Business strategies for architectural firms: type versus capabilities

There is now no shortage of strategic management advice on offer to architectural firms, from either consultants or books -although one may have to search for it. Much of this advice is based on typologies of architectural firms. This allows the consultant or the reader to assign a firm to one or another type, and read off the strategic recommendation. The simplicity and decisiveness of these typologies gives them a certain authority. In this article we argue that the typology of architectural firms is unfounded, lacking convincing empirical evidence and sufficient complexity to reflect the actual nature of architectural firms and the markets they operate in. Specifically, while most strategy literature is written as if there are relatively few sellers and many buyers, architects must compete among many sellers for work from comparatively few buyers. Drawing on the language of the resource based view of strategic management (RBV), we offer an alternative account of strategy options for architectural firms based on understanding the market in terms of demand, competition and segmentation, and the firm in terms of values, capabilities, differentiation, and branding. We suggest that the typological systems do not allow for sufficient differentiation, and that architectural firms must strive to present themselves as having identifiable differences in capabilities from their many competitors. RBV also allows a architects to specifically address issues such as market segmentation, diversification and specialisation.