A Business approach for transformation to sustainable construction: an implementation on a developing country

Ahmad Mousa

Resources, Conservation & Recycling, 2015, vol. 101, issue C, 9-19

Abstract: Construction industry in several developing countries has undergone major transitions to cope with their national economic goals and – as importantly – to align their markets with the growing global sustainability trends. This study proposes a business approach addressing the common barriers against the strong presence of sustainable construction materials in these countries. The Egyptian market was selected as a candidate for a potential sustainable transformation. The use of sustainable concrete is advocated as a pivotal market transformation that warrants technical leverage in the construction industry and ensures local development as well as global competitiveness. A mixed-mode survey was performed to estimate the level of understanding of sustainable construction and, thus, gauge market’s receptiveness to change. Like most sustainable changes in developing countries, the use of sustainable concrete in Egypt as a mainstream construction material is challenged by the stagnant culture of the industry and the absence of a proactive legislative role. Business implementation of the desired transformation is suggested to endure the three stages of the Kotter’s model for change: unfreeze-change-lock. In view of the noted commonness of the barriers and similarities in construction cultures of developing countries, due consideration to the proposed approach could be given in these markets. The business dimension of this effort is intended to complement past attempts promoting sustainable transformation.

Keywords: Developing countries; Sustainable transformation; Market barriers; Business approach; Kotter’s model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921344915300045
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:recore:v:101:y:2015:i:c:p:9-19

DOI: 10.1016/j.resconrec.2015.05.007

Access Statistics for this article

Resources, Conservation & Recycling is currently edited by Ming Xu

More articles in Resources, Conservation & Recycling from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kai Meng ().