Strategic development of high performance teams in large-scale construction projects
Abstract
Construction projects are usually delivered by inter-organization project teams comprised of the human capital of the owner, the designer and the construction firms. High performance teams (HPTs) or partnering is a frequent strategy used by practitioners to more effectively utilize such human capital. Prior research has investigated the characteristics and team-building processes that have a positive effect on the successful development of team performance. However, these studies have almost exclusively enumerated these characteristics and procedures and did not explore why the stakeholders in a construction project did or did not engage in these practices. Other studies have explored the use of social network analysis (SNA) as a tool to measure the performance of a team. However, no studies have explored the use of social network analysis combined with organizational diagnostic tools which may determine the underlying causes of potential issues within a project team's network. This study utilizes the jobs-to-be-done framework to complement social network analyses and to develop an understanding of the social, functional and emotional objectives of the owner, design, and construction stakeholders in large-scale construction projects. Ethnographic observations were conducted in two large-scale healthcare projects under highly regulated environments to understand the jobs-to-be-done of each project's stakeholders and its relationships to the project's social network. Further, the jobs-to-be-done of the owner, the designer and the construction firms were identified and classified in jobs-to-be-done trees using concepts from alliance capabilities research. Multi-stakeholder jobs-to-be-done matrices were developed to study the interactions between the jobs-to-be-done of the stakeholders. In addition, a SNA case study, which included exploration of the metrics of network density, average degree, vertex degree and centrality and structural equivalence, was developed to describe the information that such an analysis can generate. The findings of this study suggest that the presence or absence of links within a social network can be explained using the jobs-to-be-done framework. The use of an analytical framework, such as social network analysis, in combination with a framework that explores the drivers behind the actions of stakeholders allows stakeholders to identify the structural patterns of social ties and the underlying drivers of organizational dynamics in large-scale construction projects.
Degree
M.S.C.E.
Advisors
Sinfield, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Management|Civil engineering|Organization Theory
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