Strategic planning in small and medium-sized companies in the architecture sector in Portugal

• Autor(a) principal: Lopes, Pedro D´Orey Marchand Sequeira
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/28502
• topic: Strategy; Planeamento estratégico -- Strategic planning; PME Pequenas e Médias Empresas -- SME Small and Medium Enterprises; Arquitetura -- Architecture; Barriers; Estratégias; Barreiras

Architecture today presents a highly competitive and turbulent market. This scenario of instability and competition has reinforced the importance of strategy and, consequently, strategic planning. The existing literature indicates that strategic planning allows companies to achieve a better strategic positioning, performance and profitability. This exploratory study aims to investigate in the architecture sector the importance given to strategy, the way strategic planning is used and, finally, what are the main obstacles that discourage its adoption. Through a set of 12 semi-structured interviews with different micro, small and medium-sized architecture studios, this research points to a limited use of strategic planning. This result is explained, on the one hand, by the lack of knowledge of strategic planning methodologies and by the fact that often financial success and market share are seen by owner-managers as secondary to other objectives, such as their intellectual satisfaction and artistic recognition of their work. The volatility of the construction sector and the small size of most architectural firms also seem to contribute to their low usage. The results of this dissertation may be of interest to owners/managers of Architecture firms and also to Architecture universities.