The unlearning dimension of organizational learning in construction projects

It has been suggested that contracting organizations in construction projects do not seem to adapt resiliently under changing market conditions. Interestingly, recent organizational management literature reveals the essential role of practicing unlearning for generating more resilient performance improvement actions. This paper reports on a study that aims to test empirically the contingent effect of unlearning on the relationship between organizational learning (OL) and organizational success. A conceptual model which depicts the hypothesized relationship among OL, unlearning and organizational success is presented. Data were obtained from a questionnaire survey. To test the conceptual model, Pearson Correlation Analysis and Multiple Moderated Regression Analysis were employed. The study hypothesized that interaction between the practice of OL and unlearning have a moderating effect on organizational success. The hypothesis was only partially supported by the results of the MMR analysis. Only the practice of double-loop learning was found to be symbiotic with the practice of unlearning for achieving organizational success. The effect was found to be more significant when organizational success was evaluated in terms of meeting the client's expectations on project cost.     

A project sponsor's impact on practice-based learning within projects

Drawing on a longitudinal action research case study analysis of project-based learning, this paper seeks to advance a deeper understanding of a project sponsor's impact on practice-based learning activity within a project. It represents a first case examination of the interface between a sponsor and practice-based learning phenomenon within projects. The reported findings argue for the project sponsor role to be acknowledged as dynamic and interactive and a dramatic influence on project practice-based learning. It also implies that a sponsor confronts some significant dilemmas in successfully stewarding such learning. Moreover, through such endeavour, the sponsor may also become an agent for organizational learning. The findings generated also encourage further investigations into the nexus between the sponsor and other social phenomenon within projects.     

Strategic change and organizational learning in two 'Swedish' construction firms

The two largest construction companies in Sweden, NCC and Skanska, previously have acted according to what here is called a multi-domestic strategy. Such a strategy implies that each market is treated essentially in isolation. Due to perceived pressures for local responsiveness, the firms have focused on utilizing local knowledge and experience, while failing to obtain economies of scale and to learn from the different localities. A combination of changing perceptions of being local and a growing number of home markets makes possible a strategic approach that is inter-domestic in nature. This approach stresses the importance of learning and of coordinating the experience a construction firm achieves in many different localities. Therefore learning is seen not only as a process of adaptation to the environment, but also as an evolutionary process built on an organization's identity, which is created by both structural and individual factors. The identity of an organization helps us to understand its ability to learn.     

The effect of the workplace on motivation and demotivation of construction professionals

Investigations have been carried out which suggest that motivation of employees in all industries is affected by the environment or culture in which they work. Research undertaken in Melbourne, Australia investigated the effect of the workplace environment encountered on a construction site on motivation and demotivation of construction professionals. The data collected supported the hypothesis that the environment of a construction site does affect demotivation levels of site personnel. Specifically, several variables were significantly linked to this result, including long hours, chaos, non-recognition for work done and colleagues' aggressive management style. The results provide a valuable basis for indicating how the construction industry can create a more attractive workplace environment for professional site staff.     

Rethinking organizational design for managing multiple projects

This paper aims at positioning organizational design as an important phenomenon in the field of project management with a high potential of contributing to organizational theory. While organizational design has been neglected by scholars of management and organizational theory, it has been of great interest to those from the project management field. This incongruence—comprising the focus of this study—calls for new insights on theorization in context. The paper provides a preliminary theoretical framework combining contingency theory, the historical approach and social theory to understand organizational design, both as a thing and as a process. It provides empirical evidence from three case studies in healthcare. Findings confirm the specificity of each design while at the same time adopting a similar temporal pattern. We take this opportunity to highlight the seminal work of Rodney Turner on project-based organization and design.

Knowledge leadership to improve project and organizational performance

Conceptualizing knowledge leadership and customer knowledge management (CKM) in the project context is still rudimentary. Thus, the first objective of this study is to assess the associations among knowledge leadership, customer knowledge management, the performance of a precision instrument sales (PIS) project, and organizational performance. The second objective is to determine whether project performance may mediate the effect of customer knowledge management on organizational performance. The third objective is to examine the moderating role of data complexity in the relationship between customer knowledge management and project performance. This study empirically investigated a sample of precision instrument sales projects in Taiwanese high-tech industry. The findings indicate that adoption of knowledge leadership is associated with customer knowledge management. In addition, these analyses suggest that implementation of customer knowledge management influences organizational performance via project performance. The results also show that the positive relationship between customer knowledge management and project performance depends on data complexity.     

