Abstract
Saudi Arabia is soon to join the 148-Members organization, the World Trade Organization (WTO). The WTO agreements encompass the rules of trade in goods, services, and intellectual properties in chorus under one blanket agreement. Furthermore, in the WTO era, the Saudi construction firms will have to operate within the GATS Framework of Liberalization (GFOL). This thesis identifies and describes the twenty-two relevant features of the GFOL to assess the potential environmental changes for the Saudi construction firms. Besides, this study looks at the current status of the large Saudi construction firms in terms of the twenty-six strategic perspectives in order to assess the contemporary areas of strengths and weaknesses that need to be addressed. This is achieved through analysis of data obtained from questionnaire surveys of imminent construction professionals in the Saudi construction industry. This study shows that innovation in services, global operations, R&D activities, strategic planning, training/retraining activities, joint ventures, IT utilization, and information systems and knowledge acquisitions in the Saudi construction firms are low and constitute major weaknesses. Finally, the results of the survey are utilized further to identify the suitable generic strategies for the Saudi construction firms.
