7BE002 Strategic Management - Free Samples to Students
The business case can be strengthened in the following manner
Step 1- Discuss the impact of the issue through an incident
Step 2- Connect the issue to the lack of one or 2 of the 4 Cs
Step 3-Link the Cs to specific unit or units which has this lack or deficiency
Answer:
Introduction
The advent of globalisation increases the operation of the construction industry more complex and dynamic. As a result of that it is important to figure out some important determinants that are responsible to create obstacles in the process of the success of a project. Therefore, the purpose of this discussion is to understand different factors that creates enormous problem for a better construction project. In this context, the discussion carries out a research with the help of some articles to understand what the basic problems are and how far those issues can be mitigated.
Discussion
In the construction projects safety measures are considered to be one of the major factors in order to set up a successful project. There are plenty of examples related to the workplace hazards in the construction projects in the form of falls, trench collapse, electric shock, failure to use proper protective equipment and repetitive motion injuries. Based on this understanding, it can be argued that the safety measures become essential for the construction companies to facilitate (Demirkesen and Arditi 2015). In his research Saurin et al. (2015) showed that there are several incidents in the construction projects across the world where the safety measures are failed to be implemented effectively and as a result of that the workers faced severe threat in their in terms of their life threat. The recent statistics has revealed that in the developed countries like United States, UK or in Hong Kong the authorities follow adequate and proper facilities in order to ensure the health and safety of the workers (Zhang et al. 2015). On the contrary, in developing countries like China with the robust industrial boom and lucrative profits the construction companies put less concern over the safety issues and as a result of that huge loss of life and property is a regular phenomenon. In response to this Jafari et al. (2015) advocated that the construction companies must put more importance on the safety issues so that the overall project will get a successful outcome.
Highlighting the safety issues as a major challenge in the construction industry Yunus and Latiffi (2016) argued that subcontracting the projects to speciality contractors can mitigate the risk in a strategic way. While discussing the safety issues in the construction projects Guo, Yiu and González (2016) had argued that it was the responsibility of the companies to employ right people for the successful establishment of the project. However, most of the companies tried to reduce their costs by appointing subcontractors in the projects. As a matter of fact, the subcontractors are incapable to acknowledge the entire planning of the project. It requires thorough knowledge of the various ideas and concept for developing an effective project planning. The specialist contractors are needed in this context instead of the subcontractors. A construction management is comprised of quality control, work sequence and information flows. Without having adequate knowledge regarding different aspects of the construction project it can be fatal for the workers. Moreover, Wu et al. (2015) advocated that it is possible to set up a safety measures plan for the subcontractors as well. However, the competencies can be identified in terms of the different type of equipment they use, the standard they follow and the working conditions. These differences and variety in operations can lead to a detrimental impact on the workers as they have little idea regarding the workplace health and safety. Therefore, a unitary standard will be effective in order to procure a better workplace environment in construction industry.
Moreover, safety training is also identified as a key factor that can influence the rate of safety hazards in the construction industries. As far as the perspective of Chen, Q. and Jin (2015), he opined that on the basis of a research on the Philippines construction industry sector the significance of safety training must be an integral part of the construction companies. In this regard, the safety environment is considered to be an important aspect to influence the performances of the workers. In his research Wu et al. (2015) showed that the safety training facilities in the construction organisations facilitates the employee motivation, awareness and safety performances that in return will be highly beneficial for the construction companies to deliver successful projects with time and cost effectiveness. On the other hand, Guo, Yiu and González (2016) puts more emphasis on the practice of an safety culture insider the operations of a construction company. In this context, the safety culture will be comprised of attitudes, behaviours, systems and the environmental factors. Based on this understand, the safety culture in a construction company can be defined as an practice relied on the individual and group belief, norms and attitude that reduces the risk factors and develop exposure of employees and public by fostering a secure and safe construction project environment. In fact, the safety culture encompasses all levels of employees associated with a project from the higher level managers to the operation managers and the safety professional and workers. In this regard, there are four predictive factors that are able to influence the safety culture such as the safety information provided by the operation managers, safety measures carry out by the employees and workers, understanding and figuring out the safety measure by the higher authority and the safety co-ordination.
On the other hand, it is pertinent to plan the safety training practices. There are several techniques that are responsible to draw a perfect plan for safety training process. In this context Chen, Q. and Jin (2015) propounded a new dimension by advocating an effective learning process to conduct a successful safety training process. The written documentation and of the safety proficiency and the skill demonstrations are highly relevant in this aspect. Therefore, the learning process can be based on three basic learning styles in the form of visual learning, auditory learning and hands on learning. In addition to this, the Incident Reporting Systems (IRSs) can stimulate the learning process by identifying the exact reason behind the workplace hazards (Zhang et al. 2015).
