Scott Fernie¹, Stephanie Weller¹, Stuart D. Green¹, Robert Newcombe¹, and Marylin Williams²
¹ Department of Construction Management & Engineering, University of Reading, UK
² Department
of Psychology, University of Reading, UK
Knowledge sharing has been on the UK construction research agenda since the early 1980s. Benchmarking as a method of knowledge capture and transfer to improve organisational performance is an early example of this. The purpose of benchmarking is to understand both performance and the contributing factors (knowledge) that dictate performance. Continuing this theme, the Egan report in 1998 (DETR, 1998) detailed the problems of the UK construction industry and proposed that knowledge required to resolve these problems was embedded in the managerial practices of other industry sectors. His challenge to the construction industry was to capture and transfer knowledge between organisations in different industry sectors. However, despite the compelling arguments for the use of knowledge transfer within construction, efforts to develop and implement an appropriate method are curiously absent. This paper explores the notion of knowledge sharing and highlights the pitfalls that may befall potential methodologies that adopt a simplistic approach. Knowledge sharing is argued to be a complex social process that involves eliciting both explicit and tacit knowledge. The process is further complicated by the need to fully understand and consider the context within which the knowledge is embedded. This paper proposes a structured approach for knowledge sharing that considers the embedded and contextual nature of tacit knowledge. Specifically, the paper reports on the initial application of a knowledge sharing method to organisations within the aerospace and construction sector. The research is sponsored by the UK Government through the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), and subsequently benefits from a high level of collaboration between industrial organisations and academic researchers.
Keywords: benchmarking, context, industry
sectors, knowledge sharing.