Research on the Evolution of the Competition Culture of Highway Construction Companies Based on Text Mining

Abstract

The research on the evolution of the competition culture of highway construction enterprises aims to provide suggestions for highway construction enterprises to respond to the call of the Belt and Road Initiative and cope with overseas market competition in the new era. Based on the TF-IDF algorithm to extract the keywords of each enterprise culture, 291 enterprise culture texts were used as the analysis samples, and the evolution pattern of the competition culture of construction enterprises was explored. Relevant suggestions are made with the help of visualization and other technical means. It was found that: the competition culture of enterprises shows a trend from catering to the market to the internal construction of enterprises; the internal construction of enterprises is mainly reflected in talent competition, technological innovation and the optimization of management; the higher the level of competition, the more talent and technological innovation are valued; the development of competition culture is driven by the policy environment; and the focus of competition culture is affected by the maturity of the market.

1. Introduction

At the time of reform and opening up, the problem of insufficient road transportation capacity in China came to the fore. In order to meet the needs of economic and social development as well as transportation demand, the Ministry of Communications began to collect and research the experience of developed countries in solving traffic congestion on trunk highways and to research the main problems of traffic on major trunk highways in China. Immediately afterwards, a large number of state-owned enterprises began to transform and restructure, and new enterprises committed to highway construction. By the end of 2021, the total mileage of expressways reached 169,100 km, and the main national expressway network was basically completed, covering about 99% of cities with an urban population of 200,000 or more and prefecture-level administrative centers. On 19 September 2019, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council issued the “Outline for the Construction of a Strong Transportation Country”, pointing out that building a strong transportation country is a major strategic decision based on national conditions, focusing on the overall situation and facing the future. It was the first step for building a modernized economic system, an important support for building a strong socialist modernized country and a general approach for performing well in transportation in the new era [1]. With this background, the level of domestic transportation infrastructure has been rapidly improved.

With the continuous improvement of the domestic infrastructure, highway construction enterprises face the problem of how to approach the international market in this process. Responding to the national call to participate in the Belt and Road construction, it is of great significance for highway construction enterprises to develop the market and seek new development. The attitude of enterprises in the face of competition has a direct impact on whether they can adapt to the international market, so we need to research the competition culture awareness of construction enterprises under different corporate cultures and explore what kind of competition culture to build to enhance competitiveness.

China’s highway construction industry has a history of more than 40 years. The industry has recognized that different corporate cultural and business strategies, etc., have a greater impact on the development of enterprises, and the reactions and attitudes of practitioners are influenced and restricted by corporate culture (behavior patterns) [2]. Corporate culture and corporate systems regulate and guide the behavior of employees in terms of both hard and soft aspects [3]. Furthermore, Fang et al. found that corporate culture has a clear interactive role in sustainable corporate operations, and culture is further emphasized by multinational companies in the current international context of green sustainability [4]. Therefore, the construction of a competitive culture in a corporate culture has become an imperative for current corporate management and the transition to green sustainability. Based on the background of the Belt and Road and carbon neutrality and sustainability, how to build a suitable competitive culture around these themes and maintain strong competitiveness in the new competitive environment has become a management issue that cannot be avoided, which requires research on the evolution of the competition culture in China’s highway construction enterprises.

At present, text mining techniques are widely used in the research of information analysis and event causation directions. Zhang Shuai applied text mining technology to analyze the active type, active time and propagation law of virtual information under the new crown epidemic [5]. Xu Wei, He Shiwei et al., on the other hand, constructed a railroad accident causation network based on railroad accident investigation reports [6]. Gong Xinshu and Jin Mei analyzed the impact of the business environment and government support on the digital transformation of enterprises through text mining of their annual reports [7]. Based on the textual information of the competition culture of highway construction enterprises, this research applied text mining to process and analyze the samples and combined with visualization technology, to visualize the characteristics of the competition culture of highway construction enterprises to provide a reference for highway construction enterprises to enter overseas markets and determine their competition policies.

In the second section of this study, a literature review is conducted to summarize the impact of culture on various aspects of companies and deepen the theoretical significance of the study; in the third section, this study defines the concept of the key elements and introduces the research methodology and research process; in the fourth section, this study extracts the key words from the obtained data and visualizes and characterizes the obtained key words; in the fifth section, the obtained research results are discussed, and the characteristics of the evolution of competitive culture are proposed; in the sixth section, the conclusions are summarized, suggestions for the research questions are made, and the limitations of the study are described.

