Disseminating project knowledge within construction organisations : a case study of sri lankan construction industry

Abstract

Construction industry delivers its products through project-based settings. Thus, project knowledge is central in construction context, which needs to be disseminated within organisations in order to improve organisation performance and learning. There should be specific tools embedded into organisations to disseminate this project knowledge. This study was aimed at exploring how construction organisations in Sri Lanka currently disseminate project knowledge and thereby develop good practice guidelines for effective dissemination. Based on extant literature this study developed .hypotheses, which were tested through five case studies taking large-scale contracting organsitaion as the unit of analysis. Mainly semi-structured interviews were used to collect data while content analysis was used to analyse data. The case studies findings revealed that construction project knowledge is mainly disseminated through personalisation strategies, rather than through codification strategies within organisations. The study concludes that construction organisations should pay careful attention to enhance pesonalisation strategies while using codification strategies in an appropriate balance.