Crisis management in Turkish construction industry

Abstract

Various economical crises have affected Turkish economy during the last decade and construction industry has always been among the hardest hit; giving the idea that a comprehensive approach to crisis management is unavoidable. However, literature showed no findings related with crisis management applications by construction companies. Thus, a questionnaire survey was undertaken by the top management of 120 construction companies to investigate the degree of crisis management applications throughout the industry, mainly focusing on the outcomes during the economical crisis in 2001. Frequency analysis, Likert scale of comparison, Thurstone's paired comparisons, Pearson's chi-square test and Fisher's exact test were used to evaluate the results. The results showed that government policies and instable market conditions were the most important causes of crisis for Turkish construction companies. Meanwhile, only a small number of the companies utilized a systematic crisis management and the extent of crisis management applications varied depending on the size and the structure of the companies. Consequently, panic and powerlessness were the common feelings shared throughout the industry during the economical crisis in 2001. Despite, it was still encouraging that the managers utilized contemporary decision-making methods to get out of the crisis and their final decisions were generally in favour of strategically repositioning themselves.