A scientometric analysis and review of construction labour productivity research

Abstract

PurposeLabour productivity in construction has fallen behind other industries in most of the world and has declined continuously for decades. Although several scholarly research projects have been conducted to salvage the prevalent low labour productivity in construction, contractors in the construction industry have continued to grapple with the devastating impact of low productivity. The purpose of this study is to determine key areas of focus necessary to promote productivity growth in construction.Design/methodology/approachBibliometric and scientometric assessments were conducted to map the existing construction labour productivity (CLP) studies and establish key focus areas in the research domain. The keywords “Construction Productivity” OR “Construction Labour Productivity” OR “Construction Labor Productivity” OR “Construction Worker Productivity”.FindingsEmerging trends in the CLP research field are reported. The study also determined the most productive authors and collaboration among authors, most productive journals, most active regions and publications with the highest impact in CLP research.Research limitations/implicationsDocuments published in the Scopus database were considered for analysis because of the wider coverage of the database. Journal and conference articles written in English language represent the inclusion criteria, while articles in press, review, book chapters, editorial, erratum, note, short survey and data paper were excluded from analysis. The study is also limited to documents published from 2012 to 2021.Practical implicationsThe study brought to the awareness of the industry practitioners and other construction stakeholders, the key knowledge areas that are critical to promoting productivity growth in construction.Originality/valueExcept bibliometric analysis, previous research studies have used different approaches to investigate productivity in construction. The study presented future research directions through the emerging knowledge areas identified in the study.

Applications of augmented reality for construction productivity improvement: a systematic review

“…Skill shortage has significantly affected the construction industry's decreased productivity (Adebowale and Agumba, 2021, 2022). AR can be useful in addressing this deficit by training construction professionals and educating construction undergraduate students.…”

“…This situation is detrimental to project success and stakeholder satisfaction (Muya et al, 2013). Disputes and litigations are becoming commonplace in the construction industry as a result of the dissatisfaction of project stakeholders resulting from poor productivity (Adebowale and Agumba, 2022).…”

“…Adebowale and Agumba (2022) identified emerging knowledge areas for academics in the research field based on a scientific mapping of the construction labour productivity literature. One of the knowledge areas the research established is innovations in construction.…”

Propuesta de modelo matemático de rendimiento de mano de obra en enlucidos de mampostería. Caso de estudio: ciudad de Cuenca

“…El concepto de rendimiento se puede definir como la capacidad de un individuo, equipo o sistema para alcanzar metas y objetivos utilizando los recursos disponibles, es decir, evalúa la eficacia y eficiencia en el desempeño de las tareas y el logro de los resultados deseados (Adebowale y Agumba, 2022). En el campo de la construcción, específicamente a lo concerniente al RMO, se puede definir como el volumen de trabajo o de producción que es capaz de producir un trabajador por unidad de tiempo en un periodo establecido, es decir, es la eficiencia con la que un trabajador es capaz de realizar una actividad durante su jornada laboral que puede ser medido como: cantidad de trabajo/unidad de tiempo, donde las unidades dependerán del tipo de actividad realizada y los periodos de tiempo que use la empresa (Sugiyanto et al, 2022).…”

Implementing New Supply Chain Management Practices to Improve Industrial Productivity Amid the Covid-19 Pandemic

“…The undoubted importance and decisive importance of supply chains for competitive productivity of industrial enterprises in a turbulent economy have caused considerable attention of the scientific community to the issues of improving efficiency, reliability, and sustainability of supply chains (Kalaitzi et al, 2021;Karmaker et al, 2021). In this case, labor productivity, according to modern researchers, is one of the key tenets of economic theory (Radło & Tomeczek, 2022), and, despite the fact that the research interest in the problems of increasing labor productivity has not diminished over the past decades, the problem has not lost its relevance (Adebowale & Agumba, 2022;Radło & Tomeczek, 2022). The importance of labor productivity for the real sector of the economy and sustained academic interest have led to a variety of approaches to the definition of labor productivity, but in this study, labor productivity is understood as an indicator of efficiency, showing the output per unit labor input (Yagi et al, 2022).…”