Technological competencies
Risk management in construction project is identified as a process to harmonise the risks and opportunities that includes proper action between the organisational practice and the incorporation of technology. According to Vovchenko (2017) technology is considered to be one of the major concern for any construction company in order to create better operational framework and time efficient project delivery process. Moreover, the implication of technology also reduces error in the technological process and as a result of that the effectiveness of the project will get success. According to the research of Adeleke, Bahaudin and Kamaruddeen (2016) it can be argued that a suitable technology can be measured in terms of presence of the construction plants and the advanced equipment that the company is using. Moreover, the level of utilisation, cost and time effectiveness are also considered to be essential factors for understanding the technological effectiveness of a construction company. Moreover, the skilled manpower is also incorporated into the technological advancement because the construction companies introduce training framework with the purpose to develop the ability of the workers (Zhao et al. 2015). In course of the training program, the companies implement a number of technological tools and in this regard, the effectiveness and the upgrade training mechanism are highly pertinent.
Furthermore, Zhao et al. (2015) had completed the research on the US market in order to figure out the core technological practices that the construction companies follow. Based on the research, it can be found that in US market the high use of the Building Information Modelling (BMI). The role of the BMI is associated with the knowledge and skill development of the workers in conservation project. In this context, the reason behind putting more emphasis on the skill development program is that the construction industry highly relies upon the workers and the more the skill and effectiveness of the workers are developed the more it will deliver accuracy to the construction process of the company. Therefore, Safa et al. (2015)advised to implement the BIM mechanism in every construction project management as the BIM model has become a gold standard with a number of promising opportunities. As a result of that the Construction Management Association of America (CMAA) puts deep focus on this framework for creating a better environment in the construction industry in US (Durdyev and Ismail 2016).
On the contrary, some scholars are shared their preferences towards the introduction of Competitive Intelligence (CI) in the process of construction project. The construction project industry is highly dynamic and complex in nature. Therefore, it is important for the construction companies to implement such measure that can simplify their understanding regarding any particular project (Durdyev and Ismail 2016). In this context, the effective decision making process are highly essential coupled with the strategies, tools and tactics. The main purpose of the CI model is to enhance the decision making abilities so that the project manager can avert any kind of risks in a short span of time. In this regard, the function of the CI is dynamic and encapsulating a number of wide range decision making areas. It can be ascribed that the incorporation of the knowledge management and the advanced information technology are the key factors that make the CI technology effective and efficient. On the contrary, ?etkovi? et al. (2015) puts more emphasis on the infrastructure development. For a better understanding the author derived the inference from the Malaysian construction sector. In this context, it is important to understand that the growth in the productivity is imperative to increase the growth of the construction industry.
Besides this, for a better perception of the role of the technology in the construction industry Okoye, Ngwu and Ugochukwu (2015) advocated that the use of advanced and effective use of technology will foster a better strategic advantage for the construction companies to get better competitive position in the global market. In addition to this, the variety of work and the complexities in the projects compel the project managers to seek help of the technologies. Pournader, Tabassi and Baloh (2015) showed that the role of technology in the construction project is an important aspect because of the increasing the dynamic, productive and the creative sector related to the construction companies. With the intense growth in the construction industry, the companies also face high competition both in the global and the domestic markets. Therefore, maintaining service quality with the help of the technological advancement is pivotal for the construction organisations. On the basis of this understanding, it can be articulated that the role of the construction management is resembled with the building designing, construction documentation, construction procurement, planning and the construction itself (?etkovi? et al.2015). As a matter of fact, the dearth of technological advancement leads to technical issues that obstruct the steady progress of the project. The impact of this issue can be seen in the annual profit percentage of the company and hampers the image and credibility of the construction company. In his research on the case study of Nigeria, Okoye, Ngwu and Ugochukwu (2015) pointed out that this was a clear indication of the lack of technological infrastructure that the Nigerian Construction companies failed to meet and faced severe upset in the global construction market.
Financial stability is considered to be an important aspect that every company wants to maintain for the future sustainability. In this regard, the Construction industries all over the world are also willing to cope with the financial crisis and mitigate this issue as soon as possible. In course of this theme, there is a pertinent question emerges about the vitality of the technology in financial stability and the relation between the audit process and the technological underpinnings (Durdyev and Ismail 2016). The role of technology is firmly associated with mitigating the financial crisis and usher a new phase of financial stability. The use of digital tools is very useful to analyse the faults and drawbacks in the process and pointed out the section where the company must do something in an urgent basis.
