ABSTRACT
The world’s population is increasing rapidly. It has grown from 2.5 billion in 1950 to 6.5 billion in 2007, and it is expected to keep growing for several decades (Bongaarts and Sinding, 2009). This growth, coupled with expansion in global economic activity and falling trade barriers, has led to massive increases in construction demand around the world, and encouraged the construction firms to expand internationally in order to meet the demand for infrastructure projects worldwide (Javernick-Will and Scott, 2010). Moreover, it is estimated that developing countries will spend US$22 trillion on infrastructure in the next ten years. Some firms have taken up these opportunities, and have had significantly increasing revenues. For instance, the revenues of the top 225 international contractors from projects outside their home countries increased by 18.5 percent between 2005 and 2006 (Javernick-Will and Scott, 2010).
