Abstract
After temporary competitive advantage (TCA) being proposed, this concept has received a lot of attention from academia and industry. For international HSR contractors, how to form their TCA and win out over the competition for new projects is crucial, while only a few studies focus on this issue. This research aims to develop a TCA system that reflects the characteristics of high-speed rail (HSR) contractors in the corporation and project levels. At first, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted to explore and examine the key drivers and their relationships with contractors’ TCA. The results revealed that experience-mining advantage was the most critical factor of the six common factors. Next, common factors were divided into three dimensions and discussed in-depth, including resource-based TCA (i.e., technical resource and social image) which had the highest significance, followed by performance-based TCA (experience-mining advantage and risk-controlling performance), and action-based TCA (i.e., funding strategy and organizational management). Finally, two case study projects were selected to investigate the competitive situation between CRH (China Railway High-speed) and Shinkansen (Japan) in the international HSR market. This study not only provides suggestions for contractors to improve their TCA in international HSR projects, but also contributes to the theoretical framework for the TCA theory.
Highlights
IntroductionIt is necessary for contractors to fully extract the advantages accumulated by each member over the years, integrate and maximize the use of them according to the specific competition environment, forming their advantages at a particular time, which is the process of forming high-speed rail (HSR) contractors’ temporary competitive advantage (TCA)
In recent years, high-speed rail (HSR) entered a vigorous period of development and many countries have made HSR construction plans, including “High-Speed Railway Strategic Plan” made by U.S Department of Transportation, “2050” transportation strategy formulated by Europe, etc., showing that HSR is in high demand in many countries (Zhou et al, 2014)
It is necessary for contractors to fully extract the advantages accumulated by each member over the years, integrate and maximize the use of them according to the specific competition environment, forming their advantages at a particular time, which is the process of forming HSR contractors’ temporary competitive advantage (TCA)
Summary
It is necessary for contractors to fully extract the advantages accumulated by each member over the years, integrate and maximize the use of them according to the specific competition environment, forming their advantages at a particular time, which is the process of forming HSR contractors’ temporary competitive advantage (TCA). TCA, considered as the ability of companies to surpass their competitors, gain market dominance and high profitability levels when facing a particular competitive environment, so as to ensure that they can gain superiority in the competition within a certain period of time (Mcgrath, 2013; Huang et al, 2015). After O'Shannassy (2008) proposed that all competitive advantages are temporary in the complex and ever-changing environment, TCA has been valued and discussed over the past decade. Most previous research on TCA has focused on two aspects, industry and enterprise (Chan, 2004; Agnihotri and Rapp, 2011), while few studies involved the contractors’ TCA in the project competition
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