2. Literature Review

The rapid growth of China’s economy in the 40 years of reform and opening up has been accompanied by the birth, growth and decay of a large number of enterprises. The huge number of business organizations and individual entrepreneurs, who are facing organizational management problems in the rapidly changing and fiercely competitive market environment, carried out management practice activities and provided the conditions for the development of management in China [8]. The goal of management, however, is to obtain higher economic efficiency under the conditions of resources and backgrounds, the means of which requires not only the improvement of the system but also the indispensable construction of the ideological level. Therefore, with the growth of a team of highway construction enterprises, the industry has gradually formed a characteristic corporate culture and the concept of market competition.

With the proposal of building cultural soft power, a large number of scholars have carried out research on the role of culture in enterprise operations, market competition and economic efficiency and have now obtained rich research results.

2.1. Culture and Corporate Image Building

In the process of corporate competition, building a good corporate image helps to build a friendly relationship with customers and grasp the first opportunity in a competitive market. Peng Wan found that corporate integrity culture has a strong positive impact on corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance by analyzing information about Chinese companies, and an integrity-oriented corporate culture helps companies to take the initiative to undertake CSR [9].

2.2. Culture and Corporate Competitiveness

Corporate competitiveness is reflected in the level of technology, team strength, economic efficiency and operational stability, while whether a culture can have an impact on corporate competitiveness has become a widely studied issue. In the information age, the role of competition culture is further amplified, and what kind of culture to build to enhance innovation strength is an active exploration for current enterprises. From the perspective of Internet development, Locke Swisshuan found that Internet development significantly contributed to the improvement of innovation performance in prefecture-level cities, mainly through the channels and mechanisms of talent exchange, research and development spillover and transaction cost reduction [10]. Prem Prasad Silwal conducted a survey and analysis of firms in Nepal and found that corporate culture had a significant impact and that corporate innovation and uncertainty avoidance have a strong direct impact on corporate financial performance, while market culture has an indirect impact on corporate financial performance [11].

2.3. Culture and Innovation Performance

Yaopeng Wang, Hisham Farag and Wasim Ahmad examined the relationship between corporate culture and corporate innovation and found that cultural differences have a significant impact on firm-level innovation and that a strong creative culture is more likely to stimulate innovation for firms in more competitive product markets and those receiving higher management professional attention [12]. Wang Wei and Li Lulu, starting from the perspective of corporate culture strength, found that corporate culture strength has a positive impact on merger and acquisition innovation performance and potential and realistic absorptive capacity [13]. Mengying Li and Xiu’e Zhang concluded that managers of start-up firms should improve the performance level of their firms by establishing a learning organization, increasing innovation intensity and enhancing the learning of heterogeneous domain knowledge through research of the effect of learning orientation on innovation performance [14].

2.4. Culture and Competition Performance in Times of Force Majeure

Kai Li found, by researching the role of corporate culture on firms during the new crown epidemic, that firms with a strong corporate culture performed better and were more likely to support their communities, embrace digital transformation, develop new products, cut costs and have higher employee sales, return on assets and profitability [15]. Wang Ping and Tang Kaikang studied the role of corporate culture in crisis management based on the case of the Lehman Brothers and found that a positive corporate culture has a positive role in corporate crisis management and can lead to social responsibility after a crisis, while an imbalance in corporate culture has a negative role [16].

2.5. Culture and Talent Competition

In today’s environment where knowledge management and information technology are popular, talent competition has become another focus of corporate competition. Menaga. A conducted empirical research in India and found that the implementation of appropriate CSR activities can increase the attractiveness of a company to its employees [17]. Fu Long explored the integration of ideological and political education work with the construction of corporate culture and concluded that strengthening the integration of corporate culture construction and ideological and political education work can improve the comprehensive strength of enterprises in the market competition while providing a healthier working environment for the growth of employees [18].

In summary, corporate culture has a significant impact on all aspects of corporate competition, with competition focusing on image building, corporate competitiveness and talent. Therefore, exploring the characteristics and evolutionary rules of competition culture can help highway construction enterprises to adapt to overseas markets and develop competition policies.

