Zheng, J; Wen, Q and Qiang, M (2020) Understanding demand for project manager competences in the construction industry: Data mining approach. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 146(8): 04020083, ISSN 0733-9364
Abstract
Construction project managers (CPMs) are highly in demand in the construction industry, but this has not yet comprehensively been studied from a demand-side perspective. This study investigated the real-world demand for CPMs' competences by mining the big data of job advertisements. Using a large data set of 243,521 job advertisements that covered nearly the whole online job market for CPMs in China over 1 year, we tracked the demands for CPM competences at the industry level. A structural topic model (STM), a text-mining method, was used to analyze the descriptions of the CPM competences requirements to identify the major competences dimensions emphasized in the advertisements. The results suggest that there are eight major competences dimensions that recruiters expect from CPMs. Compared with relatively smaller firms, larger firms place more emphasis on construction site management, project objective monitoring, and organizational management capability. Compared with public firms, private firms prefer coordination and communication, external stakeholder management, and organizational management capability. Cluster analysis of job advertisements further suggested that there are five major types of CPMs, each of which specializes in only a few competences instead of being competent in all aspects. These findings revealed the real-world demands for CPMs and provided theoretical implications for developing a CPM competences framework from a realistic demand-side perspective. The findings also can be utilized to assist construction firms in formulating more-informed recruiting strategies and to help practitioners benchmark their own competences with industry demands.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | data mining; industry demand; project manager competences |
| Index terms: | China, external stakeholder, construction project, cluster analysis, competence, practitioner, organizational management, construction site, strategy, big data, construction firm, manager, construction industry, dimension, coordination, mining, monitoring, data mining, project manager |
| Subjects: | data analysis and analytics, data science, health monitoring assessment and metrics, work location, practitioner, control systems, profession, organization, business, industry analysis, information systems, geotechnical engineering, sociology, Geography, production management, personnel development, management |
| Topics: | Geographical Context, Project Management, Research Practice, Engineering Principles, Business Strategy, Health and Safety, Roles and Professions, Stakeholder Management, Human Resources, Digital Applications, Site Management, 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