Individual Learning in Construction Projects: Professions and their Approaches

New materials, use of sophisticatedtechnologies and increased customerdemands, in combination with growingcompetition among construction companies,have led to a high degree of specialization. Forsuccessful integration of the differentprofessional specialists, there is a need forshared learning between project co-workers.Based on twenty eight interviews in sixdifferent Swedish construction projects, thispaper illustrates strategies for individual andshared learning, among different actors andacross various organizational boundaries. Theresults indicate that personal networks are themost common source of learning for allprofessions. While clients, architects, anddesigners also engage in reading andattending courses, site managers and workersare less engaged in these activities.Experimenting and organizing for learningappear to be underutilized strategies by allprofessions. This leads to the conclusion thatattempts to increase learning have to addressthe differences in learning behaviors of thevarious groups. Further, focus onexperimenting and organizing for learning is apossibility to change the learning behaviorfrom learning as a consequence of problemsto learning for future improvement

Individual Learning in Construction Projects: Professions and their Approaches

New materials, use of sophisticated technologies and increased customer demands, in combination with growing competition among construction companies, have led to a high organizational boundaries. The results indicate that personal networks are the most common source of learning for all professions. While clients, architects, and designers also engage in reading and attending courses, site managers and workers are less engaged in these activities. Experimenting and organizing for learning appear to be underutilized strategies by all professions. This leads to the conclusion that attempts to increase learning have to address the differences in learning behaviours of the various groups. Further, focus on experimenting and organizing for learning is a possibility to change the learning behaviour from learning as a consequence of problems to learning for future improvement.degree of specialization. For successful integration of the different professional specialists, there is a need for shared learning between project co-workers. Based on twenty eight interviews in six different Swedish construction projects, this paper illustrates strategies for individual and shared learning, among different actors and across variou

Performance in Scandinavian shortsea shipping links

Within the geographic area constituted by the Scandinavian countries are there a multitude of ferry-services and RoRo-lines supporting the commercial and societal needs of transportation and logistics. The increased international trade and a continued trend towards concentration of production and consumption centres imply raised demands on these transport services that need to correspond to the high expectations set by commercial interests. This abstract springs from the project “Analysis of performance in Scandinavian shortsea shipping links” that has the aim of strengthening the role of waterborne goods transportation within the geographic region represented by the Nordic transport political network, NTN. RoRo-traffic is an important component in Scandinavia’s international transport network where the goods can be shifted from vessels to road/rail to create an efficient chain from supplier to customer. Ferry lines with short transit time and high frequency often fulfil the same function as a bridge, so called bridge substitutes, also plays an important role in this network. This illustrates the vital correlation between shortsea shipping and road transportation, a dependency that often is highlighted in the discussions concerning the development of efficient transport systems. The above mentioned sea links supports a development towards durable and cost efficient transportation on a macro level by enabling a shift of volumes from heavily congested road/rail links to sea. It is also necessary that the sea links provide a cost efficient solution for producers and consumers on a micro level. The project “Analysis of performance in Scandinavian shortsea shipping links” has a focus on vessel resource utilisation, and is based on a hypothesis that supports the relations between: Vessel resource utilisation / distance Vessel resource utilisation / transit time Vessel resource utilisation / frequency When the distance and transit time increase and the frequency decreases, the vessel resource utilisation is in general enhanced. The study will increase the knowledge of the traded-off between resource utilisation and the other parameters in order to streamline the shipping companies’ strategies. The purpose of the study is to make shortsea shipping more competitive towards other modes of transportation and to increase the understanding of the function of a “bridge substitute”. The hypothesis is supported by a pre-study from 2001

The valuation of housing in low-amenity and low purchasing power city districts: social and economic value entangled by default

Urban development projects are based on both calculative practices, in order to render investments in new housing profitable, and on a broader assessment of the value of amenities, qualities associated with housing units such as access to parks and shopping facilities, while not directly being included in presumptive buyers’ prices or rents but still affecting the prices or rents paid because amenities affect market demand. This condition is particularly cumbersome in low-income city districts, and/or in city districts with “negative” amenities, such as visible street crime and a substandard quality of schooling. A study of an urban development project in a “particularly socially vulnerable” city district in Sweden shows how municipally-owned real estate companies and private construction companies need to collaborate with authorities (e.g. the police) and municipal boards (e.g. the education board) to advocate investment in amenities. In order to increase housing stock evaluations, local housing market attractiveness, and the housing welfare of residents in blighted city districts, urban development projects must include, in substantive ways, a variety of perspectives, competencies, and formal decision-making authorities

Leadership under construction: A qualitative exploration of leadership processes in construction companies in Sweden.

