Profil
 | PhD Fellow, Master of Science (Construction Management)Christin EgebjergDTU Management, Planlægning, Innovation og Ledelse Sektionen for Planlægning og Ledelse af Byggeprocesser Danmarks Tekniske Universitet |
PhD Project Description
Title: The space between organizations - A comparative study between construction and film businesses concerning informal structures and strategic alliances Student: Christin Egebjerg
Background and Motivation The Danish building sector has for many years been accused of inefficiency, lack of motivation, and poor quality. One explanatory aspect is that construction projects are of complex nature, often produced under uncertain and changing circumstances. (Apelgren et al., 2005; Thomassen, 2003).
These years construction business is facing new demands for global competitiveness, product innovation, customer awareness etc. - challenges that will require new skills within collaboration, communication and alliances. (Kadefors, 2003; Kristiansen, 2006)
Many of the newly developed management tools aimed to deal with such challenges, like for instance lean and partnering, are being criticised for not addressing the basic issues in collaborative and communicative processes. (Cheng et al., 2000; Kadefors, 2002)
These management theories and methods have been developed from experiences in traditional industrial production and organizations (e.g. the automobile industry, airplane factories or military organizations) and later adapted to the construction business .
This PhD project will take its point of departure in an alternative approach to understanding and mobilising the underlying dynamics in collaboration, communication, motivation and management relations in construction organizations. The main input to this approach will be provided through comparative studies in project based organizations within the entertainment business.
The Danish film industry shares several common feature with the building sector: one-off products, a large number of stakeholders, restricted time-schedules and budgets, a high degree of uncertainty and a division between design and production phases with a crucial need for strategic alliances and strong project management efforts.(Blair, 2001; Jones, 1996; Lampel et al., 2000)
Research Aim
Both construction and film project organizations may be understood as loosely coupled systems with dynamic spaces in between the borderlines of the formal organizational setup. These spaces contain dimensions of physical, social, psychological and temporal nature (Christensen et al., 1991; Emmitt, 2003)
An obvious example is informal communication understood in its widest sense (as signals, profiling, symbols, trust, social behaviour, interpersonal chemistry etc.) as the inter-space managerial liaison between organizations.
An interesting aspect of informality is “pauses” as spaces between formal production activities. Pauses should not be considered as empty wholes of passed time: Rather, they are representing activities that are perhaps vital for the production (e.g. making unrecognized work or thinking about solutions or communicating thoughts or feelings, prerequisite to subsequent stages in the production flow).
In film productions, pauses are a natural instrument for the management – and “timing” has often a higher priority than time-scheduling as a mean for “true efficiency”. This could very well be of crucial importance also to the management of construction flow, but is totally ignored by formal planning and management concepts.
The aim of the PhD study is to investigate the informal structures between collaborating companies in projects within the construction sector and in film production. Similarities and differences will be emphasised against the formal structures of project management and business frameworks peculiar to the two branches.
A basic research question will be to examine whether the traditional structures and the culturally determined behaviour are in fact necessary to obtain important values, and if so, whether there are an underlying rationality and hidden logic underneath what could be at first regarded as ”a random mess” in construction collaboration.
Research methodology and Expected Output
The primary research methods will be semi-structured qualitative interviews and participant observation conducted at site as well as in the main organizations of the participating companies (Andersen, 1995; Kvale, 1996; Patton, 2002).
Qualitative interviews analyzed in a grounded theory perspective will be used for identifying the nature of informal communication, loosely coupled systems and networking processes in the socially constructed inter-organizational spaces. This knowledge will be contrasted against the formal organizational frameworks. A special focus will be put on analyzing power mechanisms, learning and motivation as dynamic forces in organizations. Post-modern theories, networking theories and organizational theories will be applied for this purpose. (Haslebo, 2004; Orton et al., 1990; Rasborg, 1995; Weick, 2001; Wenneberg, 2000).
As indicated, an important focus in the observational surveys will be laid upon the fragments of informal structures, representing pauses or ”timing” vs. ”time-scheduling.
For better understanding of organizational structures, the study will also examine the benefits of micro-sociological and the post-modern theoretical understanding in order to recognize connections from small patterns into larger structures. (Alvasson, 2002; Goffman, 1970).
The main output from the study will be a mapping of the nature and meaning of informal structures in construction projects. This result will be validated against the comparative data from well-performing project production in the film industry, typical of a high degree of informal structures and alliances. This research is innovative in its approach in Denmark as well as internationally. Thus the PhD-study will potentially make an original contribution of new knowledge to the research area ‘project and construction management’ at DTU, to the construction research community in general and to the development of performance in project oriented businesses.
