Knowledge Bank
November 2011
THE PROJECT OF SUCCESS
Kristian Kreiner
The ‘projectification’ of the firm and society (Midler 1995; Lundin and Söderholm 1998) implies a systematic translation of organizational goals into performance targets. Such targets offer not only direction for collective action, but also a solid foundation for the assessment of the achievements.
To the extent that project success becomes a matter of meeting the explicit targets, it loses its relevance as independent phenomenon.
For that reason, perhaps, project success is hardly ever discussed in the project management literature.
To the extent that project success becomes a matter of meeting the explicit targets, it loses its relevance as independent phenomenon.
For that reason, perhaps, project success is hardly ever discussed in the project management literature.
March 2010
The Chronoprogramme - Capital budgeting and motorway construction
Silvana Revellino & Jan Mouritsen
This study analyses capital budgeting practices where "matters of concern" condition capital budgeting decisions involving a particular category of investments, that of motorway building projects. Here, a central mediating instrument is the chronoprogramme which visualises the geography of "matters of concern".
February 2010
Design ambitions and logics in construction – a performative approach
Susse Georg, Tor Hernes and Kjell Tryggestad
Skyscrapers are often often seen as powerful symbols and important symbols of power; views which generally render the skyscraper as nothing more than a passive object representing people’s design ambitions. Rather than continue in this representational vein, the paper develops a performative approach emphasizing the role of materiality in constructing design ambitions.
February 2010
What we talk about when we talk about space
Marianne Stang Våland
In the thesis, Marianne Stang Våland explores the construction of mutual links between two design processes that have traditionally been considered separated and sequentially organized: the organizational and the architectural design processes.
February 2010
Constructing buildings and design ambitions
Kjell Tryggestad, Susse Georg & Tor Hernes
The aim of this study is threefold: (1) to describe and analyze how project goals and ambitions are actively shaped and established by a variety of objects, (2) to develop an adaptive and pragmatic approach to goals in construction, and (3) to discuss implications for the management and evaluation of the construction project.
February 2010
3D Digital Modelling
Jesper Hundebøl
Based on empirical probes (interviews, observations, written inscriptions) within the Danish construction industry this paper explores the organizational and managerial dynamics of 3D Digital Modelling.
December 2009
Energy Efficiency and the Construction Sector in the Danish Media
Satu Reijonen
This paper inquires into how energy efficient construction, its achievement or the lack of this is portrayed in the Danish newspaper media.
November 2009
End User Participation as an Input to Shape the Brief in Architetural Competitions
Marianne Stang Våland
In this paper the potential relationship between two design processes that are traditionally regarded as independent: the architetural and the organizational respectivelyis being considered and discussed through the implications that end user participation might have onthe written brief, upon which architectural competitions is being based.
October 2009
Valuable value: Transformations through architectural enactment
Rune T. J. Clausen
This paper is set out to study the value creation of a public building.
September 2009
Learning and Imagination in Construction
Kristian Kreiner & Lise Damkjær
In this paper we offer a minor, but slightly significant change in perspective on some very old and persistent problems in construction practice.
September 2009
Empirical Observations and Strategic Implications for Architectural Firms
Kristian Kreiner
This paper explores architectural competitions as processes of participation and choice.
July 2009
On the emergence of roles in construction: the qualculative role of project management
Kjell Tryggestad & Susse Georg
The analysis shows the ways in which the budget and other devices participates in enacting a qualculative role for project management, while simultaneously being involved in negotiating boundaries between professional roles in construction as well as the qualitative and quantitative properties of the building.
June 2009
Shape Shifting - the Story of a 3D Model in Construction
Jesper Hundebøl, Stefan Christoffer Gottlieb, Jens Stissing Jensen, Casper Schultz Larsen & Kristian Birch Sørensen
In this paper, the authors are concerned with the specific effects of a 3D building model produced and reproduced in the planning and construction phases on a particular construction project.
March 2009
The triple visual
Lise Justesen & Jan Mouritsen
In this paper Justesen and Mouritsen analyze relations among different kinds of visualization in annual reports and trace their interaction with activities in marketing and sales, in design and planning, and in operations.
November 2008
Disorganising Bureaucracies
Jesper Hundebøl
By asking how real bureaucracies’ (government agencies, i.e.) action vis-à-vis digitalization of construction effects the order of work in the design phase Hundebøl discusses how the introduction of 3D modelling disturbs work routines, methods and processes.
November 2008
A question concerning the sacred and profane: In pursuit of an economic rationale
Rune T. J. Clausen
This paper discusses the economic reasoning of an architectural practice. The aim of the paper is to develop a snapshot picture of the economic awareness of the firm of architects by looking at how management and employees rationalize their economic perceptions.
