Importing knowledge from without the organization

8.2.1 Cincinnati

Simple changes within Cincinnati seemed to be being imposed, as it seemed to struggle to encourage those not in a management position to bring forward ideas.

Therefore, most imported knowledge seemed to come from management and be imposed upon the organization as this quote from the focus group suggests:

“But a lot of [non management staff] don't [bring forward knowledge/ideas]

and just let [middle management] do it.”

It may be that Cincinnati believed it was encouraging ideas, whereas it may be acting sincerely but inadvertently killing off ideas. Koulopoulus (2010) noted methods which organizations used to inadvertently stifle innovative ideas whilst thinking they were actually encouraging them. Those methods included: Believing innovation will just

‘happen’; telling everyone to ‘think outside the box’ then holding a brainstorming session, and then not following up; creating an ‘obstacle course’ for ideas; viewing

‘different’ and ‘new’ as bad; being afraid of failure; innovating only when you need to; leaving innovation up to the ‘innovators’; encouraging everyone to drop any and all ideas into an electronic submission box.

8.2.2 Tennessee

Tennessee had made a concerted effort over the years to observe improvements in the way other industries work. As one of their directors noted:

“…one of the things that I did do was to look to what other industries were doing and actually found that the oil and gas industry were actually leading the way at that time.”

Such research had largely come through the efforts of Tennessee’s directors and did not, however, appear to be part of the contemporary organizational culture. The one organization who it appeared to aspire to be like was BP and it had spent considerable time looking at how BP worked and tried to copy its operational ideas and adapt them for Tennessee’s own uses. It had observed BP building oil rigs and realized how similar in principle this was to constructing buildings. The research with Tennessee was carried out before the BP Gulf of Mexico disaster and therefore further comment on this comparison is beyond the scope of this thesis.

In addition, Tennessee’ directors had tried to bring some ideas from the automotive manufacturing industry. The MD stated that:

“…we’ve had a guy from Toyota who came into the industry and started practicing as a consultant in the 1990s who brought some of the ‘Just in Time’ sort of stuff. Some of the ‘Kaizen’…”

Much had been written about the construction industry being more like the automotive industry and certainly the automotive industry had provided excellent examples of how to import learning successfully from other industries, such as Hyundai (Kim, 1998), but Tennessee had observed that not everything was realistically transferable from automotive processes. For example, Lean techniques which Jorgensen & Emmitt (2008) suggested required much translation before application in construction.

8.2.3 Indianapolis

Indianapolis also looked to the automotive industry to help it import knowledge, and by extension, learning. It looked more along the lines of collaborative buying, collaborative working, value engineering, researching different materials and how the automotive industry markets itself. Its directors suggested:

“…the car industry is a great example of where people can work together, collaborative buying. You know I’m surprised they haven’t gone further in the car industry? Collaborative actual production lines…”

This was, however, very much stated in the ‘how would that look’ stage and was clearly still embryonic thinking on Indianapolis’ part. Where Indianapolis was implementing technology from other industries was in the arena of three dimensional modelling. Whilst this model was not new to the construction industry, it was still not as widely used as in manufacturing. Indianapolis had made it a bigger part of what it did, particularly within the team that worked for Miami. These varied approaches suggest a high absorption capacity (following Kim, 1998) for imported knowledge at Indianapolis.

Further to the directors’ approach, members of the Indianapolis focus group tried to bring in ideas from construction industry press, with one focus group member stating

“…there's industry magazines and industry information…” and from consultants with whom Indianapolis worked. An example of this importation was the modular build student accommodation where it had employed the expertise of a subcontractor; it was using this knowledge to help Miami with its push towards wider utilization of modular build. In addition, Indianapolis looked to import as much knowledge from its customers as possible. It viewed this relationship, for example, as a marriage of skills between the retail mind of Miami and the construction mind of Indianapolis. It had used the skills marriage to integrate these two bodies of knowledge within its own organization and to pass the knowledge down the supply chain.

