Sections 4.4.1 and 4.4.2 discussed the challenges of TKI within the TPS representing the academic and industry perspective. Figure 4.4 presents a synthesis of challenges of TKI elicited from the experts’ survey interviews (Section 4.4.1 and 4.4.2). The green and bisque colour concepts are those identified by interviewees from academia and industry, respectively.
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Comparing the identified challenges from Section 4.4.1 and 4.4.2 reveals that not only are some challenges (concepts 11 and 21, 12 and 22, 13 and 23) similar to each other, shown in blue colour, but also that there are some relationship between them.
Respondents, from both academia and industry, highlighted that the TPS by definition encourages project members to walk away at the end of project; therefore, there will not be sufficient time for project members to capture the lessons they learned through the project and share it with each other. Moreover, the awareness of the project members about the importance of tacit knowledge and its integration is low in this type of procurement system, which is highly dependent on the organisational culture and the approaches that managers take in order to integrate knowledge.
Figure 4.4 – Synthesis of Challenges of Knowledge Integration within the Traditional Procurement System
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Figure 4.4 consists the synthesis of all challenges of KI within construction projects undertaken through the TPS that were elicited from the experts’ survey. The identified challenges are in details and most of them are related to each other. In order to have a categorised and summarised list of challenges, these findings are compared with the findings from literature and Sections 4.3.1 and 4.3.3, and the result is presented in Table 4.2. This table shows how the summarised challenges are in line with the concepts in Figure 4.4. Further, these challenges are explained in detail ISM (Interpretive Structural Modelling) approach is used to identify their relationships (Section 4.5).
Table 4.2 – Knowledge Integration Challenges in Traditional Procurement System
Variables Concepts
V1 Lack of Awareness on Importance of Tacit Knowledge and Its Integration
14,18,27
V2 Lack of Participation in Knowledge Integration 13(23),31,32
V3 Lack of Time for Participation in Knowledge Integration (Time Pressure)
24,31,32,33
V4 Lack of Information and Knowledge Integration 12(22)
V5 Lack of KM System (policies and strategies) 12(22),15,16,28
V6 Reinventing a Wheel (high potential of same mistakes and problem occurrence)
17,21
V7 Lack of Incentives 13(23),28,32
V8 Lack of Proper use of Knowledge Integration Techniques 16,29,36
V9 Lack of Trust 11(21),25,26
V10 Culture of Organisation 11(21)
V11 Resistance to Change (Fear of Change) 11(21),14,37,38
V1. Lack of Awareness on Importance of Tacit Knowledge and Its Integration
The awareness of construction organisation members has been seen to be relatively low as regards to the importance of tacit knowledge and its integration (Kamara et al., 2002; Hari et al., 2005). It is necessary to prioritise and improve the awareness of project’s members on the benefits of tacit knowledge, and how its integration will lead to improve project process and performance (Ekambaram et al., 2014).
V2. Lack of Participation in Knowledge Integration
Project members are reluctant to participate in the KM process as they are not well informed about the importance of KM. However, it is not well specified and incentivised in their contract to participate in this process. Inevitably, project members would be reluctant to share their knowledge (Ekambaram et al., 2014).
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V3. Lack of Time for Participation in Knowledge Integration (Time Pressure)
According to McDermott and O’Dell (2001) and Ekambaram et al., (2014), lack of time would prevent knowledge holders from sharing and transferring their knowledge in a temporal- based project, like a construction project, even when the available technology is efficient. Furthermore, project members have no time for sharing and transferring their knowledge because they will be recruited in another project on completion of the present project or they are involved in several projects within the same time frame (Ekambaram et al., 2014). Furthermore, project members are usually overloaded with various tasks to complete in a specific time. Therefore, they hardly allocate time to participate in the KI process.
V4. Lack of Information and Knowledge Integration
The construction industry suffers from the lack of KI between its phases (Pryke, 2005; Kamara et al., 2007; Harty & Schweber, 2010; Love et al., 2011; Zhu et al., 2014), especially in the TPS (CIOB, 2010) because the design and construction phases are separated in this type of procurement and the lack of integration is further compounded by project members being recruited quickly for another project on completion of the current project.
V5. Lack of KM System (Policies and Strategies)
The TPS suffers from lack of KM expertise and system (Masterman, 2000). However, much knowledge which is gained by project members is lost and dispersed, if it is not properly captured and shared at the end of the projects (Cheng, 2009). In other words, poor management of knowledge across construction projects, specifically projects undertaken by the TPS, will lead to a significant amount of knowledge loss in which case ignoring it would be detrimental to the project performance. The poor KM system means using less and inappropriate techniques for capturing, sharing and transferring knowledge in projects. However, appropriate policies and strategies for managing knowledge in projects highly depends on the existence of the supporting organisational culture.
V6. Reinventing a Wheel (high potential of same mistakes and problem occurrence)
Ignoring tacit knowledge and its integration will lead to the spending of more time and energy to develop solutions that might already exist when a problem occurs (Ekambaram et al., 2014).
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V7. Lack of Incentives
It is necessary for the project’s members to be motivated to participate in the KI process, capturing, sharing, and transferring of knowledge, otherwise no or inadequate knowledge will probably be integrated (Ekambaram et al., 2014). One reason that knowledge holders are reluctant to participate in the KI process is the lack of incentives and motivation from project managers, specifically in the TPS (Hari et al., 2005; Bessick & Naicker, 2013). This system by its definition does not incentivise project members to collaborate and participate in the KI process.
V8. Lack of Proper Use of Knowledge Integration Techniques
Different factors are involved in the lack of properly using KI techniques. Project members usually are not aware and well-trained in these techniques. This is highly dependent on the culture and KM strategies of the organisation.
V9. Lack of Trust
Trust is important for effective KI in a construction project (Ekambaram et al., 2014). However, it is very important but low in projects undertaken through the TPS because the project members in the design and construction phases are separated. The low level of trust means that the awareness level of the knowledge holders about the importance of the KI and its impact on project performance is low and they are reluctant to share their knowledge with other members in different phase of project. However, lack of trust also depends on the supporting culture of the organisation and knowledge manager to encourage and motivate the knowledge holders to participate in the KI process and build trust among project members.
V10. Culture of Organisations
Organisational culture is highlighted as the most important factor in the process of capturing, sharing, and transferring knowledge that creates a link between knowledge sharing and business problems (McDermott & O’Dell, 2001). Existence of the supporting culture is highly important in managing knowledge among individuals in an organisation and project. This is mainly dependent on the attitudes of the knowledge manager to encourage and motivate knowledge holders and build reward and recognition systems by using different techniques and technologies (Hari et al., 2005). Organisational culture should prioritise and increase the
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awareness level of its members of the importance of KI. This is highly dependent on having a standard working process and existence of trust between project members.
V11. Resistance to Change (Fear of Change)
It is the main challenge to the capturing, sharing, and transferring of knowledge in the construction industry. Individuals and experts are reluctant to share their knowledge, because they consider knowledge as power (Hari et al., 2005). Furthermore, they also do not tend to learn from others’ experiences, because they afraid of negative impact of admitting mistakes among their team members. However, the knowledge manager should consider the issue regarding knowledge holders who are reluctant to participate in KI process when they feel the insecurity of their job.