September 2008
Future Perfect Strategy: The Role of Imagination and the Risk of Empty Horizons
Kristian Kreiner & Graham Winch
Can ‘future-perfect-thinking' be turned into a management strategy? Can trivial, every-day projects, like getting a letter to a friend, serve as model for huge, complex construction projects? These questions were made current when Clegg et al (2003) created a bridge between Alfred Schutz and project management theory. In this paper we revisit this...
September 2008
Constructing the Olympic Dream
Stewart Clegg
The presentation reports a uniquely complex organizational context-that of the fast-tracked large-scale project management of a significant piece of Sydney 2000 Olympic infrastructure, which we researched in terms of its management through the "future perfect." In a grounded analysis we resolved to track how the future perfect developed in the...
July 2008
End User Participation as an Input to Shape the Brief in Architectural Competitions
Marianne Stang Våland
In this paper, the potential relationship between two design processes that are traditionally regarded as independent: the architectural and the organizational respectively, is being considered and discussed through the implications that end user participationmight have on the written brief, upon which an architectural competition is being based.
July 2008
End user participation as a vehicle for co-designing buildings and organizations
Marianne Stang Våland
In this paper, the connection between the architectural and the organizational design processes is being explored through the implications of end user participation.
May 2008
Agency and institutions: A review of institutional entrepreneurship
B. Leca & J. Battilana & Eva Boxenbaum
Harvard Business School Working Paper 08-096:
This paper analyzes the literature that has been published on institutional entrepreneurship since Paul DiMaggio introduced the notion in 1988. Based on a systematic selection and analysis of articles, the paper outlines an emerging consensus on the definition and process of institutional...
This paper analyzes the literature that has been published on institutional entrepreneurship since Paul DiMaggio introduced the notion in 1988. Based on a systematic selection and analysis of articles, the paper outlines an emerging consensus on the definition and process of institutional...
November 2007
Learning as an Aspect of Changing Practice
Klaus Nielsen
In this paper it is argued that learning in practice is situated in processes of conflictual cooperation. The paper gives a short outline of human rationality as a matter of following plans and it is argued how this perspective is mirrored in some of the dominant conventional learning theories. Inspired by Lave and Wenger’s (1991) approach to...
November 2007
Developing Praxis in Conflictual Cooperation
Erik Axel
The present and the ensuing chapter argue that change and learning are two related aspects of praxis. The present chapter will investigate the relation between developing praxis and its organization, while the ensuing will investigate the relation between learning and changing praxis.
November 2007
Concrete Innovations: Prefabrication in Denmark and France
Eva Boxenbaum & Thibault Daudigeos
The point of departure for this paper is an interesting divergence in the market creation for prefabricated elements in Denmark and France. This technology, regarded as highly innovative in the 1950s, lost market shares in France in the late 1950s and 1960s while the market for it continued to grow in Denmark in the same period. We explore five...
November 2007
The traditional standard contracts - do they deserve their status as the black sheep in Lean Construction?
Kenneth Brinch Jensen
Summing up, there are 3 objectives in this paper:
- Question Ballard & Howell (2005), Miles & Howell (1997) interpretation of relational contracts
- Question the hypotheses on changed contract forms as premises to reaching lean ideals
- Exploring relational contracting theory mechanisms as well as agency theory mechanisms, proposing...
- Question Ballard & Howell (2005), Miles & Howell (1997) interpretation of relational contracts
- Question the hypotheses on changed contract forms as premises to reaching lean ideals
- Exploring relational contracting theory mechanisms as well as agency theory mechanisms, proposing...
November 2007
Budget-variances and circulating accountability: Mobilising the budget in a construction project
Annie Bekke Kjær & Jan Mouritsen
This paper is concerned with an unfavourable budget variance of almost 30%. The budget variance is a simple mathematical achievement: It is the difference between a budget and realised results in cost, revenues, profits or spending. It requires an initial budget sum and a later accounting statement. The 30% is a spending variance. There is time...
November 2007
The Architecture of Success and Failure in Construction
Mette Løth Frederiksen & Kristian Kreiner
How are project achievement and project success related?
The paper builds on research conducted on successful projects. It is observed that successful projects do not necessarily end on time, on budget and on targeted utility. If this is a fact, how can we explain that some projects are being scandalized on the basis of such underperformance,...
The paper builds on research conducted on successful projects. It is observed that successful projects do not necessarily end on time, on budget and on targeted utility. If this is a fact, how can we explain that some projects are being scandalized on the basis of such underperformance,...
November 2007
Construction Matters: The Qualqulative Role of project Management
Kjell Tryggestad
Within the literature the ‘project manager’ is often referred to as a rational and powerful person with a clear objective. The project manager and other actors in the building process are recognized when they perform these roles. The roles and their internal structure are assumed to be stable properties of the actors.
This paper aims to enrich...
