Knowledge sharing in a fragmented construction industry: On the hindsight

TLDR: In this paper, the authors investigated the factors that inhibit and facilitate knowledge sharing among fragmented firms in a construction industry context and uncovered five main factors of knowledge sharing: working relationships, nature of the shared knowledge (Unintimidating Knowledge), policy and procedures, contract, and power.

Abstract: The main motivation behind this study is to ascertain the factors that inhibit and facilitate knowledge sharing among fragmented firms in a construction industry context. By and large, the augmentation of small and medium enterprises (SME) vis-a-vis to the tapering of the large ones causes fragmentation of construction industry. With the lack of collaboration between firms, knowledge sharing might be difficult to achieve. An initial literature review has been undertaken and in-depth interviews with top management individuals have been conducted to explore how project teams share their knowledge within a fragmented environment. The results uncovered five main factors of knowledge sharing: Working relationships, nature of the shared knowledge (Unintimidating Knowledge), policy and procedures, contract, and power. Inter-alia, other factors collected from the reviewed literature: Information communication technology (ICT), partnering, and knowledge management (KM) will be used to build up a conceptual model, which facilitates knowledge sharing in construction. For the purpose of validity and generalization, the model will be tested in a quantitative study in future research.