Managing Knowledge in the Construction Industry

Knowledge management presents a new way of understanding organizations and companies, and is especially suited to sophisticated and highly technical firms and operations such as those in the construction industry. This new book draws on hard data from three separate research programs in Sweden and shows how the concept of knowledge can make sense in the construction industry, an industry which can be viewed in essence as being engaged in the material transformation of "nature into buildings". In particular it explores and examines three different businesses: a medium sized construction firm; Wingårdh Architecture, Sweden’s most prestigious architecture firm; and BESAB, a specialist concrete injection firm working on underground construction. An emerging theme is the situational and context-bound nature of knowledge in the construction industry, thus showing "knowledge" to be a remarkably heterogeneous concept. A range of readers should find the book useful, from students and construction managers through to researchers.

1. Managing Knowledge in the Construction Industry 2. Site Manager Work and the Use of Coaching 3. Architectural Work as Practice: Materialized Semiosis 4. Knowing the Concrete: Knowledge and Skills in a Specialist Construction Company 5. Knowledge and Construction Work: Concluding Remarks

Alexander Styhre is Professor of Operations Managementin the School of Technology Management, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden. He is the author, co-author and editorof thirteen books in the field of organization theory, includingThe Innovative Bureaucracy: Bureaucracy in the Age of Fluidity (Routledge, 2007).