Leadership in construction industry: Learning from the past

In construction industry there is often a continuous dynamic equilibrium of severeal ‘forces’, controlled by several stakeholders in this industry, e.g.: Contractors, clients, governments, consultants, banks, insurers, etc. This means there is a continuous need for review a company’s strategy to the existent world around it. Not just only on a local scale (which is often the basis for construction activities) but increasingly on a national and international scale. However, this need for ‘glocalizing’ thinking (often combined with acting locally) in general is no practice by a large part of construction industry’s stakeholders. This paper describes an analysis of an European situation, focussed on Dutch construction industry. In general here, leadership is considered as the ability to build up a strong construction business.
Two case studies of entrepreneurs and the way they build their construction business are analysed. On the one hand it represents lessons learned for leadership, based on experiences in the recent past; whereas on the other hand it points at possible influencing factors for succesful leadership, due to e.g. globalization and/or a changing business culture. Results point e.g. in the direction that succesful leadership in construction business is not just following a standard ‘format’, whereas being considered as a successful leader or not is still a part of the local (business)culture.