UK construction companies’ strategies in the face of business cycles

Firms in the construction industry have always had to deal with the challenges of the economic cycle and develop strategies to deal with the resulting fluctuations in their business environment. In the context of the 2008–2011 double-dip recession in the UK, the results of a survey targeting the top one hundred construction companies in the UK are reported here. This research is particularly intended to assess whether the strategies of large companies in the construction sector, when faced with the issues associated with the variation in the economic cycle, have changed since the previous business cycle (i.e. the 1986–1990 boom followed by the 1990–1991 recession). The survey reveals the challenges that companies have faced, reports on company behaviour and on the policies adopted. While there are many similarities between policies adopted during the recessionary periods of the two cycles, the research found notable changes in attitudes towards diversification, human resource management and price bidding

The motivations for the adoption of management innovation by local governments and its performance effects

This article analyses the economic, political and institutional antecedents and performance effects of the adoption of shared Senior Management Teams (SMTs) – a management innovation (MI) that occurs when a team of senior managers oversees two or more public organizations. Findings from statistical analysis of 201 English local governments and interviews with organizational leaders reveal that shared SMTs are adopted to develop organisational capacity in resource‐challenged, politically risk‐averse governments, and in response to coercive and mimetic institutional pressures. Importantly, sharing SMTs may reduce rather than enhance efficiency and effectiveness due to redundancy costs and the political transaction costs associated with diverting resources away from a high‐performing partner to support their lower‐performing counterpart

Le Design management des services publics

National audienc

Le Design management des services publics

National audienc

The robust superreplication problem: a dynamic approach

In the frictionless discrete time financial market of Bouchard and Nutz [Ann. Appl. Probab., 25 (2015), pp. 823--859] we consider a trader who is required to hedge $\xi$ in a risk-conservative way relative to a family of probability measures ${\cal P}$. We first describe the evolution of $\pi_t(\xi)$---the superhedging price at time $t$ of the liability $\xi$ at maturity $T$---via a dynamic programming principle, show that $\pi_t(\xi)$ can be seen as a concave envelope of $\pi_{t+1}(\xi)$ evaluated at today's prices, and prove its dual characterization. Under suitable assumptions, we show that the robust superreplication price is equal to the classical $P$-superhedging price for an extreme prior $P\in {\cal P}$. Then we consider an optimal investment problem for the trader who is rolling over her robust superhedge and phrase this as a robust maximization problem, where the expected utility of intertemporal consumption is optimized subject to a robust superhedging constraint. This utility maximization is carried out under a subset ${\cal P}^u$ of ${\cal P}$ representing the trader's subjective views on market dynamics. Under suitable assumptions on the trader's utility functions, we show that optimal investment and consumption strategies exist and further specify when, and in what sense, these may be unique

The robust superreplication problem: a dynamic approach

In the frictionless discrete time financial market of Bouchard and Nutz [Ann. Appl. Probab., 25 (2015), pp. 823--859] we consider a trader who is required to hedge $\xi$ in a risk-conservative way relative to a family of probability measures ${\cal P}$. We first describe the evolution of $\pi_t(\xi)$---the superhedging price at time $t$ of the liability $\xi$ at maturity $T$---via a dynamic programming principle, show that $\pi_t(\xi)$ can be seen as a concave envelope of $\pi_{t+1}(\xi)$ evaluated at today's prices, and prove its dual characterization. Under suitable assumptions, we show that the robust superreplication price is equal to the classical $P$-superhedging price for an extreme prior $P\in {\cal P}$. Then we consider an optimal investment problem for the trader who is rolling over her robust superhedge and phrase this as a robust maximization problem, where the expected utility of intertemporal consumption is optimized subject to a robust superhedging constraint. This utility maximization is carried out under a subset ${\cal P}^u$ of ${\cal P}$ representing the trader's subjective views on market dynamics. Under suitable assumptions on the trader's utility functions, we show that optimal investment and consumption strategies exist and further specify when, and in what sense, these may be unique

Moving from production to services: A built environment cluster framework

The construction industry is no longer focused on providing a single product - i.e. a building or a physical infrastructure, but a variety of services and improvement to the human environment. Major trends such as Performance-based Building as well as Sustainable Built Environment are calling for major changes. These changes mean additional roles for the industry as well as the need for new indicators to measure its performance and its economic impact. This paper proposes a new approach based on the development of a framework for the analysis of the entire construction and property sector - the “built environment cluster”. It extends the analysis of an international study based on nine countries -Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Lithuania, Portugal, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. The need for improving statistical data is stressed particularly in the context of enlarging the scope of the industry. This new approach provides an excellent starting point for developing new performance indicators that will take into account the changing nature of the industry, for an integrative perspective providing a basis for strategic management, for studying sustainable development in construction and for understanding innovation processes and changes. A comprehensive perspective of the industry performance is crucial for policy initiatives as well as for strategic analysis of firms. © 2006, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. All rights reserved