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doi: 10.1080/01446193.2016.1272759pmid: N/A
AbstractAt least since 1980, there has been a practically continuous, but somewhat fragmented discussion on the relevance of management research. This discussion has addressed practically all fields of management; here, besides general management, operations management, project management and construction management are examined in more detail. Although many different proposals have been made to rectify the situation, no definitive resolution has been found. In this paper, it is argued that prior analyses have not reached the root causes of the irrelevance problem. By an analysis of the recent history of management research, the following novel findings are reached. First, the root cause of the irrelevance is argued to lie in the 1959 reports on American business education, written by Pierson and Gordon & Howell. Second, while the proposed direction in the 1959 reports was deficient in several ways, the rejection of production as an integral part of organizations and management has been perhaps the most damaging feature of those reports. Third, current research on management suffers from a variety of immediate causes for irrelevance, insufficiently recognized by the scholarly community. It is suggested that reaching the root causes for irrelevance will facilitate finding suitable cures.
doi: 10.1080/01446193.2016.1270462pmid: N/A
AbstractDespite the proliferation of work within construction management that draws upon management and organizational theory, two omissions stand out from the body of published work: the absence of any real debate about the values of rigour and relevance in research; and the under-use of dominant perspectives in business and management research (such as institutional theory) to frame construction management and organizational issues. Drawing specifically upon the ideas of institutional logics and institutional work, this paper explores the tensions, ironies and contradictions of the rigour-relevance debate; and the challenges and opportunities facing construction management research (CMR) and its institutions in furthering management and organizational research agendas. In doing so, attention is directed to the complex, contested and changing nature of the knowledge base within the business and management field; as well as key differences between that community of practice and CMR.
doi: 10.1080/01446193.2016.1272760pmid: N/A
AbstractThe increased interest for materiality as an analytical category in the social sciences provide construction management and economics scholar with new possibilities to better exploit the detailed empirical data being collected in the construction industry and related fields. While constructivist and other idealist theories have tended to dominate the social sciences since at least the mid-sixties when the social sciences sought to release itself from the methodological dogmatism of the “hard sciences”, materiality is now recognized and subject to theorizing within different social science traditions. This article advocates a broad engagement with materiality within construction management research and presents a series of analytical concepts and empirical studies that stress how the built environment that human beings inhabit is far from passive, inert and stable as common sense thinking easily misleads analysts to believe. An image of materiality that recognizes an agential, dynamic and more fluid nature of materiality is thus arguably conducive to an intellectually stimulating construction management scholarship.
Sacks, Rafael; Seppänen, Olli; Priven, Vitaliy; Savosnick, Jonathan
doi: 10.1080/01446193.2016.1274417pmid: N/A
AbstractA new, process-oriented approach is needed in construction management. Lean construction emphasizes the concept of flow as a way to understand production in construction, yet there is still no accepted metric for measurement of flow quality. This has hampered research and practice. The proposed construction flow index (CFI) is a composite measure that reflects the quality of production flow in repetitive construction projects. It incorporates measures of work continuity for crews, processing continuity for locations, production rate variation, amounts of work in progress, interference and operation sequence logic. Expert knowledge was acquired to establish weights for the CFI parameters, and its use was tested in evaluating the planned and actual production flows for a number of projects. Project managers can use the CFI to evaluate the quality of their construction plans and to measure and communicate production flow quality status to trade crews, enabling management and improvement of production flow. The CFI is also a valuable tool for construction research. The CFI challenges traditional construction management by measuring flow, where standard practice only measures transformation (earned value). It challenges lean construction practice using the Last Planner System, suggesting that the percent plan complete measure of plan reliability is insufficient.
Hallowell, Matthew R.; Alexander, Dillon; Gambatese, John A.
doi: 10.1080/01446193.2016.1274418pmid: N/A
AbstractAlthough the quantity and quality of safety risk data have improved in recent years, available data do not link directly to natural principles and are, therefore, limited in their application and scientific extension. The present study aims to test the hypothesis that the quantity and intensity of energy observable prior to an incident predicts the severity of the incident. The hypothesis is built upon the theory that energy is translated to an injury through uncontrolled release of the energy, transfer of the energy to the human body and the vulnerability of the body and associated protective equipment. To test the hypothesis, a multi-phase experiment was conducted. First, over 500 injury reports were gathered from national databases and private companies. For each report, the leading information describing the work operations and environment and the lagging information describing the injury were extracted, separated and isolated. Second, the magnitude of the energy was estimated using only leading information. Once energy magnitude was quantified, the distribution was compared across injury severity levels using analysis of variance tests. As hypothesized, energy magnitude is a strong predictor of injury severity. Although computationally intensive, energy intensity, defined as the magnitude of energy divided by the area of contact between an object and the human body, showed strong predictive validity. This research indicates that energy-based safety risk analysis has predictive validity and is a promising line of scientific inquiry with the potential to increase our understanding of the natural phenomena that contribute to injuries.
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