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Assessing construction innovation: theoretical and practical perspectives

Construction Economics and Building

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Title Assessing construction innovation: theoretical and practical perspectives
 
Creator Davis, Peter
Gajendran, Thayaparan
Vaughan, Josephine
Owi, Toinpre
 
Subject —
Innovation discourse, the construction industry, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), construction innovation, types of innovation.
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Description Innovation is key for productivity improvement and advancements in different sectors of the economy, including the construction sector.  The criticism of the slow pace of innovation in construction industry may be unwarranted, considering the structure of the industry and nature of the construction business.  The loosely coupled nature of firms, mostly Small and Medium Enterprises (SME’s), delivering ‘projects’ through partial engagement, together with the distinction between the project innovation and firm innovation makes it difficult to extract innovations in a meaningful way.  The problem also lies in conceptualising, defining, articulating and assessing innovation in construction.  The literature is replete with research into construction innovation, however, there is limited research into understanding how innovation is perceived and narrated in practice.  The paper aims to explore how innovation is assessed and narrated in construction, specifically analysing theory and practice perspectives.  A theoretical model was constructed from a structured literature review illustrating existing discourse and narratives of construction innovation assessment.  A qualitative analysis of ‘Professional Excellence in Building’ submission documents to the Australian Institute of Building was performed to identify the practice perspective of innovation.  The findings suggest that internal organizational and process innovation account for the majority of improvements identified.  Importantly a taxonomy of narrative is developed that articulates how the construction industry in Australia views industry innovation.
 
Publisher UTS ePRESS
 
Contributor —
 
Date 2016-09-08
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
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Format application/pdf
text/html
 
Identifier http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/AJCEB/article/view/5178
10.5130/AJCEB.v16i3.5178
 
Source Construction Economics and Building; Vol 16, No 3 (2016): Construction Economics and Building, Incorporating a Special Section on Innovation and SMEs in the AEC Sector; 104-115
2204-9029
 
Language eng
 
Relation http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/AJCEB/article/view/5178/5559
http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/AJCEB/article/view/5178/5569
 
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Rights Copyright (c) 2016 Peter Davis, Thayaparan Gajendran, Josephine Vaughan, Toinpre Owi
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0