3. Methods

The first highway in China was built in 1988, but the origin of highway construction enterprises goes back to 1949. Due to the background of China’s pre-1978 era, the competitive environment and competitive consciousness of the original enterprises engaged in highway construction were not mature, and their competitive concepts and culture reflected the early form of the competitive culture of the highway construction industry, which set the tone for the competitive style of highway construction enterprises. Since then, the highway industry market has gradually matured, and the competitive culture built by enterprises established at different times during this period is bound to be influenced by the industry environment at the time of its establishment.

China’s corporate culture was widely promoted after the “Scientific Outlook on Development” was proposed, but before that, companies also had individualized competitive cultures. In addition, there were various forms of competitive culture, and most of them were formed in the process of development. The formation of competitive culture is influenced by the competitive environment at that time.

Therefore, this paper is based on the assumption that the time of establishment of a highway construction company is the point in time when its competitive culture is formed.

As the collected cultural information is mainly expressed in the form of text, in order to quantitatively present the cultural information, this study uses text mining technology to extract the keywords in the text in batches and obtain data information such as the frequency of keywords and the colinear situation after standardizing the keywords. After combining the information of the time point of establishment of the enterprise, the distribution of keywords and data information can be concisely presented to facilitate the analysis of evolutionary features, so the primary consideration in choosing the research method is how to present the data. Therefore, this study applies visualization technology based on the JAVA environment to present the extracted keywords from multiple perspectives.

3.1. Research Methodology

3.1.1. Competition Culture

Competition culture is, in other words, a consensus and atmosphere formed by the whole society to maintain the competition mechanism and respect competition rules. From the perspective of enterprises, competition culture is an intuitive mapping of their attitudes toward market competition, which laterally reflects their competitiveness.

In this research, the keywords reflecting competition culture are divided into competition policy and competition concept to discuss the characteristics of competition culture.

3.1.2. Competition Policy

The competition approach refers to the macro strategies adopted by enterprises to cope with market competition, and there are mainly two kinds of corporate image shaping and internal corporate environment creation. The corporate image in the industry constitutes the overall image characteristics of the industry, while the corporate image is also constrained and influenced by the industry image. In addition, the multiparticipant co-operation mode of highway construction and the characteristics of large construction investment lead to corporate image and reputation as a prerequisite for competitiveness. In addition to the competition culture presented outside of the company, a healthy and stable internal environment can ensure the full potential of competitiveness. The above elements constitute the competition policy of the company at the cultural level.

3.1.3. Competition Concept

The competition concept refers to the ideology of highway construction enterprises in response to market competition. According to the different subjects and objects of the concept, it can be divided into the market competition concept and the internal competition concept of the enterprise. The market competition concept mainly reflects the attitude of the enterprise in the face of market competition and the concept it upholds, which is a reflection of the external image of the enterprise. The internal competition concept refers to the internal staff competition and internal optimization of the cultural requirements of the enterprise, which is the embodiment of the internal environment of the enterprise.

3.2. Sample Description

This research collected information on 450 highway construction companies, which were located in various regions of China and had different business focuses. Among all the samples, 291 enterprises had clear cultural information (including cultural information on their official websites, slogans, posters and corporate profiles), and the rest had information that could not be verified. All information was obtained from the official websites of each enterprise to ensure the reliability of the corporate culture information. The corporate culture information collected in this research was sourced from the cultural information, slogans, posters and corporate profiles on the official websites of the enterprises, which showed good comprehensiveness. In addition, this research used the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System as the data source of enterprise establishment time, and the data showed high credibility [19].

The research was based on the TF-IDE algorithm to extract keywords from the cultural texts of 291 companies. Due to the limitations of the algorithm, the extracted keywords were meaningless, repetitive in expression or vague in expression, so the extracted keywords were manually deleted and merged to ensure that the extracted keywords were accurate and meaningful.

After the data and text processing screening was completed, the keywords were classified based on the target object, nature, role and other attributes of each keyword to facilitate the discussion in the analysis phase.

3.3. Research Methods

The TF-IDE algorithm was applied to pre-process the collected text, extract the keywords of each enterprise culture and classify them.

Based on the JAVA environment to visualize the competitive culture keywords from 1949 to 2018 combined with the time factor, we analyzed the evolution of competitive culture, summarized the development process and law of the competitive culture of highway construction enterprises and put forward suggestions and countermeasures regarding building a competitive culture within the current industry environment. The research logic process is shown in Figure 1.

4. Data Analysis

In this research, a TF-IDE algorithm was used to extract keywords from the culture text by splitting and removing keywords using a Jieba toolkit. First, the extracted keywords were guaranteed to have practical meaning, and second, they were screened to avoid synonyms with only subtle differences, such as “defying hardships” and “hardships”. The extracted keywords were stored in the company as a unit.

