Stakes and struggles in liminal spaces: construction practitioners interacting with management-consultants

Abstract

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Expensive or expansive? Learning the value of boundary crossing in design projects

“…This study contributes to the expansion of project-based organization research towards social, cultural and managerial boundaries (Chinowsky, 2011;Pemsel and Widén, 2011;Askland et al, 2013;Räisänen and Löwstedt, 2014), in particular, with a theory of boundaries based on activity differentiation. According to this theory, boundaries emerge between activities when the differences in their structure (subject, object, instrument, rules, community and division of labour) activate the contradiction between exchange value and use value.…”

“…If it is possible to extend the analogy between project-based organizations and games to the present study, boundary crossing requires more than to understand the spoken and unspoken 'rules of the game' (Askland et al, 2013, p. 120;Räisänen and Löwstedt, 2014, p. 4). In fact, boundaries are liminal spaces where the institutionalized rules of each activity are suspended and new rules can be created (Räisänen and Löwstedt, 2014). This can be exemplified by the negotiated free of charge inspection in group A, which worked against the contractor's interest.…”

The building or enactment of expertise in context: what the performative turn in the social sciences may add to expertise research in construction management

“…Generally, these studies provide little insight into people, teams or organizations may reach the normative ideals (Short, 2012, Schwartz-Shea andYanow, 2013). In contrast, performative studies tend to be embedded in interpretive research designs that seek to understand complex problems in their situated contexts from the bottom up (Räisänen and Lö wstedt, 2014). The latter means that researchers emerge themselves in the actual practices they are interested in -e.g.…”

Understanding operations strategizing in project-based organisations: middle managers’ interaction and strategy praxis

“…Our research focus and contribution: on middle managers is thus motivated by both their recognized significance middle managers in strategic implementation (Balogun and Johnson 2004, Rouleau and Balogun, 2010, Mantere, 2008Floyd and Wooldridge 1994) as well as the importance of middle managers as agents of control within project-based organisations, not least construction (Styhre and Josephson 2006). Our purpose here, and key contribution, is to thus develop a SaP informed analysis of how middle managers mediate operations strategies, such as Lean, across project-based organisations, extending and focusing previous studies on more general business strategy at contractors (Betts and Ofori 1992, Cheah and Chew 2005, Cheah and Garvin 2002, Junnonen 1998, Kao et al 2009,Löwstedt and Räisänen 2014. Moreover, by focussing on the praxis of middle managers as mediators of strategy our analysis develops extant research on strategizing in project-based organisation such as construction, where despite some calls (e.g.…”

“…Cheah et al, 2007;Russell et al 2014;Stewart and Spencer, 2006) rather than the doing of strategy. This focus on doing strategy posits our contribution in prolongation of that provided by Räisänen & Löwstedt (2014) and Sage et al (2012). This perspective is important, not least because 'preparing practitioners better for entry into strategy praxis should help middle managers and others contribute more effectively to their organizations' strategizing' (Whittington, 2006: 627).…”