Research on industrialized construction (IC) has predominantly focused on either the manufacturer’s role at the system or component level, emphasizing off-site production technologies, or, when addressing the building level, on vertically integrated industrialized construction firms (ICFs) that fully control design, manufacturing, and assembly. This emphasis has generated valuable insights into integration and modularization but has left limited understanding of how conventional construction firms (CCFs)—developers and general contractors operating in decentralized production networks—adopt IC within their existing technical systems. This study aims to characterize the technical strategies through which CCFs adopt IC and to identify empirical configurations of IC adoption across different national contexts. Using an abductive multiphase research design, a characterization framework was developed and empirically validated through application to 29 firms in Chile, Spain, and the UK. Principal component analysis and k-means clustering revealed six distinct technical configurations representing alternative strategies of IC adoption. These configurations demonstrate that IC in CCFs is not linear but can emerge through diverse combinations of six analytical dimensions: impact on the main production line, systematicity and sourcing structure, design coordination, extent of adoption, level of predefinition, and the relationship between design predefinition and supply chain transfer. The study makes three contributions to the body of knowledge: (1) conceptually, it reframes IC adoption as a set of configurational production strategies, challenging linear models of industrialization; (2) analytically, it provides a replicable framework and typology for comparative research; and (3) practically, it offers a diagnostic tool enabling firms and policymakers to identify viable pathways toward adoption within decentralized production networks.
Vásquez-Hernandez et al. (Mon,) studied this question.