Newly graduated students’ role as ambassadors for digitalisation in construction firms

Mattias Jacobsson and Henrik C. J. Linderoth

Construction Management and Economics, 2021, vol. 39, issue 9, 759-772

Abstract: This study furthers the understanding of newly graduated students’ role in construction firms’ efforts to better use digital technologies. The aim is to increase the understanding of the role that newly graduated students play in digital transformation in construction firms. The study is based on 18 semi-structured interviews and three focus group interviews with new graduates and construction managers in Sweden’s three largest construction firms. The results show that despite having relevant skills, new graduates play a limited role when they are first recruited, as they struggle to close the “knowledge-experience gap”. Gradually, whilst familiarising themselves with how things are done, they act as ambassadors for digitalisation and contribute to the modification of senior colleagues’ beliefs about how technology could be used. However, this development is hampered by them getting caught-up in messy everyday activities, which forces them – like other staff – to prioritise urgent issues over important ones. An observed lack of established practices for how to make use of students’ skills hampers their involvement further. It has been suggested that urgency might not only be a problem, but a solution in that it is possible to increase the sense of urgency around new way of working with digital technologies.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01446193.2021.1955398 (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:39:y:2021:i:9:p:759-772

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

DOI: 10.1080/01446193.2021.1955398

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 ().