This paper aims to enrich...
July 2007
Constructing buildings and ambitions – and folding market time
Kjell Tryggestad
Can technical objects have ambitions? Or is it only humans that can? And how do ambitions emerge and become a possession? The aim of this paper is to inquire into this question on the emergence and distribution of ambitions. The inquiry is furthered by a case based investigation of the skyscraper Turning Torso in Malmö Sweden.
July 2007
Constructing the Client in Architectural Competition. An Etnographic Study of Revealed Strategies.
Kristian Kreiner
This essay describes and analyzes architectural teams as they prepare their design proposals in architectural competitions. It focuses on the routines and heuristics involved, not least in relation to the mental and social construction of the client’s preferences, the design task, and the rules and conditions of the competition.
It seeks to...
It seeks to...
May 2007
Constructing power; powering construction
Stewart Clegg
While power is unavoidable in organizational life it does not have to be a negative experience. Two approaches to power, familiar from the social and political science literature, are contrasted. These are a view of power as positive and negative, respectively. Following this presentation, two empirical encounters with construction will be...
January 2007
Strategic Choices in Unknowable Worlds
Kristian Kreiner
This paper explores ways in which the strategies that guide architects in architectural competitions may be evaluated ex ante. It starts by constructing a simulation model that shows that ex ante evaluations of strategies are in principle possible. In spite of the fundamentally stochastic nature of the model, we are able to differentiate stable...
December 2006
Architects in the 21st century – Agents of Change?
Marianne Stang Våland
This article presents a generalized discussion of American and Dutch architectural positions.
November 2006
Architectural Competitions
Kristian Kreiner
This is a case study of an architectural competition. It documents and discusses the various processes involved in selecting the winning entry.
November 2006
Budgeting, Risk and Inter-organisational Politics: Assembling the Budget of Animal House
Annie Bekke Kjær & Jan Mouritsen
This paper discusses budgeting as a practice in the construction industry. It explains budget making thorough relationships between the budget-amount, reputation and time.
All budgeting work is inter-organisational because the actors that inform budgeting come from near and afar in time and space. Politics is concerned with the formation of...
All budgeting work is inter-organisational because the actors that inform budgeting come from near and afar in time and space. Politics is concerned with the formation of...
November 2006
Constructing buildings and ambitions – The Turning Torso case
Kjell Tryggestad
Can buildings have ambitions? Or is it only humans that can? And how do ambitions emerge and become a possession? The aim of this paper is to inquire into this question on the emergence and distribution of ambitions. The inquiry is furthered by a case based investigation of the skyscraper Turning Torso in Malmö Sweden. The inquiry accounts for the...
July 2006
The Communicational Aspects of the Building Process - A Necessary Expansion of the Scope
Charlotte Krenk
Co-operation, coordination, and clear communication are aspects of the building process related to human interaction, which are now gaining priority within the field. The growing interest in the human interaction aspect of the building process can be seen as a sign of recognition of the need for adjusting to the change in the marked conditions....
June 2006
DOUBLE-LOOP FALSE LEARNING
Kristian Kreiner
The micro-processes of learning under uncertainty
Paper submitted to EGOS 2006 – sub theme 35: The Social Complexity of Organizational Learning: Dynamics of micro-practices, processes and routines.
In this paper Kristian Kreiner analyse an example of a temporary collapse of the joint effort before the building was successfully completed. A...
Paper submitted to EGOS 2006 – sub theme 35: The Social Complexity of Organizational Learning: Dynamics of micro-practices, processes and routines.
In this paper Kristian Kreiner analyse an example of a temporary collapse of the joint effort before the building was successfully completed. A...
May 2006
Towards a Research Design for the Emergence of New Practices
Eva Boxenbaum
This paper contrasts three explanatory frameworks on how and why new practices emerge. The three frameworks are sociological institutionalism, evolutionary economics, and new institutional economics. The paper also makes suggestions for a research design that could test their relative explanatory power.
April 2006
Managing system products: A case study of prefabricated building parts
Majken Merete Gorm in collaboration with Kristian Kreiner
This paper examines the business of supplying prefabricated system products, i.e. multitechnological building parts which can be cost-effectively delivered in variable designs. Certain aspects of construction work support the spread of such products, including an often mentioned complexity on construction sites and a prevalent tendency towards...
September 2005
Knowledge Management Challenges in the Construction Sector
Kristian Kreiner
My analysis of the knowledge management challenges in the Danish construction sector is based on the following assumptions:
1. Construction is a sector of unique characteristics, e.g. in the form of temporal structures, highly complex processes, and high environmental turbulence.
2. These characteristics influence the possibilities for...
1. Construction is a sector of unique characteristics, e.g. in the form of temporal structures, highly complex processes, and high environmental turbulence.
2. These characteristics influence the possibilities for...