The construction industry is currently experiencing accelerating developments concerning societal demands along with project complexity, internationalization and digitalization. In an attempt to grasp the consequences of these demands on productivity and innovation, this edited book addresses how innovation is likely to take place with a more long-term perspective on the construction sector.
While existing literature focuses on organizational discontinuity and fragmentation as the main reasons for the apparent lack of innovation in the industry, this book highlights the connectivity of construction actors, resources and activities as fundamental for understanding how innovation takes place.Through 15 empirically grounded chapters, the book shows how innovation is part of construction processes on various levels, including project, firm and industry, and that these innovation processes are characterized by organizational and technological connectivity over time.
Written by European business management scholars, the chapters cover empirical cases and examples from both a multi-organizational and a multi-international perspective in terms of covering the viewpoints of different industry actors and the contexts of several different European countries including: Sweden, Norway, the UK, Italy, France, Hungary and Poland. By illustrating how connectivity is part of innovation processes in the creation of single-product innovations, of various innovations within and across projects, as well as a fundamental aspect of the processes in which innovations cross nations, the book provides a new angle on how to understand construction innovation and where the industry might (or needs to) be heading next.
This book is essential reading for anyone interested in construction management, project management, engineering management, innovation studies, business and management studies.
Table of Contents:
- In the pursuit of a new understanding of innovation in the construction industry – the significance of connectivity
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Malena Ingemansson Havenvid, Åse Linné, Lena E. Bygballe and Chris Harty
- Forming innovative projects in sustainable construction – how socio-technical connectivity shapes the building project and its context
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Mårten Hugosson, Kristin Stevik, Per Søberg and Kjell Tryggestad
- Innovative effects in the Swedish construction sector – the case of BIM in the New Karolinska Solna Hospital project
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Åse Linné
- Entrepreneurial innovation in the construction sector: overcoming process discontinuities in projects – who’s in charge?
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Will Hughes and Lars Stehn
- Construction logistics innovation: tracing connectivity from activity interdependencies
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Kajsa Hulthén and Viktoria Sundquist
- Cross-fertilization among construction and clinical actors: the dynamics of health care construction projects
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Alessandra Tzannis, Silvia Biraghi and Rossella C. Gambetti
- Innovation among project islands – a question of handling interdependencies through bridging
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Malena Ingemansson Havenvid, Lena E. Bygballe and Håkan Håkansson
- Construction projects as vehicles for health care innovation?
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Judit Simon, Balázs Révész, Tibor Mandják, Zsuzsanna Szalkai, and Erzsébet Hetesi
- Innovation in strategic capabilities of municipal clients – some evidence from a Swedish case study
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Mårten Hugosson and Tomas Nord
- Organising communities for construction innovation - examples from the French and Swedish construction sectors
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Florence Crespin-Mazet, Malena Ingemansson Havenvid and Åse Linné
- The connectivity of domestic and international actors in product innovation – the case of Polish windows manufacturing
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Milena Ratajczak-Mrozek
- Narratives of innovation that address climate change agenda in the construction sector
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Natalya Sergeeva and Carmel Lindkvist
- Activity systems and innovation in project-based production: the case of construction
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Finn Orstavik
- Tracing the connectivity of innovation across time and space
Malena Ingemansson Havenvid, Åse Linné, Lena E. Bygballe and Chris Harty
