International competitiveness of the Canadian construction industry: A comparison with Japan and the United States

Competitiveness can be a useful indicator of the long-term health of an industry. Whereas competitiveness has been studied at the corporate and national levels, its usefulness at the industry level has not been explored. The research objective is to develop a model to evaluate competitiveness at the industry level. Motivated by persistent problems of the Canadian construction industry, an attempt is made to quantify its international competitiveness. The industry is compared with its counterparts in Japan and the United States. Competitiveness is defined, the different dimensions of competitiveness are illustrated, and the need to quantify competitiveness is discussed. A multicriteria hierarchical model was developed and tested using both statistical and survey data. Salient findings of the research and conclusions are presented.