Harvesting and Managing Knowledge in Construction

of prescriptive models as a precursor to the more appropriate examination of challenges and alternatives to the planned approach! That leads to the discussion of several emergent models of change and how managers may, advisedly, endeavour to accommodate and deal with change. It might have been helpful to give more attention to the research of Harris and Ogbonna (e.g. 2002) who determine issues in organizational change yielding important (often unanticipated) outcomes. ‘Considering the development of strategic options’ constitutes Chapter 10. It begins with consideration of Ansoff’s matrix, progresses to brief consideration of Porter’s model, use of resources, according to Hamel and Prahalad (1994), the value chain, SWOT, RBV, and core competences. Criteria for judging strategy are discussed and use of scenarios is noted. A more extensive section concerns ‘the importance of context’ in which various bases for formulation and judging strategy are examined. Chapter 11 concerns ‘Implementing the strategy— issues, dilemmas and delivery of strategic outcomes’. The examination of differences between ‘intended’ and ‘realized’ strategy is useful and important. The latter sections address dealing with failure, causes of failure and recovery possibilities. However, the rather brief examination of turbulent markets belies the importance of such an environment for construction organizations. Finally, Chapter 12 ‘Turning theory into practice— some empirical examples of strategy in construction organizations’ is an assembly of perspectives from a wide variety of practitioners, drawn from a very broad spectrum of organizations. As such, the content is highly variable as, it seems, the authors present what they see as important for the topic, rather than following issues from a prescriptive template. The chapter is a nice ending to the volume. The strength of this volume is the discussions of construction—it is worth reading. What is refreshing is the sub-themes of continuous change requiring perspective of emergence due to knowledge limitation and uncertainty—after all, managing must be forward-looking. That leads to a desire to remove the blame and claim ‘culture’, so often a feature of construction; and to educate personnel towards a different mindset—a becoming ontology—in which uncertainty and variability are regarded as natural and normal while certainty and planned outcomes are not!