Fourteen processes defining competitive advantage of Brazilian trade contractors

Abstract

Brazilian Trade Contractors (TC), or Subcontractors and Specialty Contractors, are main players in the Brazilian Building Industry competitiveness. They are part of a highly fragmentized and informal chain, with a great diversity in their value propositions and in their organizational forms. Nonetheless, despite their heterogeneity, most of them are SMEs lacking resources, capabilities, and other assets. This lack of assets and a competition led by the lowest bid offering produces the bankruptcy of 50% of them in their fourth year of operation, with negative consequences in the competitiveness of the whole Industry. Hence, understanding the causes of that performance is an important issue to improve TC management practices and, consequently, their performance. This paper focuses on internal factors, specifically, on the internal processes that allow Trade Contractors to achieve a good performance in their specific competitions. For this purpose, data were gathered from a qualitative research in 24 Trade Contractors with good performance and in 7 other agents that hire them, mainly in Sao Paulo - Brazil. Two are the main results: First, fourteen processes conducted by TC were identified. Second, those processes are performed in different configurations in accordance with different value propositions and size of the TC.