Fostering Crucial Insights: The Significance of Inter-Project Information Sharing and the Influence of Local and Organizational Cultures

The negative role of current organizational cultures and its implications for regional Contractors' performance

A substantial number of business researches and articles stress on the relationship between organizational culture and knowledge sharing attitude among employees and inter departments. Many experts argue that organizational culture have a significant influence on the long-term success of organizations. However, in field of Construction; which suffer from high level of bureaucracy and unique structures,?the highlights on this matter are rare especially on the ways to sharing the knowledge between the regional areas; in case of large corporates, or among the projects within same company.

For the GCC; a region that has mostly typical projects and fewer challenges compare to different part in the world, the viable lessons learnt and sharing knowledge' habits could be barley found or if so, its applied in a narrow ranges (i.e notifications or discussions about Health and Safety issues) .

A recent research conducted to examine operations variability in one of the largest and most excellent construction companies in region (operating in Middle east, east Europe and Africa with more than 100,000 staff) shows that over a decade :?

§????So many causes of projects failures have been continuously seen in several numbers of company's projects. The report noted that there were very few meetings held at the senior management level to discuss and chase the root causes of these repetitive failures..

§????In projects that involved design works, same design errors reported in 28% of its projects at the regional level, and 61% on its projects globally. Few actions were internally discussed at projects level.

§????The communications channels and amount are varied between the company's different areas and sometimes within?projects in the same area.

§????Although it had an online platform initiated to connect its employees and their experience around the world ( very rare in this part of world), 11% of its staff were registered, and out of them, 20% were only active!

§????Lessons learned process is not organized either controlled, it largely depends on the projects and on associated client’s formalities in most of cases.??

However, at the time many of middle east construction companies don’t have this luxury, company’s capability and advanced vision, yet a report criticize the negative role of a company culture, its areas and project sub-cultures in relation to the sharing of knowledge. During the 10 years’ time (research examination period) , the research’s conclusion indicate that knowledge sharing may have a significant influence on the long-term success of organization as well as its project performance if it applied in systematic and progression manner. The company?as per the report would be able to generate around 13 million USD of savings if it avoided the variability caused by past project mistakes, which mostly were associated with contracts and designs.?

Another important point was concerning the level and the smoothness of sharing the knowledge and experience between different generations of company’s engineers. The company; that market itself as big family, has reported internal issues associated with lack of consistency between its senior staff and their fresh graduated employees (under development),?this translated into high rates of “Employee turnover”, especially among those had excellent university records. Positively noted in one of the correspondences between the HR and the Area managers of the case company,?the point of fresh graduates turnover was highly debated as it has may affect the company’s growth and potentially its competitive advantage on long-term..

As said, the knowledge is power and the power nowadays is where these companies' position in the market.

What and How Organization's Culture Should Look Like ?

According to the leading social author Schein (1990), the organization's culture consists elements of practices, symbols, values and assumptions that the members of the organization share with regard to appropriate behavior and overall integrated objectives and performances . In the context of project management, PMBOK (2017) has defined the organizational culture as comprising the values and behaviors of a company’s employees. These values may include but not limited to : overall tone of the shared employee experience, shared visions, mission statements and expectations, motivation and reward systems, views on leadership and authority relationships, work ethic, codes of conduct, environmental factors, social norms, risk tolerance. Both definitions in common stress in visible role of the values. The set of values in any company provide the rich understanding of social norms that define the rules or context for social interaction through which people act and communicate in that company, it influence as result the knowledge sharing behaviors needed to leverage knowledge among individuals. After some time, such embedded values within organizational culture create default norms for what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ and what could be avoided in future.

Unfortunately, this rosy image of the organizational culture is barely found in the construction industry. Construction companies in general invest hugely on systems that define exactly the productivity measures of its staff and weather their projects are on track or not. In contrast, they ignore the underlying factors prompting the productivity and accordingly their projects’ performance!

At sub levels, the vast majority of Area and project managers think that the projects under their leadership is?an exclusive property, by essence if whatever kind of problem appear they will leave it for themselves or between their subordinates. "The military looks like " organizational hierarchy in construction encourages the selfishness, demotivation and sometime creates in indirect way the atmosphere for employees to harm the company’s principle and values.?Nevertheless, still you can find cases walk against the stream. A construction company called “South Bay Construction” as example, illustrate how its simple/ impressive culture and commination channels leads for how successfully they are now, and how it will help their business in the future.

Technology companies were among the earliest which recognize the role of effective communication & knowledge sharing within organizational culture . Still not late for construction business leaders to exploit IT companies initiative, assess?benefits and pick whatever fit their organizations. Below infographic generated by HumanresourcesMBA.net simplify the culture structure in some of most successful companies in the world.

