
engaging local companies as ‘partners’ in the knowledge that they would
be able to deal with any local cultural difficulties
·
or by pursuing ‘international’ clients governed by familiar, supra-cultural
policies of their own.
In contrast, the three interviewees representing Case
Study Organisation E, were able to indicate a variety of strategies that not
only allowed for cultural differences within their marketing approach, but
positively embraced them. Indeed, for
this organisation, cultural differences, both within the organisation itself,
and within the environments in which it worked, contributed overtly to its
competitive advantage. Indeed, the
company actually emphasised cultural differences rather than seeking to minimise
or remove them. Through this emphasis,
it was able to find synergies that allowed the company to offer its client-base
a distinct and special service. As
such, the policy of embracing and using cultural differences relied on its
marketing strategy. While the company
had limited activity outside Europe, the interviewees stressed
their identity as members of a global organisation.
The first thing I would say
is that ‘global’ doesn’t mean you operate in every area of the world. Being
in every country in the world may mean you’re an international organisation
but it doesn’t mean you’re a global organisation. To be global and work globally
is actually about thinking and about a whole approach to business and the
changing nature of business – that’s the difference between global and international.
However, this was not the case for all consultancies.
The other case studies involving consultants, both quantity surveying
practices (Case Study Organisations C and F), indicated that neither had any
specific policies in order to accommodate the cultural differences they faced.
One aspect that was of importance to many interviewees
was that of ethical differences. Here,
the distinction between contractors and consultants was more marked. For the consultants, the issue of lowered ethical
standards was one they were unwilling to discuss. However, when they were drawn on the subject,
they noted that the reputedly high ethical standards of British construction
professionals were of benefit in their overseas business dealings. Clients readily trusted them and where ethical
integrity was of importance, they had a competitive advantage compared to
consultants from some other countries. They
were keen to incorporate this perceived competitive advantage in their marketing
approach. For example, one interviewee,
working for Case Study Organisation F, made the following comment:
In a way, it works for us.
One of the reasons people like to have Brits more is that we do export integrity.
There’s still the view that if a British quantity surveyor tells you that
is what it is, then that is what
it is. Clearly in the Middle East particularly (most of the
countries outside the UK in fact) there’s a different
kind of ethics, commercially. We manage to steer clear of it professionally
but we’re aware that it goes on. Sometimes it goes on at the highest level
– government to government or international oil company to international oil
company right down to “if you want a work permit I’ve got it here”! But that’s
why you have local partners, to deal with these matters.
For contractors, the issue of ethical differences was
more complex. While they were required to exhibit the same high ethical standards
demanded of construction professionals working for consultants, the interviewees
working for contractors tended to express more ambivalence where the topic
was discussed. Perhaps, contractors’
staff are more exposed to ethical differences. Certainly, it was suggested that the ethical
standards of contractor’s staff were far from immutable when they were in
the field, despite the dictates of head office (indeed, this was one area
where contractors appeared to have a clear policy with regard to cultural
differences). Some interviewees were
outspoken in their exasperation with the difficulties that ethical differences
presented both to their organisations as a whole and to the individual staff
representing their companies’ interests overseas. The problems of reconciling a company with ethical
standards reflecting UK cultural norms, with those
one could expect to encounter internationally, were so intractable, that one
interviewee was led to see international work as being too problematic. Indeed, it was seen as such a problem, that
the interviewee (representing Case Study Organisation G) had considered withdrawing
from international work altogether.
I mean, the tragedy of some
of these places, and Nigeria was, perhaps, the worst, is that you have a good
guy in UK, you send him over to Nigeria and before he’s been there a year
he’s either broken by resisting – ‘dash’ is the word they use for bribery
– either resisting ‘dash’ or receiving it. And, you know, you can ruin bloody
marvellous guys by sending them out to some of these awful places. And that
was the tragedy of Nigeria for us (apart from the loss)
was the good guys – we ruined them by sending them out to Nigeria. You have to be very brave,
you know, when you’re an office manager on a contract out in the wilds, you
have to be very brave to resist the pressures or very upright to resist corruption.
It’s dreadful.
Similarly, the ethical standards demanded by Case Study
Company A were such that they were prepared to eschew certain locations around
the world on the basis of the prevailing ethical standards of those locations.
The interviewee for this company remarked:
Going back to the fact that
[company name] is family-owned, there is a high ethical standard here. We
insist that all our joint venture partners sign up to the US Foreign and Corrupt
Practices Act. And so we don’t do some of the things that other companies
do who don’t have the same moral standards that we have. And so, in certain
countries where that’s a fact of life, and without which you’re not going
to win work, then its an issue, to the point where sometimes we’ve walked
rather than stay. If it’s a fact of doing business that you’ve got to throw
a lot of brown envelopes about then that’s a factor for us, which generally
turns us off.