Title: The space between organizations - A comparative study between construction and film businesses concerning informal structures and strategic alliances Student: Christin Egebjerg
Background and Motivation The Danish building sector has for many years been accused of inefficiency, lack of motivation, and poor quality. One explanatory aspect is that construction projects are of complex nature, often produced under uncertain and changing circumstances. (Apelgren et al., 2005; Thomassen, 2003).
These years construction business is facing new demands for global competitiveness, product innovation, customer awareness etc. - challenges that will require new skills within collaboration, communication and alliances. (Kadefors, 2003; Kristiansen, 2006)
Many of the newly developed management tools aimed to deal with such challenges, like for instance lean and partnering, are being criticised for not addressing the basic issues in collaborative and communicative processes. (Cheng et al., 2000; Kadefors, 2002)
These management theories and methods have been developed from experiences in traditional industrial production and organizations (e.g. the automobile industry, airplane factories or military organizations) and later adapted to the construction business .
This PhD project will take its point of departure in an alternative approach to understanding and mobilising the underlying dynamics in collaboration, communication, motivation and management relations in construction organizations. The main input to this approach will be provided through comparative studies in project based organizations within the entertainment business.
The Danish film industry shares several common feature with the building sector: one-off products, a large number of stakeholders, restricted time-schedules and budgets, a high degree of uncertainty and a division between design and production phases with a crucial need for strategic alliances and strong project management efforts.(Blair, 2001; Jones, 1996; Lampel et al., 2000)
Research Aim
Both construction and film project organizations may be understood as loosely coupled systems with dynamic spaces in between the borderlines of the formal organizational setup. These spaces contain dimensions of physical, social, psychological and temporal nature (Christensen et al., 1991; Emmitt, 2003)
An obvious example is informal communication understood in its widest sense (as signals, profiling, symbols, trust, social behaviour, interpersonal chemistry etc.) as the inter-space managerial liaison between organizations.
An interesting aspect of informality is “pauses” as spaces between formal production activities. Pauses should not be considered as empty wholes of passed time: Rather, they are representing activities that are perhaps vital for the production (e.g. making unrecognized work or thinking about solutions or communicating thoughts or feelings, prerequisite to subsequent stages in the production flow).
In film productions, pauses are a natural instrument for the management – and “timing” has often a higher priority than time-scheduling as a mean for “true efficiency”. This could very well be of crucial importance also to the management of construction flow, but is totally ignored by formal planning and management concepts.
The aim of the PhD study is to investigate the informal structures between collaborating companies in projects within the construction sector and in film production. Similarities and differences will be emphasised against the formal structures of project management and business frameworks peculiar to the two branches.
A basic research question will be to examine whether the traditional structures and the culturally determined behaviour are in fact necessary to obtain important values, and if so, whether there are an underlying rationality and hidden logic underneath what could be at first regarded as ”a random mess” in construction collaboration.
Research methodology and Expected Output
The primary research methods will be semi-structured qualitative interviews and participant observation conducted at site as well as in the main organizations of the participating companies (Andersen, 1995; Kvale, 1996; Patton, 2002).
Qualitative interviews analyzed in a grounded theory perspective will be used for identifying the nature of informal communication, loosely coupled systems and networking processes in the socially constructed inter-organizational spaces. This knowledge will be contrasted against the formal organizational frameworks. A special focus will be put on analyzing power mechanisms, learning and motivation as dynamic forces in organizations. Post-modern theories, networking theories and organizational theories will be applied for this purpose. (Haslebo, 2004; Orton et al., 1990; Rasborg, 1995; Weick, 2001; Wenneberg, 2000).
As indicated, an important focus in the observational surveys will be laid upon the fragments of informal structures, representing pauses or ”timing” vs. ”time-scheduling.
For better understanding of organizational structures, the study will also examine the benefits of micro-sociological and the post-modern theoretical understanding in order to recognize connections from small patterns into larger structures. (Alvasson, 2002; Goffman, 1970).
The main output from the study will be a mapping of the nature and meaning of informal structures in construction projects. This result will be validated against the comparative data from well-performing project production in the film industry, typical of a high degree of informal structures and alliances. This research is innovative in its approach in Denmark as well as internationally. Thus the PhD-study will potentially make an original contribution of new knowledge to the research area ‘project and construction management’ at DTU, to the construction research community in general and to the development of performance in project oriented businesses.