The Temporal Development of a Competitive Advantage Hierarchy within the Construction Industry

Sustainable competitive advantage (CA) is a necessary requirement of a rational economic business organisation. Without this CA a business does not have a rational source for appropriating added value in the form of retained profit. Various management research papers have identified numerous factors that may create a source of competitive advantage. Other researchers have shown how industries have changed through. This paper will draw upon both sources to show a temporal development for the construction industry. The paper will structure sources of CA to show the significance of each source during the lifecycle of the business and the industry. The paper will develop the concept of a temporal hierarchy as a model for identifying and developing potential sources of CA at any point in the lifecycle of a particular business entity. The temporal hierarchy will identify which sources of CA may be most appropriate (at a given point in the lifecycle) to sacrifice in order to create a further (and higher) source of CA. The proposed temporal hierarchy suggests four epochs, Factor, Investment, Innovation and Wealth. The conclusion of the paper will include examples of the application of the temporal model to a small sample of case studies, showing the representativeness of the model to ‘real-life’ businesses.