Editorial: informality and emergence in construction

Chan, Paul; Räisänen, Christine

doi:10.1080/01446190903361912

Cited by 26 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…As a result, construction research has been predominately focused on studying the formal and technical aspects of construction (Chan and Räisänen, 2009). However, construction management involves people and thus draws upon social science which involves understanding interactions between people as individuals and as groups.…”

Section: Research Approaches In Construction Managementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Change management in practice: an ethnographic study of changes to contract requirements on a hospital project

Shipton

Hughes

Tutt

2014

Construction Management and Economics

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Changes to client requirements are inevitable during construction. Industry discourse is concerned with minimizing and controlling changes. However, accounts of practices involved in making changes are rare. In response to calls for more research into working practices, an ethnographic study of a live hospital project was undertaken to explore how changes are made. A vignette of a meeting exploring the investigation of changes illustrates the issues. This represents an example from the ethnographic fieldwork, which produced many observations. There was a strong emphasis on using change management procedures contained within the contract to investigate changes, even when it was known that the change was not required. For the practitioners, this was a way of demonstrating best practice, transparent and accountable decision-making regarding changes. Hence, concerns for following procedures sometimes overshadowed considerations about whether or not a change was required to improve the functionality of the building. However, the procedures acted as boundary objects between the communities of practice involved on the project by coordinating the work of managing changes. Insights suggest how contract procedures facilitate and impede the making of changes, which can inform policy guidance and contract drafting.

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Section: Research Approaches In Construction Managementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Change management in practice: an ethnographic study of changes to contract requirements on a hospital project

Shipton

Hughes

Tutt

2014

Construction Management and Economics

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“…This collaborative research methodology is important to SaP approaches as it challenges the assumption that researchers should or can develop insights about rather than with research subjects, instead practitioners and researchers worked together to develop and reflect upon their practices as they emerge (cf. Chan and Räisänen, 2009;Ewenstein and Whyte, 2007;Van de Ven, 2007). This technique also enables greater awareness, though not alleviation, of (mis)translation and (mis)understanding between academiaindustry discourse, as described by Seidl (2007).…”

Section: Research Approach and Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

A ‘Strategy-as-Practice’ exploration of lean construction strategizing

Sage

Dainty

Brookes

2012

Building Research & Information

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A growing body of work emerging from the management and organizational studies literature is the 'Strategy-as-Practice' (SaP) perspective, which focuses on the ways in which strategy is enacted or 'done' within organizational settings. In this paper we use this perspective to examine the diffusion of lean construction. In recent years, lean construction has grown in prominence to become one of the primary performative improvement recipes for the sector.However, rather than lean providing a stable strategy around which more collaborative, intelligent and efficient project-based organizations develop, 3 this research reveals how it transforms during its journey with unintended consequences for organizations. Ethnographic study, informed by SaP, demonstrates how a lean strategy and its effects on organizational practice and culture cannot be understood separate from its material and embodied practices and its power effects. As well as contributing to the empirical examination of lean construction practice, this paper opens up new trajectories for research into strategizing within construction which are orthogonal to celebratory or critical positions and provides researchers with ways of exploring lived practices and spaces where strategizing takes place.

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“…Drawing more on French sociology as epitomized by thinkers such as Bourdieu, Foucault, and Latour, this perspective has become influential in project management research more generally (Hodgson and Cicmil, 2006) and has yielded some important contributions to construction management research. These include contributions that draw on Foucault such Clegg et al (2002) and Schweber (2013), and contributions that draw on actor-network theory and practice-based perspectives (Bresnen et al, 2005;Chan and Räisänen, 2009;Bresnen and Harty, 2010;Sage et al, 2011). Research on how identities are constructed at work (Brown and Phua, 2011;Phua, 2013) also has the potential for new insights in many areas, particularly ethics and trust, which would be relevant to the prudentially reasonable sensemaker model.…”

Section: Broader Perspectives From Organization Theorymentioning

confidence: 94%

Project organizing as a problem in information

Winch¹

2015

Construction Management and Economics

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One of the most influential perspectives in business and management has been the Carnegie School, represented by such luminaries as James March, Hebert Simon, Oliver Williamson and Zur Shapira. The perspective underpins much of contemporary organization theory and organizational economics. Yet there have only been limited attempts to apply it to the domain of construction economics and management. An important exception to this statement is the application of Williamson's transaction cost economics to the governance of inter-firm relations in construction, but the opportunity is presently being missed for a more thorough-going application. The aim, therefore, is to suggest what such an application might look like and why it might be useful in stimulating new lines of research enquiry. The principal tenets of the Carnegie School are examined, as well as the central role of uncertainty and bounded rationality in those tenets. The contributions to organization theory of the Carnegie School are drawn upon to conceptualize project organizing as a problem in information, and suggest a new perspective on the microfoundations for that theory.

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Editorial: informality and emergence in construction

Cited by 26 publications

References 19 publications

Change management in practice: an ethnographic study of changes to contract requirements on a hospital project

Change management in practice: an ethnographic study of changes to contract requirements on a hospital project

A ‘Strategy-as-Practice’ exploration of lean construction strategizing

Project organizing as a problem in information

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