Wong, P S P and Lam, K Y (2012) Facing turbulence: Driving force for construction organizations to regain unlearning and learning traction. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 138(10), pp. 1202-1211. ISSN 0733-9364
Abstract
Organizational learning (OL) is recognized as crucial in construction organizations' performance. Nevertheless, scholars have argued that construction organizations do not seem to learn in a manner that fosters resilience in coping with changes in developers' demands. Skeptics argue that OL should be facilitated by unlearning (UL)-a process of discarding obsolete beliefs and routines. While OL has emerged as a popular construction management research topic, it is a concept that has yet to be investigated empirically from an unlearning perspective. This paper reports a study that aims to (1) investigate the effect of OL and UL on the performance of construction organizations, and (2) investigate the role turbulence (TU) plays on triggering OL and UL. Data were collected from a questionnaire survey conducted in Hong Kong, and the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique was employed for data analysis. The results indicate that (1) TU triggers the process of UL and (2) UL significantly contributes to the practice of OL in construction organizations. These results imply that if construction organizations unlearn, they could be more capable of learning to enhance performance. Furthermore, turbulence is found to be a motivation for unlearning. This study contributes to the research of OL in construction by providing possible reasons leading to construction organizations being incapable of learning. Furthermore, additional research is recommended on ways to facilitate construction organizations' unlearning.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | organizational learning; performance; turbulence; unlearning |
| Index terms: | coping, Hong Kong, construction organization, questionnaire, traction, turbulence, motivation, survey, structural equation modelling, data analysis, routine, management research, organizational learning |
| Subjects: | psychology, fluid mechanics, data analysis and analytics, research design and methodology, organization, data collection methods, sociology, behavioral psychology, transportation engineering, statistical analysis, professional development, Geography |
| Topics: | Business Strategy, Geographical Context, Research Practice, Information Management, Engineering Principles, Organizational Design, Human Resources |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCEA |
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