4.1. Keyword Co-Occurrence Analysis

Based on the keyword extraction, this research used the JAVA environment to perform co-occurrence analysis of the cultural keywords.

A total of 354 available keywords were extracted in this research, and the keywords were manually classified. The results are shown in

Table 1. Classification of corporate culture keywords.

Category		Keywords
Competition policy	Image building	People-oriented, brave and dangerous, climbing to the peak, capable of conquering and fighting, high aspirations, tolerant, follow the customs, and light with the dust, outstanding, never say no to defeat, not to humiliate the mission, serve the motherland, strive for excellence, not afraid of hardship, selfless dedication, hard work, for the benefit of mankind, ready to go, resilient, thundering, full of passion, social responsibility, virtuous, rapids, forward, serve the country, political and human harmony, common prosperity
	Internal construction	Dare to be the first, dedication, silent, honor and shame together, indifferent to fame and fortune, unrelenting, respect for talent, employ people without doubt, go all out, hard work, selflessness, loyalty, hard work, dedication, noble sentiment, true talent must be used, only talent is the best, virtue first, self-improvement, heavy burden, family, family unity, family and all things prosper, family culture, care for the small family, build everyone, do things with heart, do not do wrong, dare to think and do
Competition concept	Market competition	Superiority, sincere co-operation, credibility, scientific management, quality improvement, environmental protection, fair competition, human capital, resource conservation, sincere solidarity, high-quality engineering, industry-oriented, careful construction, innovation, economic prosperity, energy saving, green engineering, technical content, civilized city, urban traffic, management system, rules and regulations, steady progress, boldness, mission, bridge, pavement, contract, comprehensive improvement, strategic objectives, livable city, engineering quality, legal operation
	Intra-firm competition	Strict management, hard work, moral concepts, learning to apply, work efficiency, efforts to achieve, moral and talented, strict discipline, adhere to the post, clear provisions, according to the rules, code of conduct, quality service, ethics

. As seen in Table 1, the four types of keywords were evenly distributed, and there were only relatively few keywords for intra-firm competition. Overall, the other three types of competitive culture keywords were more comprehensive and complete, but there were more near-sense words. Subsequently, this research counted the frequency of the co-occurrence of each keyword, and the top 20 keywords in frequency are listed in

Table 2. Count of co-occurrence of corporate culture keywords (partial).

Count	Centrality	Appearance Time	Keywords
49	0.42	1952	People-oriented
22	0.13	1989	Climbing to the peak
21	0.04	1989	Undaunted by hardship and danger
16	0.18	1987	Quality project
16	0.21	1985	Scientific management
10	0.13	1988	Excellence
9	0.06	1988	Dedication to work
8	0.04	1990	Integrity-based
8	0.15	1974	Virtue and talent
7	0.11	1981	Make the best use of people’s talents
7	0.01	1952	Truthfulness and pragmatism
7	0	2001	Builders without borders
6	0.02	1949	Careful construction
6	0.04	1999	Respect for talents
5	0.04	1990	Keeping up with the times
5	0.06	1952	Innovation
5	0.02	1993	Create first-class
5	0	1978	Competitiveness
5	0.05	1990	Hard work
4	0.03	1987	Credibility first

. From the data in Table 2, it can be seen that “people-oriented”, “climbing to the peak” and “Undaunted by hardship and danger” were the three keywords with the highest co-occurrence frequency, among which “people-oriented” was the intermediary center of the research. “People-oriented” had the strongest intermediary centrality, which indicates that the term is widely recognized, and enterprises are more inclined to build a competitive culture based on it. In addition, scientific management, technology and quality engineering are also widely regarded in the industry.

Furthermore, this research, combined with the co-occurrence statistics of the corporate culture keywords, found that the term “people-oriented” appeared in the early stages of the industry in China and was also mentioned in the highway construction enterprises that entered the industry at different times. It shows that the core of public enterprises in the planned economy is service, which reflects a strong sense of social responsibility and that a friendly corporate image enhanced the survival of enterprises in the pre-reform and opening-up era.

4.2. Analysis of Keyword Time Bursts

This research visualizes the keywords that emerged clearly on the timeline based on the JAVA environment. As shown in Figure 2, the thick line represents the time period when the keyword bursts out, indicating that the keyword was generally recognized by the enterprises established at that stage; the thin line is the time period when the keyword appeared but does not enter the burst, thus reflecting the competitive concept and approach that the enterprises established at that time in the industry tended to adopt.

