How countries achieve greater use of offsite manufacturing to build new housing: Identifying typologies through institutional theory

Abstract

The need to address housing supply deficits has driven global efforts to transform the construction industry, and in particular, to achieve greater use of offsite manufacturing (OSM). Countries like Japan, Germany and Sweden have been more successful than others in driving greater use of OSM to build new housing. How these countries achieved such success, and lessons for how others may reach such levels of using OSM to build new housing, are yet to be identified. To address this gap, in this paper we applied institutional theory to analyse the factors driving greater use of OSM to build new housing in seven selected countries. Qualitative content analysis of 95 documents enabled the identification of four typologies that have led countries to the greater use of OSM for new build housing. The four different typologies, characterised by various coercive, normative and mimetic institutional pressures, show that there is no one single strategy for guaranteeing success. An individual country cannot directly transfer specific aspects of policy and practice used in another country to their own in order to drive greater use of OSM for building new housing. Our findings also underscore the need for the further application of institutional theory to OSM research in order to better understand how history and path dependence, for instance, shape the trajectory of gradual shifts from onsite construction to the greater use of OSM to build housing in different countries.