Wandahl, S (2005) Power, interest and value in building project organisations. In: Khosrowshahi, F (ed.) Proceedings of 21st Annual ARCOM Conference, 7-9 September 2005, London, UK.
Abstract
In the majority of building projects the project organisation is temporary and dissolves when the project is completed. This results in a short term cooperation situation where immediate performance has absolute priority. This combined with the tendency towards an increasing number of parties in the project result in a dynamic management environment where power, various interests and values are addressed. Power is the ability of an actor to extract valued output from a system and to affect the system's effectiveness and efficiency. The objective of this paper is to explore the concept of power in construction project organisations and to investigate how it can influence the management of projects. Furthermore, to relate the concept of power to Value-Based Management and to explore whether power should be a barrier to holistic management. The applied method is a study of selected relevant and significant literature concerning power. An explanation of how the concept of power can be understood in a construction project context is given. Finally, the connections between Value-Based Management and power are discussed. The principal result is a framework of how to perceive power in building project organisations.
| Item Type: | Conference Paper (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | value; power; interest; value-based management; project organisation |
| Index terms: | efficiency, cooperation, project organization, construction project, effectiveness |
| Subjects: | organizational theory, psychology, production management, performance management |
| Topics: | Project Management, Quality Management, Organizational Design |
| Descriptive scope: | 2 PC |
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