Learning from knowledge management and trans-organizational innovations in diverse project management environments

We move towards the next millennium with a growing body of clients who are knowledgeable about the type of products, services and technologies required for their businesses. This increasing body of clients with higher levels of expectations and needs creates challenges for providers of clients’ services and products. Organizations have to compete to ‘win work’ and satisfy the needs and expectations of clients. Evidence from governments (nationally and internationally), research and practice also suggests that organizations will be faced with increasing competition. There is also the view that organizations that survive and have competed favourably in the late 1990s have largely done so by being innovative, by having a good customer focus, and by being able to manage the ‘knowledge’ and intellectual capital of their workforce. This trend is likely to continue well into the new millennium. The paper reviews the literature on knowledge management and innovation from a ‘project management’ context. It puts forward a framework describing the relevant research issues and methodologies under consideration in an on-going preliminary research study which attempts to investigate how organizations involved in ‘project management’ activities learn from innovations and knowledge management. The paper argues, from a research point of view, that benefits could be derived from employing a combination of research strategies, including cognitive mapping methodology, in eliciting relevant information on innovation and knowledge management from practitioners from different industrial settings who are involved in ‘project management’ activities. In terms of improving value-added to construction clients and for improving construction competitiveness, the paper concludes that the construction industry can benefit from a concerted effort directed at knowledge management. There is very little evidence of empirical studies directed towards this area, especially from a human resource perspective. There is therefore ample scope for research and education in the construction industry in the knowledge management domain.