Lester, E (2021) COVID-19 crisis management left tacit knowledge behind. In: Scott, L and Neilson, C J (eds.) Proceedings of 37th Annual ARCOM Conference, 6-7 September 2021, Online Event, UK.
Abstract
As the COVID-19 pandemic raged throughout New York City and its surrounding suburbs, more than 500,000 positive cases and 30,000 deaths were recorded between early March and early May 2020. In response, built environment firms were forced to confront uncertainty, shift mindsets, and embrace new workflows to remain viable in the face of city and state mandatory stay-at-home orders and curfews. This required the creation of new internal processes for document dissemination. Firms focused on alleviating clients' concerns and boosting productivity by providing information, a hierarchy of business processes, and new codes of conduct. Utilizing case study methodology, this evolution at one architecture firm was tracked. Semi-structured interviews prior to and after the early wave of the pandemic clarified and verified findings. Participants were asked probing follow up questions to better understand the impacts, especially regarding tacit knowledge. The firm's efforts were optimized, but tacit knowledge sharing disappeared. Once this form of knowledge sharing was highlighted, participants acknowledged the loss and speculated about how to address this critical activity moving forward.
| Item Type: | Conference Paper (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | knowledge management; information management; architecture; covid-19 |
| Index terms: | productivity, face, mindset, New York, knowledge sharing, COVID-19, pandemic, interview, case study, workflow, tacit knowledge, knowledge management, evolution, methodology, dissemination, built environment, crisis management |
| Subjects: | psychology, knowledge management, environmental science, data collection methods, health behaviours and lifestyles, infrastructure and transport systems, research methods, management, health risk and incident analysis, knowledge translation, financial risk, professional development, Geography |
| Topics: | Sustainability, Health and Safety, Business Strategy, Cost Management, Information Management, Research Practice, Geographical Context, Organizational Design, Urban Studies |
| 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