To learn or not to learn from project monitoring feedback: In search of explanations for the contractor's dichromatic responses

Organizational learning (OL) seems to be a legitimate contractors' response to project monitoring feedback. However, findings from previous studies reveal that contractors' responses to feedback are mercurial and difficult to model by using conventional approaches. This study applies catastrophe theory to model the contractors' learning behavior in response to feedback. An industry survey was conducted in Hong Kong for data collection. To test the conceptual model, Cusp fit program was employed. The results indicate that not until they perform worse than the client's anticipation, the contractors may not practice double-loop learning as a response to the project monitoring feedback. Contractors' learning from feedback may be conditional. This study demonstrates a new approach to model a dynamic characteristic of the contractors' learning behavior.     

Learning in project-based organizations: The role of project teams' social capital for overcoming barriers to learning

It is a major challenge for project-based organizations to learn across project boundaries by making project-level knowledge available to the organization as a whole. This study argues that project teams' social capital is conducive to overcoming barriers to learning in project-based organizations. Based on a large-scale analysis of engineering projects in Germany, the study shows that project teams' social capital, i.e. the intra-organizational social ties of project teams with their colleagues outside the project, compensates for project teams' lack of opportunity, motivation, and ability to make project-learnings available to the organization as a whole. By contributing to overcoming barriers to learning in project-based organizations, social capital represents an important driver of organizational learning about market conditions, products and technologies as well as project management.     

The effects of organizational culture and environmental pressures on IT project performance: A moderation perspective

In this study we examine the impact of culture and environmental pressures on IT project performance. Specifically, the current study examines four dimensions of organizational culture (i.e., institutional collectivism, results orientation, positive work environment, leadership risk tolerance) and environmental pressures that are competitive and regulatory in nature. Within the context of these variables this study examines the moderating effect of environmental pressures (i.e., levels of competitive and regulatory pressure) on the relationship between organizational culture and IT project performance. The model was empirically tested with data from the United States and China. These two countries were chosen due to their very distinctive characteristics related to organizational resources and environmental factors.     

Problem absorption as an organizational learning mechanism in project-based companies: Process thinking perspective

In organizations existing rules and norms are usually used as the basis for solving new problems even when this means stretching those rules. Such absorption of new problems by rules reduces the need to explore and develop new solutions and to encode those solutions into new rules. Furthermore, one way that organizational learning can occur is through problem solving, i.e. learning takes place through identifying and resolving problems that occur in the execution of projects. Thus, finding a viable perspective and approach with which project-based companies can understand how their organizational learning through problem solving activities take place in the course of time is a very important issue. Therefore, the goal of this paper is to explore the potential of process thinking to open up new ways to understand organizational learning – particularly through problem absorption within problem solving – in project-based companies. All in all, with the help of this paper we have sought to offer a brief illustration of how process thinking may help to understand this issue.     

Learning approaches for housing,service and infrastructure project organizations

Capturing and sharing experiences that may be applicable in several projects is generally recognized as a way of enhancing the performance of construction projects. Several studies have reported difficulties in applying learning approaches that could be applicable for a wide range of projects. The learning behaviour in three types of construction project: housing, service and infrastructure, is examined by the means of a questionnaire study including 51 construction projects and more than 800 responses from clients, designers, contractors’ managers, contractors’ workers and subcontractors. The effects of leadership, openness and influence are considered. Based on a factor analysis, three approaches to learning were identified: organizing for learning, experimenting and networking. While housing project organizations do not demonstrate any specific preferences, service project organizations show a focus on networking and infrastructure project organizations show the highest interest in experimenting. On the basis of these results it can be concluded that learning approaches are dependent on the type of project. Thus adopting different learning approaches for different types of construction project seems to be a more relevant strategy than implementing a ‘one size fits all’ learning approach for all construction project organizations.     

Critical learning themes in project management education: Implications for blended learning

This research examines the underlying reasons why students taking project management courses emphasise skills that are transferable and the utilisation of e-learning environments as critical to their learning experiences. Students' opinions are expressed through a series of focus groups. We found that the underlying reasons for students' emphasis on these two factors as crucial to learning and teaching project management could be classed under five higher-order themes. The implications of our findings are that in order to develop desired human, conceptual and technical skills, a teaching approach based on a blend of learning that resides at the intersection of the ‘transferable skills’ and ‘e-learning environments’ construct is required for the effective teaching of project management. For effectiveness, this blended form of andragogy (learning focused on adults) must be flexible enough to cater for the vast variations in the profiles of students, and their individual learning preferences.     

