Galvin, P and Tywoniak, S (2019) How organizational boundary choices impact capability development. Construction Management and Economics, 37(12), pp. 712-726. ISSN 01446193
Abstract
As construction-oriented public sector agencies have outsourced more and more of their construction-related activities, they have often suffered from an inability to provide appropriate oversight due to degraded capabilities. This had led to calls for these agencies to rebuild capabilities across different technical areas. A firm’s boundary choices—make, buy, ally and dual modes (make and buy simultaneously)—may impact the ability of a firm to maintain and even build new capabilities, and in this article, we seek to investigate the impact that boundary choices have upon rebuilding capabilities and the extent to which organizations may make sub-optimal choices economically to potentially create opportunities for learning and knowledge sharing. Using qualitative data from three project-based public sector organizations managing large construction projects, we observed that neither pure make nor buy decisions assisted significantly in capability building. Dual modes provided firms with some opportunities to build capabilities, but the most successful decisions seemed to occur in respect of using intermediate governance modes such as alliances. We also observed that the boundary choice was just one dimension of the capability building process and suggest organizations require a multi-pronged strategy to rebuild capabilities over time.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | firm capabilities; organizational learning; outsourcing; public sector; qualitative analysis |
| Index terms: | public sector organization, knowledge sharing, rebuilding, strategy, large construction project, organizational learning, firm capability, organizational boundary, agency, building process, qualitative analysis, capability development, public sector, outsourcing, governance, dimension |
| Subjects: | health monitoring assessment and metrics, knowledge management, business, research design and methodology, building construction, sociology, administrative law, management, professional development, organizational theory |
| Topics: | Legal Issues, Organizational Design, Site Management, Business Strategy, Health and Safety, Project Management, Research Practice, Engineering Principles, Information Management, Procurement, Governance |
| 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