Strategic resource amalgamation and diversified business operations: unraveling competitive advantage in Chinese construction contractors

Purpose Existing research lacks exploration of factors that can drive contractors to expand their market, resulting in a research gap where they cannot identify key determining factors in expanding their market. This study aims to explore the multiple pathways of driving diversified business operations of international construction contractors. Design/methodology/approach This study identified key factors that affect the diversified business operations of international construction contractors and explored the multiple causal paths of factors through Chinese contractors selected from the Engineering News Record top 250 as samples using Fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis. Findings This study reveals that six factors, namely, enterprise scale, operation capability, financial capability, innovation capability, internationalization and corporate social responsibility (CSR), are key drivers of international contractors’ diversified operations. These factors combine to generate four different diversification paths, including three broad diversification paths and one narrow diversification path. The elements involved in these paths have complementary and enhanced roles in broadening the contractor’s diversified business operations, suggesting that contractors may need to integrate resources and make strategic adjustments to enhance their positioning in the international market. Among them, operation capability is the core element of diversified business operations and innovation capability and CSR are also important factors in successfully forming a “broad” diversified operation in the international market. Practical implications The research results provide a profound understanding of which the key determining factors of the diversified business operations of international construction contractors to build new competitive advantages. Originality/value This study has enriched the research perspective of contractor competitive advantage theory by introducing the concept of diversified operations, providing a comprehensive theoretical framework for understanding how contractors can expand their market paths.