Clearly, the ethical dimension had an important influence
of international construction company marketing policies.
Other common themes that emerged from analysis of the
case studies included a focus on the specific client base that have been referred
to as being international, i.e.
blue-chip, multinational conglomerates. Even those companies that had traditionally
focused their attention on local clients (such as Case Study Organisation
B) were ‘refocusing’.
We are constrained by what
we've built in the past. These vehicles that we built years ago are difficult
to dismantle, because of the Arab mentality, in the Middle East, where they like long-term
relationships and the same people for a long time. They don't like change
in that respect, from a business aspect. So, in some ways, we are constrained
by the businesses that we formed.
A number of reasons for this shift in focus were given:
·
the ability and willingness of international clients to pay,
·
their appreciation of higher levels of service offered by UK construction organisations
·
and the ability of local competitors to provide many of the basic services
that local clients might require.
However, a by-product of this strategic approach was
to reduce the respective organisations’ exposure to the risks presented by
cultural differences. While it would
be overstating the findings to say that this was a specific aim of the policy
of targeting international clients, it was certainly an element in the overall
goal of reduction in risk exposure internationally, reflected in international
marketing policies. This is because
cultural differences were seen as a risk that rather then being managed in
a synergistic manner was to be avoided or minimised.
Another commonality that emerged was the desire by
all the organisations to project a corporate identity in their activities
overseas. The interviewees considered
their corporate culture to be an important element of their corporate identity.
Their main tool in achieving this was the expatriate and, hence, despite
the high, almost prohibitive, cost of expatriates, they remained an important
element of the international activities of all the companies participating
in the research apart from Case Study Organisation E.
For the consultants in the study, expatriates were also important as
they represented their company’s service.
Clients were buying the service they, as individual expatriates, were
providing. This differed with the contractors, who were
selling a constructed product that was produced through what were, as many
of the interviewees stressed, well understood techniques and procedures. In this sense, the consultants had a distinct
competitive advantage over their contracting colleagues in that they had more
opportunity to demonstrate the added-value of their services. Consequently, they had more to gain from understanding
culture from a marketing perspective, and at a strategic level than the contractors
in the study.
Finally, niche activities seemed to be important to
most of the organisations. For example,
Case Study Organisation A saw its ability to capitalise projects as being
important.
… its sad to say that sometimes,
companies such as ours are deemed to be a better bet for loans than some countries
are. So we can get the money at a better rate than some countries. So it is
attractive to them to have companies like us actually going in and taking
these burdens off them. It sometimes comes down to who can get the cheapest
loan. The technology is pretty well known throughout the world. Operating
and maintenance follows well-worn paths. And so if everybody is at the same
[technological level], it’s the smart ideas and perhaps the innovative financing
that will win you the day.
Similarly, Case Study Organisation D focused on its
technical excellence in civil engineering..
Context could be important. The
company’s technical specialism was in civil engineering, a service often required
in remote locations. Additionally,
due to the high levels of competition in some overseas locations, such as
the Middle East, which limited those regions’
viability, the company targeted locations that were more ‘difficult’.
…I think what happens on the
larger projects in lousy places is that everyone works for the project. …we
have all sorts of nationalities because we have people who have come through
[company name] with different backgrounds, we have people who have come through
[partner company’s name] who are from the former … colonies, so we have all
sorts of people. It's like the French football team! It doesn't matter because
people are there because they have the right skills and everybody has regard
for their colleagues’ skills and everybody works for the project. If you're
in the jungle working on building something, then the concentration is on
getting it built properly. And I think the issues which might come up here
don't come up in the jungle.
For these organisations, their niche skills subsumed
cultural differences. By contrast,
Case Study Organisation C was actually exploiting cultural differences in
its association with Japanese contractors.
So they [the Japanese] are quite interesting but they
have a very different understanding and I think that now they are beginning
to learn that there are too many of 'us' – there's Europe, America – and we
will never adjust to them and, particularly now that they've taken a fall
financially, they're no longer going to be the massive power house that they
have been so they now realise that they must try to understand a little more
about the way we work, particularly when they're working overseas (it doesn't
matter in Japan). So, where there are opportunities for English consultants
is we tell them how we work and they'll meet ‘fire with fire’. But I still
don't understand them fully - they still do things which surprise me after
working with them for five years.
