Gluch, P and Svensson, I (2016) The organizational nexus of changing management practices for sustainable renovation. In: Chan, P W and Neilson, C J (eds.) Proceedings of 32nd Annual ARCOM Conference, 5-7 September 2016, Manchester, UK.
Abstract
Many Swedish public buildings, such as hospital and school buildings, were built between the years 1950-1975, and now both the buildings and the technical systems of these are reaching their technical life span and thus need to be renovated or even demolished and replaced. Ambitiously set governmental sustainability targets also force construction client organisations to find sustainable and innovative ways to renovate, an ongoing challenge where especially the public sector is expected to take a leading role. Besides technology development, these challenges will require that sustainability targets are embedded in decision making practices in all public organisations involved in renovation of buildings. Something not done to a larger extent today, meaning that short-term prerequisites often are favoured over long-term ones. Focusing on organization processes and decision making practices related to sustainable and energy efficient renovation of public buildings in Sweden, this research investigates how governmental sustainability targets enter the business agenda and influence management practices in public construction client organisations. Questions of interest in the research are: What ongoing organising processes influence and drive sustainable renovation in public organisations? How are governmental sustainability targets translated into practice? How and which actors are involved in the translation process? What roles do artifacts play in this translation?The paper contributes to this field by conceptualizing the organizational nexus of sustainable renovation processes of public buildings in which macro actors (eg governmental policy makers) operates with micro actors (eg building engineers, architects) as intermediaries and translators through various mediating artefacts (eg. decision support tools and methods). The paper is based on a review of both local government policy documents and academic literature. The organizational context and analytical unit is the municipal premises office of the City of Gothenburg in Sweden.
| Item Type: | Conference Paper (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | construction client organisations; institutional work; management practice; multi-level analysis; public buildings; sustainable renovation |
| Index terms: | decision support, local government, client organization, Sweden, construction client, public sector, institutional work, meaning, engineer, artifact, architect, documents, artefact, management practice, decision-making, renovation, public construction, school building, public building, intermediary, technology development |
| Subjects: | client relations, business, construction type, profession, practitioner, innovation and technology management, management, renovation and retrofit, professional development, Geography, decision analysis, sociology, building construction, administrative law |
| Topics: | Construction Technology, Risk Management, Stakeholder Management, Roles and Professions, Research Practice, Geographical Context, Information Management, Engineering Principles, Business Strategy, Organizational Design, Legal Issues |
| 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