Radosavljevic, M (2003) Chaos in construction: labour productivity and its impact on planning and organisation of firms. PhD thesis, University of Dundee, UK.
Abstract
"The paramount message of this research is that performance of the construction industry is poor. The question however is, what should managers do in order to improve the performance, meet clients demands and satisfy their employees? Not an easy answer, indeed. The literature review on labour productivity and related studies has clearly shown that it cannot be easily modelled or predicted. In addition, researchers could not even agree whether productivity is random or not. The first studies were therefore merely statistical. The objective of this first step was to determine whether labour productivity is random. The analyses demonstrated that it is not, but rather resembles a chaotic nature. In order to prove this, several non-linear analysis were applied. It appeared that labour productivity data is noisily chaotic with a memory on initial conditions of five to eleven days. Such results signified that planning for more than the duration of a memory on initial conditions is unrealistic. Based on that, a new so-called process planning methodology has been proposed and tested on five industrial projects in Slovenia. The outcomes demonstrates that short-term planning is indispensable and increases overall performance significantly. However, the implementation of the process planning methodology has imposed structural changes that transformed the firm into a self-organised system. That needed a conceptual and theoretical explanation. The last part of research was therefore focused on the development framework of the necessary restructuring process, and its general theoretical explanation. Finally, if managers really want improvements, they should be aware that no significant progress without significant changes in a firm s organisational structure. These changes, however, always involve employees - autonomous and creative individuals, and that should never be forgotten."
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | performance; construction planning; labour productivity |
| Index terms: | productivity, labour productivity, construction planning, implementation, construction industry, duration, organizational structure, manager, literature review, Slovenia, methodology |
| Subjects: | construction planning, contractual arrangements, data analysis and analytics, practitioner, sociology, project controls, industry analysis, research methods, management, Geography |
| Topics: | Time Control, Site Management, Organizational Design, Business Strategy, Research Practice, Roles and Professions, Geographical Context, Procurement |
| 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