Enhancing financial success among electrical contractors
This paper provides electrical contractors with significant information related to enhancing company financial performance. The methodology involves understanding the determinants of contractor financial success through: (1) an extensive literature review; (2) collection of financial- and management-related data from electrical contractors; and (3) analysis of data to identify management trends that are more prevalent in profitable firms. Ninety-six usable responses were collected from small, medium, and larger electrical contracting companies. General trends reveal that more profitable firms place greater emphasis in the areas of certain management initiatives (higher lines of credit and supporting continuing education), marketing initiatives (involvement in formal alliances and partnering), and technology initiatives related to spending more capital resources on computers and software. Significant differences are revealed with financial ratios as well. A Financial Success Scorecard is created for firms to compare their management inputs to those of successful firms. Findings from this study could provide helpful guidelines for nonelectrical contracting firms. Recommendations for achieving future financial success are also provided.
Modeling and Likelihood Prediction of Prefabrication Feasibility for Electrical Construction Firms
AbstractElectrical contracting firms have consistently pursued industrializing their business through the implementation of prefabrication, lean production, and supply chain integration. Despite the pioneering prefabrication efforts of electrical contractors, there is still no clear understanding of the determinants of electrical prefabrication feasibility in terms of supply chain collaboration and surrounding industry requirements. Accordingly, this paper presents the development of prediction models of prefabrication feasibility for electrical contractors. The research tasks of this study were performed in three main phases. The first phase included various data collection tasks, including conducting semistructured interviews, providing an online questionnaire, and obtaining relevant local economic data of the respondents’ metropolitan areas. The second phase involved the utilization of the collected questionnaire responses and economic data to develop logistic regression models that relate the prefabri...
A LITERATURE REIEW OF TARGET COSTING IN SSCI AND SCI&SCI-EXPANDED INDEXES
Target costing as a cost management and profit planning system is used by many competitive firms since 1970s. Although the concept is simple, the implementation needs an extensive collaboration inside and outside of the organization. In contrast, many organization managers think that target costing is just related with accounting and finance staff. Our study aims to review the literature of this important concept; target costing by examining 41 English articles published in SSCI and SCI&SCI-Expanded between 1985-2008. The study aims to briefly explain the content of each article to show the reader what has accomplished so far.