Sustainability and construction strategy in changing times.

Within the construction sector, the goal of mainstreaming enviornmental sustainability has been met with many competing agenda and challenges. These include calls for new building and procurement methods, growing attention to well being and health and safety as well as the multiple commercial challenges associated with the 2008 recession, Brexit and CoVID-19. Rigid, top-down approaches to strategic planning fail to capture firm level responses to their changing context; they also fail to provide adequate guidelines for firms struggling to stay afloat and (be seen to) do the ’right thing’. The proposed PhD asks how do firms develop strategy in such unpropicious times. More specifically, what are construction firms doing and what aren’t they doing and why and what happens to these commitments when circumstances change. As this suggests, the proposed research takes the case of green building to explore issues of strategy development and maintainance in the face of changing contexts. A key focus of the research will be the fit between evolving business models and environmental strategies. Findings from the research promise to provide insights into ongoing processes of strategy making in times of extreme uncertainty as well as into how to ensure that environmentalism remains on the agenda as the sector weathers the current storms.

Candidates will need to have an interest in and, ideally some background in, business, management, construction management and/or social science.