Furthermore, this research constructs a co-occurrence network for keywords based on the JAVA environment in the timeline. The line in Figure 3 indicates the simultaneous occurrence of two words in the competitive culture of a company. The source and evolution trend of the competitive culture can be traced through the line, and the time span of the keyword activity can be visualized by combining the distribution of keywords on the timeline. As shown in Figure 3, most of the keywords appeared between 1978 and 2010, when a large number of highway construction companies were involved in the exploration and construction of highways.

Combined with the emergence of keywords under time parameters, “competitiveness” is the longest active keyword, which is closely related to the development of the market economy from 1978 to 1993, indicating that highway construction enterprises formally entered the era of market economy competition. In addition, “high-quality projects”, “dedication to work” and “diversification” are all more than 2, reflecting that the focus on competition of the highway construction enterprises in the 1990s was no longer limited to external market competition but gradually extended to talent, project quality and internal construction. Among them, the corporate culture of the China Communications Construction Group is “builders without borders”, which has exploded in the 21st century, reflecting the growth in scale of the China Communications Construction Group. As the most representative state-owned enterprise in China’s highway construction industry, its development trend fully demonstrates that the industry market is rapidly growing.

After 1978, the country began to focus on solving the problem of insufficient highway capacity, and a large number of enterprises entered the highway construction field. The ever-intense competitive environment prompted the rapid development of a competitive culture, and what kind of competition should be formed and how to deal with it became a collective problem faced by the industry after 1978. At the same time, the exchange and collision of competition concepts between state-owned enterprises and emerging enterprises, after restructuring and entering the market, prompted the emergence of a large number of competition culture keywords after 1978 and frequent coexistence with old culture keywords. Meanwhile, highway construction has had an improving effect on the exports of Chinese companies [20], and highway construction has received positive feedback from other industry markets.

After 2000, the construction of highways has narrowed the gap between urban and rural areas [21], and socio-economic improvements have led to a shift in the development of competitive points. The competitive culture keywords rapidly decreased, and the active keywords were mainly “unity”, “dare to be the first”, “respect for talents” and “dedication”. Among them, “Dare to be the first” and “Respect for talents” point to the competition of talents in enterprises, while “Unity” and “Dedication” are not only the requirements of internal talents but also the concept of enterprises in response to external competition, indicating that the competition in the highway construction industry has deepened from the market level to the level of the internal construction of enterprises.

4.3. Analysis of Competition Culture by Stage

The visual presentation of Figure 4 reveals that there were fewer active cultural keywords for enterprises established between 1949 and 1978, which are all predecessors of the current state-owned enterprises. The key words such as “people-oriented”, “seeking survival” and “courageous innovation” reflect the importance of public enterprises to grassroots employees and present the simple demand for the survival and progress of enterprises.

In 1978, there was a turning point in the culture of competition, and the term “competitiveness” began to appear in the companies established during this period. In addition, the content of the competition culture of enterprises established after 2000 became less updated, and the common line of competition culture gradually stabilized. Therefore, this study divides the development history of highway construction enterprises into three stages: 1949~1978, the pre-market economy period; 1978~2000, the market economy exploration period; and 2000~, the competition culture maturity period.

4.3.1. Before the Market Economy Period

Before 1978, China’s economic form transitioned from a new democratic economy to a planned economy. The lack of market regulation in the industry in the form of planned economy led to the inability of publicly owned enterprises to develop direct competition among enterprises from 1949 to 1978.

Based on this, this research does not separately discuss the competition culture in this phase.

4.3.2. Exploration Period of Market Economy

This study further analyzes the competitive culture of companies established between 1978 and 2000. During this period, the 54th executive meeting of the State Council approved the increase in the road maintenance fee levy, the introduction of vehicle purchase surcharges and allowed “loans to build roads and tolls to repay loans”, which led to the formation of a stable construction model for highways and prompted more enterprises to join the highway construction market. From Figure 5, it can be seen that the enterprises established after 1978 gradually started to compete for “quality” on the basis of “service” in the planned economy, and the key words of the enterprises established after 1985 are “institutionalization”, “climbing to the top” and “professionalism”. These keywords reflect the awareness of self-improvement of enterprises as the competition culture gradually penetrated into the enterprises, and the quality of enterprise management began to receive attention.

