The role of investment, exchange and accumulation of non-economic capital on international project performance

Recently there has been an increase in construction firms internationalising. The internationalisation process particularly, market entry strategies has been well researched. There has been less research concerned with investigating long term sustainability for exporting firms. The cornerstone of a sustainable business model is construction performance. Construction performance is a combination of project and client organisation objectives and the design and construction process. An understanding of client and project objectives as well as process is impacted upon by cultural factors. Client organisational and project objectives is a critical part of the early stages of a project which involves brief development. Firms involved in design stages achieve sustainability through an explicit understanding of non economic factors. Non-economic factors have been identified as cultural, social and intellectual capital which ultimately underpin financial capital. This paper explores how exporting firms invest, accumulate and exchange 'softer' capital to achieve sustainability. The preliminary results of an architectural design firm case study are presented. The findings indicate that project and process performance can be improved through various strategies. Project performance can be enhanced through accumulation of social and cultural capital to develop intellectual capital and process performance can be increased through accumulation of cultural in exchange for social capital.