Forman, M and Haugbølle, K (2009) Arbitration and expert appraisals of defects in construction: What do companies learn? In: Dainty, A R J (ed.) Proceedings of 25th Annual ARCOM Conference, 7-9 September 2009, Nottingham, UK.
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to analyse the interplay between the conflict system and actors in the construction projects with focus on the parties' use of the conflict system, and the conflict system's influence on the parties' practice. For a long time there has been focus on defects in buildings and the high levels of conflict between partners in construction projects. New collaboration forms e.g. partnering have been seen as a means to avoid conflicts, while it has not been examined how the institutional conflict system affects the companies' learning process. Use of the institutional conflict system can be seen as an opportunity for the involved companies and clients to rethink defects e.g. in a construction project. This study applies theories within science and technology studies (STS) and learning processes. The data are gathered through qualitative interviews of representatives of the conflict system (arbitration and experts) and actors in the construction sector (client, advisor and contractor). The following three findings are discussed in the paper: 1) Interviews revealed that actors in the construction sector to a very high degree wish to solve the conflicts by themselves as collaborators, and they have developed different solution processes; conflicts escalate when they enter the institutional conflict system. 2) Companies have developed a double strategy toward conflict-solving targeting respectively the context of building process and context of the institutional conflict system that reflect the contradictions in the two contexts. 3) The companies use the experiences from cases in the institutional conflict system as feed back processes from construction projects to companies.
| Item Type: | Conference Paper (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | arbitration; building defects; conflict; dispute resolution; organisational culture |
| Index terms: | building defect, interview, partnering, strategy, dispute, science, construction project, collaboration, building process, construction sector, resolution, appraisal, organizational culture, arbitration |
| Subjects: | professional practice, specialized education, dispute resolution, data collection methods, industry analysis, conflict resolution, partnership management, sociology, building construction, production management, factor and component analysis, management |
| Topics: | Stakeholder Management, Project Management, Research Practice, Business Strategy, Organizational Design, Site Management, Education, Design Practice, Legal Issues |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCTE |
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