Managing short-term efficiency and long-term development through industrialized construction

Per Erik Eriksson, Stefan Olander, Henrik Szentes and Kristian Widén

Construction Management and Economics, 2014, vol. 32, issue 1-2, 97-108

Abstract: There is a strong need for a productive and innovative infrastructure sector because of its monetary value and importance for the development of a sustainable society. An increased level of industrialization is often proposed as a way to improve efficiency and productivity in construction projects. In prior literature on industrialized construction, there are however neither many studies addressing more long-term aspects of innovation and sustainability nor studies within the infrastructure context. Organizational theory suggests that firms need to be ambidextrous and focus on both long-term exploration of new knowledge and technologies and short-term exploitation of current knowledge and technologies, in order to achieve sustainable development. Therefore, an investigation of how both short-term exploitative performance objectives and long-term explorative development can be addressed when implementing industrialized construction in infrastructure projects was conducted. A case study consisting of four infrastructure projects shows that the main drivers for increased industrialization are of an exploitative nature, focusing on cost savings and increased productivity through more efficient processes. The main barriers to increased industrialization are however related to both explorative and exploitative activities. Hence, by managing the identified barriers and explicitly addressing both exploitation and exploration, industrialized construction can improve both short-term efficiency and long-term innovation and sustainability.

Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01446193.2013.814920 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:conmgt:v:32:y:2014:i:1-2:p:97-108

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RCME20

DOI: 10.1080/01446193.2013.814920

Access Statistics for this article

Construction Management and Economics is currently edited by Will Hughes

More articles in Construction Management and Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().