FOURTEEN PROCESSES DEFINING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE OF BRAZILIAN TRADE CONTRACTORS

misbe2011 Tracking Number 48

Brazilian Trade Contractors, 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, their organizational forms and, as a consequence, in their results. 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 lower bid offering produces the bankruptcy of 50% of them at their fourth year operation, with negative consequences in the competitiveness of the whole Industry. Hence, understanding the causes of that performance is an important issue to improve Trade Contractors 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 was 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. We have two main results: First, we identified fourteen processes conducted by Trade Contractors, namely: Strategic Process, Planning and Management, Commercial, Information Technology, Technical Assistance, Marketing, Financial and Accounting, Procurement, Product Design, Design for Production, Production Planning, Human Resources, Occupational Safety, and Production. Second, those processes are performed in different configurations in accordance with different value propositions and the size of the Trade Contractor.