According to Figure 6, the active keywords during this period are concentrated in the enterprises established within two to three years, and the active keywords were quickly updated. Moreover, before 1993, the active themes of competitive culture were mainly external image shaping and enhancing enterprise competitiveness. After 1993, the competition of internal soft culture construction gradually appeared in the industry, and the industry gradually recognized the positive role of encouraging innovation and talent cultivation in competition.

4.3.3. Competition Culture Maturity Period

To further analyze the pattern of competitive culture after 2000, this study intercepts the co-occurrence of cultural keywords of enterprises established from 2000 to 2018, as shown in Figure 7. Enterprises established from 2000 to 2010 have a richer active competitive culture than in the 1990s, and enterprises established after 2010 have gradually concentrated their cultural keyword categories. After 2016, the number of established companies decreased, and the competitive culture of companies has tended to be perfected, indicating that the market of the industry under this stage has gradually become solid and that the mature companies in the industry and the new entrants to the market have reached a broad consensus on the content of the competitive culture.

In addition, Figure 8 shows that “people-oriented” is no longer active and is replaced by “making the best use of talents”, “fair competition”, “sincere solidarity” and “hard work”. It can be seen that the competition culture of the highway construction enterprises established in this time period has formed a combination of market competition and internal competition, and the activity of the word “fair competition” indicates that the industry competition is gradually standardized. The active time of keywords in this period is longer than that of enterprises established before 2000, which indicates that new enterprises entering the market also recognize the existing competition culture, and the competition culture of the industry is gradually stabilizing, with “innovation” and “talent” as the core themes.

5. Discussion

Based on the results of text mining, the evolution of the competitive culture of highway construction enterprises is mainly presented in three stages:

(1)

The competitive culture keywords of enterprises established before 1978 were slowly updated, the number of enterprises established in this period was small, and the keywords stayed on “people-oriented” and “innovation”, showing the characteristics of “service”;

(2)

The content of the competition culture of enterprises established from 1978 to 2000 was greatly enriched, and the key words frequently coexisted. The policy of opening up the industry and the initial formation of the market were important driving forces for the formation of this phenomenon, and the competition culture was explored in this stage.

(3)

After 2000, the state gradually standardized the highway construction field. The industry competition consciousness and market competition rules tended to mature. The competition environment continues to be standardized; at the same time, the solid market environment led to a decrease in the number of new enterprises; “innovation” and “talent” have become the keywords of the competitive culture.

Furthermore, this study explored the industry environment and context at the time of milestone changes in the competitive culture of the industry. As shown in

Table 3. Policy context at the point in time of competition culture change.

Year	Background	Events of the Same Year
1978	Reform and opening up	A surge in the number of companies entering the industry
1988	Tenth anniversary of reform and opening up; the State Council issued the notice on the further expansion of the scope of the Coastal Economic Open Zone, deciding to include 140 cities and counties in the new coastal open zone, including Hangzhou, Nanjing and Shenyang, three provincial capitals; the opening of the Hujia Expressway; the opening of the north and south sections of the Shenyang to Anshan and Dalian Houyan to Sanshibao Expressway	Awareness of market competition emerges
2000	Proposal of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on the formulation of the tenth five-year plan for national economic and social development; Beijing–Shanghai Expressway completely opened	Market competition goes through the roof
2010	Proposal on the formulation of the twelfth five-year plan for national economic and social development	The industry is gradually solidifying, and the point of competition is shifting

, whenever the industry policy context changed, the competitive culture of the companies entering the industry at that time significantly changed compared with the previous time, and based on this, this study concluded that the policy environment has an intuitive influence on the competitive culture of the industry. The evolution process of the competitive culture of highway construction companies is shown in Figure 9.

As can be seen from Figure 3, corporate image construction and careful construction are competitive themes that exist in the whole process of highway construction development: the former belongs to the commonality of enterprise competition, while the latter reflects the characteristics of the construction class enterprises to discuss the merits of results. New competitive culture keywords gradually decreased after 2000. The reasons for this phenomenon are: (1) a stable competitive environment in the industry and a lack of motivation for innovation in the competitive culture; (2) market consolidation and the industry access threshold is raised; and (3) the level of industry specialization is raised, and the cost of new companies entering the market is increased, making it difficult to match the market competition. Furthermore, Li Hui, Wu Xiaoyun and Yuan Lei found that the external environment of firms has an important influence on the formulation of strategies [22]. Based on this, we can conclude that the maturity of the market (external environment) affects the entry of new firms into the industry, which, in turn, has an impact on the competitive environment as well as the innovation of the competitive culture.