Discussion and conclusions
The general goal of the marketing strategy employed
by the majority of the case study companies seemed to be to minimise the company’s
exposure to cultural diversity and, by extension, the risks entailed in that
exposure. The only area of cultural
difference for which specific policies had been developed were those designed
to deal with ethical differences as a result of differing business practices.
However, for the contractors in the study in particular, marketing
policies designed to deal with ethical differences appeared to fail to reflect
the reality of the expatriate experience and, consequently, were likely to
be seen as dogmatic and impractical.
British construction enterprises (and particularly
contractors) reported finding it increasingly difficult to compete overseas.
If they are to maintain a significant presence in the international
arena, they can no longer rely on reputation and historical connections.
They need to be able to add value to their service, primarily through
the transfer of the knowledge that provides their competitive advantage. However, transfer of knowledge across cultures
is difficult and it is only through carefully managing the differences that
transfer of knowledge (and, hence, competitive advantage) can be effective.
This management of the differences in culture becomes apparent in the
implementation of policies designed for that express purpose.
From a marketing perspective, this would have to be both in terms of
the strategic approach to market identification and in terms of the development
and building of staff skills and abilities in the context of an appreciation
of cultural diversity.
The problem that the majority of the companies in the
study had was their inability, or unwillingness to make any serious efforts
to accommodate cultural differences in the delivery of their services across
the world. However, one reason for
this is because doing so is not easy. It
requires effort to reflect upon, consider and understand the gaining of competitive
advantage through the application of knowledge. It is even more difficult to then find ways
of gaining additional advantage by incorporating the cultural dimension within
the application of that knowledge – in other words, being synergistic.
Case study organisation E was identified as an exemplar
in this respect. The directors were
able to incorporate the cultural dimension at the national level within its
services by focusing on the cultural dimension at the corporate level. In the first instance, they took the time and
effort to reflect upon their own corporate ideals and conception of professionalism.
With this knowledge, they were able to form relationships with overseas
organisations that, while having people of a different national culture, subscribed
to the same corporate ideals as they. This
was a long and difficult process but, by ensuring a match in values at the
corporate level, they were able to develop the trust necessary to allow the
overseas subsidiaries to implement policy and deliver service free from central
control. This meant that, while delivery
of service remained relatively constant throughout the organisation, the delivery
and was interpreted and implemented in a way that was appropriate and relevant
to the local, cultural context. Case
study E’s success lay in their clients believing that policy and service delivery
would remain of the same quality and standard throughout the company.
To ensure this, regular collective meetings of senior management from
all the offices throughout Europe, were held to form a consensus
on what the company was seeking to achieve and what direction it would take
in the future. These meetings not only
confirmed current and future strategy but also reinforced the corporate values
on which the organisation was founded. The key point to note in this story is that
the approach taken by the company was in no way easy or simple to adopt. However, past and continuing effort has been
rewarded with commissions and other business.
One issue that was evidently important, as it ran through
many of the interviews was that of ethical differences. This paper has not sought to address the debate
over the most appropriate marketing response to ethical differences.
What was clear was that most corporate ‘official’ policy was not to
entertain in any way the issues of corruption, bribery and so forth, in any
way whatsoever. What was also clear was that that this was not
always appropriate in practice. This
was because ethical differences do not just manifest themselves as big cases
of corruption and bribery, but can pervade societies and be seen, at the societal
level, as being perfectly acceptable whereas major corruption is not acceptable.
Thus, what Western eyes might see as nepotism would be seen in other
societies as familial duty rooted in strong cultural, collectivist values.
Equally, the giving and receiving of gifts, which might be seen in
Britain as bribery, might be seen
in other cultures within a wider context of trust and transaction which is
entirely appropriate. While the paper
did not seek to resolve the question of how construction enterprises might
account for ethical differences at this level it did identify a mismatch between
an almost dogmatic attachment to ‘ethical values’ on the part of organisations,
creating difficulties for the managers responsible for marketing their companies
in certain locations. A more appropriate
stance is required, that avoids condemnation in the company’s home country
while ensuring that the company’s expatriate or foreign managers are not placed
in the ambiguous situation of ensuring the company’s interests while supporting
their ethical policy. What such a stance
might entail is a question to be resolved elsewhere.
Another aspect that has emerged as a key feature of
companies working internationally is the link between corporate (or organisational)
culture and national culture. It was
found that to successfully incorporate national cultural differences within
corporate competitive advantage first requires a culture within the corporation
that is predisposed to viewing cultural differences as a source of potential
advantage rather than only as a source of problems. Ironically, it seems that only through synchronisation
of culture at the organisational level are companies able to transcend national
cultural differences and, in so doing take control of the cultural dimension
in their international marketing strategies.
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