Breaking the Mirror: How Conventional Construction Firms Embrace Industrialized Construction

Abstract Prior research on industrialized construction (IC) has focused primarily on industrialized firms—vertically integrated and product-oriented. Less is known about how conventional construction firms (CCFs) in decentralized networks adopt IC and articulate organizational configurations to coordinate emerging technical interdependencies. IC adoption in CCFs is constrained by rigid correspondence between technical and organizational systems, and evidence on how CCFs address this challenge remains scarce. This study analyzes 29 CCFs in Chile, Spain, and the United Kingdom using an abductive and configurational approach to examine correspondence between technical IC adoption approaches and associated organizational configurations. The findings identify six technical approaches and four correspondence patterns: mirroring, partial mirroring, strategic mirror-breaking, and functional exceptions. These patterns show that IC adoption in CCFs does not follow a linear trajectory toward vertical integration; instead, CCFs combine degrees of activity transfer to the supply chain and design predefinition and deploy diverse coordination mechanisms to manage new technical dependencies. Theoretically, the study extends the mirroring hypothesis by synthesizing correspondence patterns in decentralized contexts and documenting functional exceptions not previously addressed. Practically, it offers a diagnostic framework to identify risks of rigid correspondence, surface organizational implications of differentiated technical IC decisions, and explore empirically observed organizational alternatives for coordinating emerging interdependencies.