For firms established between 1978 and 2000, the competitive culture that tended to be adopted was “institutionalization”, “climbing to the peak”, and “dedication”, and the main direction of corporate competition was to optimize corporate management capabilities and innovate technological levels to enhance competitiveness, with a general keyword outbreak length of 2 to 3. The number of firms established after 2000 decreased, the competitive culture changes decreased, and the active duration of cultural keywords was extended. It further proves that the industry has reached a consensus on the current competition culture, and the competition pattern and norms have gradually stabilized. From the timeline view after 2000 (Figure 7), it can be seen that enterprises entering the market in this time period paid more and more attention to the competition of talents, indicating that knowledge and innovation had shown their value in market competition, and talents and innovation had become the development direction of market competition at this stage. Marinovic Ivan and Povel Paul also found that a degree of competition for talent can improve the performance of a company [23]. Therefore, it is not difficult to understand that the improvement of corporate performance has further stimulated highway construction companies to change their concept of talent and talent competition strategy.

To sum up, the main characteristics of the competitive culture of highway construction enterprises are: (1) driven by the policy environment; (2) the degree of market maturity affects the focus of competitive culture; and (3) the higher the level of competition, the more talent and technological innovation are valued.

6. Conclusions and Limitations

6.1. Conclusions

In terms of theory, this study summarizes the evolution pattern and characteristics of the competitive culture of highway construction enterprises and analyzes its formation process; in terms of practice, this study provides suggestions for highway construction enterprises to improve their market competitiveness and develop overseas markets from the perspective of culture construction at the enterprise management level.

• In the transportation infrastructure industry, carbon peaking and carbon neutrality have become new international topics, and how to balance the relationship between carbon peaking and carbon neutrality with economic effect and engineering construction quality will become a new competitive focus. “Green”, “energy saving and emission reduction”, “low carbon” and other key words will undoubtedly become the mainstream of the next competitive culture and in the process of improving the carbon market, the overseas market requirements for enterprises. Sustainable operation will become an important competition point for highway construction enterprises in the Belt and Road construction.
• In the context of energy saving and emission reduction, overseas markets are gradually paying more attention to whether foreign enterprises implement green and sustainable operations. It is foreseeable that, with the gradual improvement of transportation infrastructure construction, more and more countries will tighten their energy-saving and emission reduction policies. Therefore, enterprises actively participating in overseas construction should gradually establish a “sustainable” corporate image overseas according to the construction level and policy trend of the target countries and perform well with regards to policy risk prevention in advance.
• After clarifying the sustainable policy environment in overseas markets, we need to first investigate the economic policy background of the relevant countries and the social responsibility of the industry to assess the competitive market situation in the target countries. If the country emphasizes capital operation, it needs to establish an aggressive competition culture and obtain wider co-operation opportunities with economic benefits; if the country emphasizes humanistic care and democracy, it needs to establish a relatively mild competition culture, build a good corporate image, emphasize social responsibility and make preparations for long-term co-operation.
• Based on the understanding of the market size, project construction level and the number and scale of emerging enterprises of the relevant countries, companies need to make targeted business deployment of technology and talent and establish a competitive culture based on a clear strategy. For countries with large market scale, a high project construction level and a small number of emerging enterprises, where their industry has a high threshold, and large-scale project co-operation is the mainstream trend, innovative technology and talent accumulation are needed to open the market. A competitive culture emphasizing innovation, talent absorption and win-win co-operation will be the focus. For countries with a small market scale and where the industry, as a whole, is still in the development stage, the mature operation model and technology become important competitive advantages, and the competitive culture should focus on market development, engineering quality and highlight the corporate vision.

6.2. Limitations

The construction of the competitive culture of highway construction enterprises is dynamically adjusted with the changes in the industry, and the established era environment has different degrees of influence on the formation of the competitive culture of enterprises, so it is difficult to quantify these factors.

In addition, the manifestation of culture is not limited to the description of text, but the activities carried out by the enterprise, the projects constructed and the composition of enterprise management. The rules and regulations of the enterprise can reflect the direction of the construction of the competitive culture of the enterprise to a certain extent, and how to collect and extract this part is a problem that needs further research.