Wild, A (2001) Construction projects as teams or situations: Criticizing the "techniques of communication" approach. In: Akintoye, A (ed.) Proceedings of 17th Annual ARCOM Conference, 5-7 September 2001, Salford, UK.
Abstract
A discourse of teams has pervaded construction since the Latham Report(1994). This article reviews Dainty and Moore's (2000a,b and 1999) critique of that discourse by treating their articles as evidence for a re-interpretation. It is argued that their work has significant tacit assumptions and residual categories around: integration, interfaces, teambuilding and communications. These reflect a particular paradigm of the manageability of construction resulting from the post-war reports on construction and the research efforts these have instigated. Manageability has assumed the same significance in construction management research as equilibrium and rationality in economics. Problems of methodology are treated as those of 're-interpretation' of evidence from the research comparable to Goldthorpe's (1980) development of the residual categories of economists into alternative explanations.
| Item Type: | Conference Paper (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | communities; management; practice; latham report; teams |
| Index terms: | critique, Latham, management research, rationality, evidence, construction project, war, methodology, paradigm, integration |
| Subjects: | organizational analysis, industry policy reports, conflict and crisis studies, production management, education and knowledge transfer, research methods, decision-making and reasoning, evaluation and assessment methods, research design and methodology |
| Topics: | Project Management, Research Practice, Governance, Legal Issues, Organizational Design |
| 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