Learning from project monitoring feedback: A case of optimizing behavior of contractors

Monitoring is an essential part of construction project management and has typically been devised to guard against non-compliance. When contractors are subjected to regular performance feedback, instead of just taking remedial action, they may take the opportunities to enhance their operations in the light of the feedback. Thus, it has been advocated that responding to performance feedback has a learning element. This study takes on this notion and examined the performance change pattern of contractors that have been subjected to regular performance feedback. Longitudinal performance scores were fitted against five well established learning curve models using the Least Square Curve Fitting Analysis (LSCFA). It was found that the 3-parameter hyperbolic model is the ‘best-fit’ model in terms of effectiveness and stability. The LSCFA results also suggested that the contractors in the sample can be arranged in four clusters: Competent Learners, Incidental Learners, Indifferent Learners and Optimizers. The majority of them fall into the optimizing cluster. This suggests that these contractors may adjust their resources to maintain their performance at an acceptable level which do not deprive their future opportunities. With due caveat to the constraints and limitations of working sample, this finding is thought provoking for project managers in exercising project monitoring.     

The value of trust in project business

The paper works towards establishing value for trust in project business, particularly the financial value of trust to project business. Concepts of trust are revisited. Rational explanations of trust are shown wanting, calculations of trust and danger being misrepresentations of how the willingness to trust is formed. The paper argues for the need to establish the interpretative and socially constructed nature of trust, primarily based upon prior experiential and psycho-motive learning in relation to current situational factors. Trust and its relationship to forming expectations and generating confidence are considered. Empirical findings are mobilised to show how trust contributed to value in a financial sense. Value is not an absolute in this context for value is empirically and theoretically shown to relate directly to expectations. Value is defined as an asset and is thus part of social capital for projects and in embedded in firms.     

HRM in project groups: The effect of project duration on team development effectiveness

The literature has found contradictory results regarding the impact of human resource management on project success. This paper focuses on one important human resource management process – team development – to investigate its importance in the project environment. Results show that most team development practices that work well in the operational business environment do not have a significant influence on project success. However, project duration was found to moderate the relationship between team development and project success: the effectiveness of team development increases in longer projects. The paper identifies and analyzes team development practices that have a positive impact on project success exclusively in long projects.     

Action learning for further developing project management competencies: A case study from an engineering consultancy company

Competence development of the employees is a core element when it comes to successful implementation of planned change. In this article, findings from an in-depth empirical study in an engineering consultancy are presented. The consultancy wanted to further develop the organization due to changed market conditions. Among other initiatives, top management established a competence development programme for the project managers. Action learning was used as a developmental method in one of the projects in the programme. The research showed that certain preconditions needed to exist in order for the project managers to benefit from participating in action learning, e.g. a proper and respected selection process for participants, proper training of the facilitators, sufficient time spent together in each action learning session, and sufficient follow-up.     

Learning capabilities in organizational networks: case studies of six construction projects

Organizational learning is a key mechanism for adapting to changes in the organization's environment, sharing know‐how and experiences, and for providing innovative solutions. Practices of organization learning are examined in six Swedish construction projects. In the Swedish construction industry, organization learning practices are in many cases underdeveloped and therefore mechanisms for sharing know‐how, information, and experiences remain an organizational capability not fully exploited. Findings suggest that construction projects are primarily relying on informal and personal contacts rather than more formal reporting and computer‐based management control systems. The implications for management in the industry are that new arenas wherein various professional groups can share knowledge and information would be beneficial for construction projects in terms of enabling for joint learning and a better use of the intellectual resources employed the project.     

Managing the project learning paradox: A set-theoretic approach toward project knowledge transfer

Managing project-based learning is becoming an increasingly important part of project management. This article presents a comparative case study of 12 cases of knowledge transfer between temporary inter-organizational projects and permanent parent organizations. Our set-theoretic analysis of these data yields two major findings. First, a high level of absorptive capacity of the project owner is a necessary condition for successful project knowledge transfer, which implies that the responsibility for knowledge transfer seems to in the first place lie with the project parent organization, not with the project manager. Second, none of the factors are sufficient by themselves. This implies that successful project knowledge transfer is a complex process always involving configurations of multiple factors. We link these implications with the view of projects as complex temporary organizational forms in which successful project managers need to cope with complexity by simultaneously paying attention to both relational and organizational processes.     

The negative consequences of knowledge hiding in NPD project teams: The roles of project work attributes

Knowledge hiding, a unique concept distinct from knowledge sharing, occurs frequently in NPD project teams. Although knowledge hiding has been proven to cause distrust and reduce individual creative performance, little is known about the negative influences of knowledge hiding on team performance in new product development (NPD) projects. Drawing on organizational learning theory and job characteristic theory, this study investigates how knowledge hiding influences project team performance through team learning and the contingent roles of project-based work attributes (i.e. cross-functionality and team stability). Data were collected from a sample of 92 NPD project teams in China. The results revealed that knowledge hiding was negatively associated with project team performance. This linkage was partially mediated by team learning. Team stability played a moderating role in the relationship between knowledge hiding and team learning. Moreover, as team stability increased, the negative indirect impact of knowledge hiding on project team performance was weakened. Finally, theoretical implications, practical guidelines and limitations were discussed.