Lindfors, C T (2001) Towards a taxonomy of management in construction: Exploring the structure of management. In: Akintoye, A (ed.) Proceedings of 17th Annual ARCOM Conference, 5-7 September 2001, Salford, UK.
Abstract
Managing the complexity of construction, in terms of handling, controlling and directing organizations and projects to achieve success, forms part of the current work in the research project 'Value chain management in construction', being undertaken in collaboration with a major construction company. Some of the early work has pinpointed deficiencies in current management thinking and practice within the subject company. One hypothesis is that organizational and project success is linked to the extent to which a company or other organization is able to understand all the issues of management, independent of the fact that one manages a small project or manages a large company. In order to be in a position to understand the true extent of management, linguistic breakdowns have been performed to try to establish consistency in the various meanings1 implied by the word 'management' and how these measure up to current thinking and practice. To produce the taxonomy, an established methodology was used to give a more structured approach and to enhance the validity of the research. As a step towards the development of this taxonomy, a preliminary structure to define the subject of management is presented. This first pass through the linguistic landscape has produced a rough taxonomic representation for understanding management in construction.
| Item Type: | Conference Paper (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | construction management; management innovation; ontology; taxonomy |
| Index terms: | project success, value chain, ontology, validity, construction company, collaboration, management innovation, methodology, small project, complexity, taxonomy |
| Subjects: | organization, evaluation and assessment methods, data analysis and analytics, research methods, management, education and knowledge transfer, project management theory and practice, value chain strategy, production management, systems engineering |
| Topics: | Organizational Design, Supply Chain Management, Business Strategy, Research Practice, Project Management, Engineering Principles |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCTA |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here