Leadership has increasingly been advocated as a potent organizing practice, linked positively to several performance dimensionsas well as successful organizational development and change. Despite these alleged promises, the specific characteristics of leadership proc-esses as they unfold in a construction context have not been fully captured by construction researchers. This paper is predicated on anidentified lack of methodological richness underlying leadership studies in construction. While a growing number of contributions havequantitatively tested the ideas and models of leadership scholars, few have qualitatively explored the experiences and interpretations ofthe actual people that practice leadership in their daily work in construction companies. Drawing on a rich qualitative interview study, thispaper analyzes open-ended stories about leadership in the largest construction companies in Sweden. The findings show how leadership styleshave been shaped to align with traditional work and organizing principles, but also how they, by the same token, pose a seemingly unresolvedtension with change initiatives that seek to reorganize to improve organizational performance. Altogether, these findings indicate that there aregrounds to question the transformative potential of leadership in construction companies, as practiced today. The paper concludes by outliningthe practical implications of these findings, together with some analytical generalizations that can serve as pointers for a strengthened lead-ership agenda in construction research, one that is characterized by an increased methodological richness and accentuated focus on thecontext-specific aspects of leadershi

The politics of projects in technology-intensive work

Editoria

Safety by design: dialogues between designers and builders using virtual reality

© 2015 The Author(s). Published by Taylor & Francis.Designers can contribute to enhancing the safety of construction work by considering how their decisions impact on both the physical environment in which construction workers operate and the means and methods they use. To do so, however, designers require knowledge about safety hazards on site and the opportunity to examine their designs early in projects. Through a set of studies virtual reality tools were used to examine the potential for collaborative dialogue between designers and builders to provide a forum for learning and proactive change of a design to make a project safer to build. In the tests, participants viewed proposed designs using virtual reality to examine various alternative design and construction scenarios. The study shows that consultation and dialogue with an experienced construction professional are highly beneficial for designers to appreciate the implications of designs on safety, and that designers are more willing to adapt design details than to change aesthetic aspects of their designs

Entanglements of creative agency and digital technology : a sociomaterial study of computer game development

Digital technology, with its distinctive characteristics that result from the fundamental process of digitalization that underpins it, is seen as fundamentally altering processes of creativity. However, we currently have limited understanding of creativity in relation to the development of digital technology. Computer game development, with its combination of esthetic, affective and cultural use features and highly sophisticated digital technologies, is a valuable setting for investigating these issues. In this paper, we explore how computer games are shaped through the interplay between the creative intentions of developers and the digital technologies involved in their production and playing. Drawing on in-depth studies conducted at three leading computer game development studios and a leading producer of the software system used in game development, this paper shows how the game developers' creative ideas for imagined novel game-playing experiences relate to a) the development of relevant digital technologies, and b) the emergence of new game development practices. The article goes on to propose a view of creativity as an on-going flow that, following an initial ‘creative impulse’, ripples through the sociomaterial entanglements of a particular setting, reconfiguring them in the process and spreading out in time and space in often unexpected ways

Impact and Management Research:Exploring Relationships between Temporality, Dialogue, Reflexivity and Praxis

This paper introduces the special issue focusing on impact. We present the four papers in the special issue and synthesize their key themes, including dialogue, reflexivity and praxis. In addition, we expand on understandings of impact by exploring how, when and for whom management research creates impact and we elaborate four ideal types of impact by articulating both the constituencies for whom impact occurs and the forms it might take. We identify temporality as critical to a more nuanced conceptualization of impact and suggest that some forms of impact are performative in nature. We conclude by suggesting that management as a discipline would benefit from widening the range of comparator disciplines to include disciplines such as art, education and nursing where practice, research and scholarship are more overtly interwoven