8.2.4 Chicago

Chicago’s directors pointed to the recruitment of new people as the best way of importing new knowledge into the business from outside. Chicago routinely externalized new recruits’ knowledge about the way their previous employer purchased from, and organized, its supply chain and how it controlled the business.

One of the directors noted:

“…last year, we recruited quite a lot of people. And I think we learned a lot during that process as well. If nothing else we learned about how other large contractors buy things, who its - what its supply chains look like, you know what sort of control systems it tend to have…”

The recruitment process allows it periodically to review and improve its own systems.

This meant that Chicago viewed an employee turnover of zero as a weakness to the business as it curtailed the ability to bring in that stream of learning. Palekar (2006) advocates recruitment as vital for importing new organizational knowledge and learning.

8.2.5 Dallas

Much of Dallas’ external knowledge acquisition appeared to be borne either out of necessity to research a construction technique or product. The other main driver tended to be customers such as Washington challenging it to adopt things that its peer group were already doing. Dallas did, however, have its own design group which was specifically in place to research such knowledge opportunities. Dallas directors noted:

“…[Dallas design group] imports certain things into the Washington team because one of our engineers will say “Oh actually we’ve been trialling this, we do this sort of thing. Have you ever thought about using it on such and such?”

What was not clear was how proactive Dallas’ design group was in terms of whether it actively seeks new knowledge unilaterally or reacts to internal knowledge requests.

Such an assessment of the proactive-reactive knowledge acquisition position adopted by different organizations was conducted by Saka-Helmhout (2007) who suggested that it was the action of actors rather than the organizational structure which determines the acquisition of new learning. Therefore, it may be that Dallas had a particularly proactive head of design group.

In addition, Dallas’ management procedures were developed by importing some of its customers’ procedures. Such importation aided alignment between Dallas and its customers and highlighted that it was willing to learn and develop its business through learning. An example given was Washington’s ‘RAGB’ system, which the Dallas MD was even using on a personal level during a house extension project:

“…there’s a snagging list to be resolved and I’ve filled it in red, amber, green and blue.”

Importing actual business operation processes directly from customers appears a novel departure from current writings about value stream alignment (c/f Adamides et al, 2008) or the alignment of IT to reduce inventory in the supply chain (c/f Piplani &

Fu, 2005).

Perhaps Dallas’ best source of learning could be attributed to its undercover work, as noted by one of the directors:

“…we have an unmarked van that can sometimes go on to someone else’s site, have a little look around if I’m particularly interested in something…”

Whether this could be noted as a questionable source of learning is a moot point; it did not appear to quite come under the heading of industrial espionage (c/f Samli &

Jacobs, 2003). Another useful source of learning appeared to be its strategic hiring, which was similar in approach to that of Chicago when discussed with the directors, one commented:

“…I do sit down and consider people’s backgrounds and think “Ah I haven’t had a [contractor] man for a long time. I wonder what [contractors] are up to these days?”

Dallas’ risk management policy was learned from the petrochemicals industry. The reasoning was that without an excellent risk management policy, the petrochemicals industry would kill people and therefore Dallas’ directors decided to import its risk philosophy, with one director commenting: “…when they have a bad day they blow people up so its risk management provides a very important function…” which it has adapted for construction industry use.

8.2.6 Kansas

Kansas imported some new joinery knowledge through the hiring of a key individual and in the view of the directors this had been successful in the development of its joinery business. One director commented:

“…he brought in these new flat pack grommets and key clamps and god knows what. And, well first of all I said ‘God, [name] you know we’re a traditional joinery company, we’re not going to be messing about with that crap.’ But it’s actually fantastic stuff…”

In addition, Kansas simply viewed what other contractors were doing when it worked alongside those contractors on site. Furthermore, there was formal knowledge exchange that occurred in the contractors’ forum run by Oakland set for the specific purpose of allowing contractors to learn from one another. Another forum set up with other contractors was the ‘Toolbox Talk’, which was a talk to transfer expert knowledge about a specialist area, which Kansas asked its subcontractors to do when these subcontractors were carrying out a specialist service. Toolbox talks were noted by Cameron & Duff (2007) as a key learning element in the construction industry