There has been a frequent misconception in analyses of construction sectors of the national economy: the tendency to describe these activities as 'an industry' or a small and stable set of 'industries'. This has led to confusion. Construction was inappropriately assimilated to various forms of manufacturing industry. Characteristics of the construction process were treated as 'problems', to whose solution substantial energies were unnecessarily diverted. There has been muddle about the extent to which macro-level planning is appropriate, notably on R&D strategies and innovation for improved industrial efficiency. Construction projects increasingly use unfamiliar technological bases, comparable to 'technology fusion' in other sectors. A more fruitful emphasis may be to regard construction as organized as agglomerations of projects -rather than as a discrete industry or a fixed constellation of firms. The idea of the 'demand chain' is introduced. The paper concludes that a 'technological paradigm' should replace the 'industry paradigm' and that an enduring question remains to explore what is meant by construction 'capacity'.
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About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation.Abstract Decision making and the nature of decisions themselves are changing with the introduction of new information technology (IT)-based systems in the construction industry. The use of IT systems relates to and can induce changes in business processes within firms as well as interorganizational project processes between firms. In the USA, some of the world's largest hardware and software producers are developing new generations of systems. The market for such systems is potentially large, and these vendors work in close proximity to powerful engineering and construction organizations as well as leading research establishments. It is likely that some of these systems will become de facto standards. For this and other reasons of industrial competitiveness, developments in US IT decision support systems are of interest to
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