Source: HumanResourcesMBA.net

?Knowledge and Experience Sharing

Many experts emphasize on the importance of quality data and information speed being transferred at horizontal and vertical level within organization, this in principle should lead for an effective utilization of knowledge and accordingly enhance the organization competitiveness. The Construction industry that arguably is a function of resources and know-how, is highly competitive, rapidly changing and knowledge-intensive in general.

Compared to other industries, the knowledge elements in construction compromise usually wider scope, it may refer as example to systematic lesson learned, overview of dispute cases (Contracts, Finance, Suppliers ..etc.), method statements, productivity enhancement tips, design errors, minutes of meetings, post-project reports in a form of stories, advice, contextual facts, client financial history, capacity and it professional level?..etc.?The sources of knowledge in Construction involved also more parties, as example, project team members, contractors, subcontractors, clients, community, regulations, international firms, your rivals and other stakeholders. Its wroth to note that a well-setup exchange and distribution channels of organizational and project knowledge is very crucial to ensure the team access / utilization of these knowledge at the right time and the right place.

However, at project level, the knowledge sharing depends largely on project leaders, and on the social communication levels between project stakeholders (as governed by the company’s internal systems and policies, and through different explicit information channels such as project documentation). Our concerns here in this article is at the inter-projects portfolio, where the knowledge sharing is debatably not rich/energetic and systematic as it found within project level. The knowledge sharing process through which a project could be affected by the experience of another project either positively or negatively is rarely embedded within many contractors' structure or cultures. The weak communication links between projects, time pressure, underestimate the benefits, lack of encouragement and motivation that hamper knowledge sharing make the process of inter-project knowledge sharing almost non-existent. This?challenging task needs a lot of attention from the business leaders.

According to Davenport and Prusak (1998), the knowledge at the corporate levels?is looked like as a fluid mix of framed experience, values, contextual information, and expert insight that provides a framework for evaluating and incorporating new experiences and information, which originates in the minds of knowledge holders and is transferred into documents, organizational routines, processes, practices, and norms.?This process as defined by Prusak shall be looked at carefully, and to find a ways to systemize and embedded such process into the current traditional Construction organizations’ s culture which they are in needs for it more than any time in past.?

Simple Ways to Create a Culture of Knowledge Transfer and Sharing

Way : Break down the walls between the projects and project’s teams

How : Share emails that may contains lessons between project managers, stress always that is not scandal or personal problems and every one can face but important to learn, urge as many as project managers for brain storm sessions to find solution, lessons learned process in mandatory in all project life cycle stages, encourage project managers to ask for help when needed, annual and semiannual meetings having high level project teams to discuss critical issues of projects, hall meeting, food gathering..etc.

Who : CEO, Area Managers, Project Directors and Managers.

Way : Build communication system that works !?

How : Emails and traditional archive rooms are not always right way, a regional leader CCC has an example its own internet based communication system and data based that make its team around the world to communicate easily, store the method statements, share the knowledge and occasions. Senior managers should encourage their team from time to time to use and apply. This way approved to be crucial for learning curve in many companies in other industries and it shall work with construction.

Who : Area Managers, Project Directors and Managers, HR and IT Managers.

Way : Invest in your people !?

How : Training sessions to develop their communication skills and to demonstrate the company values, incentives and bonuses for those actively spotting the problems before it happened.?

Who : Area Managers, Project Directors and Managers, HR Managers.

Way : Strategic Thinking !?

How : Appoint the right people in right places.?

Who : All levels.

Still many ways can be implemented, so please suggest on the comments down your thoughts !?

Conclusion

The culture in project based firms (especially the big Contracting companies) encourage high levels of interdependency / decentralization in different dimensions at project levels. At time this could give more space for the project managers to control and manage their projects in more efficient way, yet this creates complications at an inter-project level, related to knowledge utilization and sharing. In the absence of proper organizational culture that promote knowledge sharing between all stakeholder it’s very difficult for companies to survives in nowadays highly competitive environment. The market has many cases for companies that fall because of their lack to avoid their past projects mistake and bad experience.?The recent bridge collapse in ITALY and BP oil spill back to 2010 cases shown how simple mistakes (which it could be avoided if there was clarity in communication and knowledge transfer between stakeholders) could lead for harmful consequences at both social and company’s levels.

Disclaimer

The views and opinions expressed herein are my own and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of my employer or any other group or individual. The information provided is collected from different sources of literatures, media news and only intended to be general discussion to the public. It is not intended to take the place of the written guidelines and regulations or professional advice that is specific to any company’s situation. Finally, for any citation to this article, please don't forget to mention the source and the author's name.

Haitham Khader, Friday Sept 28th 2018