Collaboration between construction firms and the supply chain for the implementation of innovation strategies

The construction industry in the UK is one of the major employers, involving many different firms and professional bodies, and it comprises of a wide range of products, services and technologies. Nonetheless, for many decades the industry has suffered several structural challenges, such as low investments in R&D and innovation, fragmentation of supply, and a lack of collaboration. To find solutions to these issues, the Government has implemented an Industrial Strategy, which aims to foster supply chain integration, by enhancing investment in innovation. Another specific purpose is to implement Building Information Modelling (BIM), to reach more efficiency and sustainability, predictable delivery of buildings, and off-site manufacturing. Scholars have also argued that the construction industry is considered slow to innovate and characterised by a sense of “backwardness” (e.g. Woudhuysen & Abley 2004).The implementation of innovative technology can lead to innovative behaviour, to increased integration and efficiency among actors, and simplified design work. Concerning the greater importance placed on supply chains by the industry and the Government, scholars in supply chain management (SCM) emphasise how supply chain integration can solve fragmentation and foster collaboration and innovation. The aim of the thesis is to understand how a British construction firm collaborates with its suppliers in order to implement innovation strategies. The research is driven by the interest to deepen the analysis of how collaboration and strategizing with the supply chain takes place, and how innovation is managed by the firms involved. Specifically, the research question aims to understand whether the early engagement of the supply chain during projects when innovation is implemented leads to effective collaboration and empowerment. The empirics are analysed through a novel theoretical approach, which draws on Strategy-as-Practice (SaP) as a general theoretical framework and applies Actor-Network Theory (ANT) to analyse the data. It adopts a research methodology comprising of targeted ethnographies, in-depth interviews, and document analysis. The reason to adopt this theoretical approach lies in the fact of focusing on the role of actors, both human (e.g. the firms involved), and non-human (e.g. technology) in shaping strategy during particular organisational settings, such as meetings, workshops, or other events. The focus is on how the actor-network, involving the contractor and the supply chain, is built, and how collaborative innovation strategizing (CIS)is shaped by multiple networks and objects, and fluid technology. Concerning the theoretical contribution, more research is needed to understand the specific role of BIM in supply chain collaboration, and BIM theorisation regarding its fluidity in shaping collaboration and innovation. The flat ontology mobilised here differs from previous SaP studies within the construction industry by refusing to scale strategizing into hierarchies of local practices and structural context and thus being more open about which actors, and places and times, make a difference to the strategizing process. Moreover, strategizing and ANT has few empirical applications in the literature, including SaP research, and is to the best of my knowledge an entirely novel approach in construction. Concerning the methodological contribution, these novel theoretical approaches are developed here in combination with an ethnographic research to investigate collaboration and the implementation of innovation within specific places and times. Analysing these settings with ANT, within a SaP frame, it was possible to develop interesting insights into how power fluctuates among the actors, and how non-human actors influence collaboration and strategizing. An additional moment (“pre-interessement”) has been added to Callon’s model of translation which has been used to analyse the building of the actor-network, and how the network builder uses particular ways to converge the suppliers' interests into the network. The thesis also contributes by providing a “bottom-up”, or lived, perspective of how strategy is shaped, and has emphasised the importance of the relationships among heterogeneous actors for collaboration and strategizing. Moreover, the analysis of BIM as a fluid technology allows the elaboration of multiple definitions, practices and meanings of collaboration. The nuanced exploration of collaboration remains rare especially in the BIM literature where the meaning of collaboration is often simplified and presumed as a BIM outcome. Finally, concerning the contribution to industry, the research has emphasised how the integration of the supply chain can be enhanced through long-term relationships and trust-building, such as through fewer selected supplier firms to collaborate with, and regular meetings and workshops with the supply chain. Furthermore, BIM has shown to be an object which fosters collaboration and innovation across supply chain, but it must be implemented once the actors involved have a solid knowledge of the software, otherwise effective collaboration can be hampered.