Organisational structuring and restructuring
Organisational structure has a direct impact on the performance of the organisations. The structure of the organisation is responsible to achieve athe goals and objectives in business operation. According to Maduenyi (2015) there will be no validity and authenticity of the organisation without having an appropriate mechanism and well-conceived culture. On the other hand, King, R. and Clarkson (2015) asserted that the role of the organisation structure is to create proper framework so that it will generate more profit. However, both the argument put emphasis on the role of the organisation structure in order to generate more profit, return on investment, ales growth of business and revenue. In other words, it can be argued that the role of the organisational structure determines the performance of the organisation. In this regard, D'Ippolito (2014) suggested that performance can be conceptualised on the basis of both financial and non-financial entities. Therefore, as per the understanding of Vij and Bedi (2016) the organisational structure is identified as the formal system of task and reporting relationships that controls, coordinates and motivates employees so that they can generate more effectiveness in the organisational framework as per the goals and objectives.
On the other hand, Knight and Harvey (2015) tried to depict a picture of the management control system that facilitates a better framework to enhance the company performance in professional service organisation. On course of the discussion, it can be argued that the Transaction Cost Economics is considered to be a fascinating aspect that fosters better experience for the management control system design theory. It can be stated that in the professional service sector it is very important to create an effective framework where the private companies should maintain a proper organisational structure in order to continue the business activities. Moreover, it is imperative to assess that the role of the organisational structure facilitates a smooth and systematic process and in case of crisis it will be helpful to take effective decision making (Schäffer, Strauss and Zecher 2015). Moreover, in general the role of an effective organisational structure is intertwined with the ease the organisational activities. In compare the general perception of the organisational structure with the construction companies it can be seen that in the construction sector the organisations play a big role in decision making. The projects in the construction organisation are primarily based on effective planning and intense decision making process before setting up plan for conducting the project. Therefore, the major significance of the organisational structure is to create a framework in order to get success in the construction projects.
As a matter of fact, the activities of the organisation are related to design a better framework for the company operation in order to establish itself in the high competitive market. In this regard, the performance quotient is very important for any organisation. For an example, the operations in a construction company are highly dynamic and based on service production. Henceforth, if the company fails to provide quality service then it will get a bad reputation in the competitive market that is detrimental for its future sustainability (Knight and Harvey 2015). In this context, procuring an effective design for the organisational structure is considered to be an important aspect for the construction companies. In addition to this, the prevalence of the non-technological mechanism of a company is related to the designing the organisational structure. The more the company will be organised the more it can enhance the effectiveness of its performance. According to Forgues and Lejeune (2015) design can be defined as an innovative idea that fosters benefits to the problem- solving, reasoning and against the innovativeness of the organisation. Form the empirical evidences it can be derived that the paradigm of design is stapled with the function and style of the organisation. As far as the corporate organisation is concerned the perspective of design the organisation can be identified as a process through which the company can procure more efficient performance in order to meet the customer expectation or satisfaction of the customers.
This discussion interlinks the connection between innovation and the organisational structure. Innovation and creativity are referred as one of the prime factors for any organisation to maximise its market operation so that most of the private organisations tries to encourage innovative ideas and appreciate the creative workforce. However, it is also important for the organisation to formulate its structure in such a way that it will deliver exactly the same as the company wants. It means, if the company wants to introduce more innovative workforce in its operational structure then it has to keep a creative organisational structure at first (Schäffer, Strauss and Zecher 2015). By creating an effective organisational structure the company will be able to mitigate different kind of problems in terms of the practice of discrimination and exploitation in the workplace, lack of farsightedness in the process of project planning and generating more revenue and profit. In fact, a better organisational structure facilitates more sound decision making process to deal with the challenges and crisis factors. In case of a construction company there is always challenges that are creating obstacles to the projects so that it is highly important to develop an efficient organisational structure.
Lack of effective communication
Communication in the construction companies follows slow adaptation in compare to the other industries. There are lots of reasons behind this backwardness. One of the major factors is that the construction companies are keener to enhance their quality of service rather than fix up the internal system. In response to this reluctance, Murata et al. (2017) have argued that build up an effective communication system would be beneficial for the construction industries. The communication is comprised of the connection of the administration to the planning; accounting and the computer aided design so that overall the company can set up a better framework to serve the purpose professionally. In addition to this, the adoption of advanced communication tools will deliver more intelligence and integration to the organisational framework. Based on this understanding, Jankowski, Prokocki and Krzemi?ski (2015) rightly argued that the wireless networking system in a construction company can generate more innovation and knowledge so that the workers can perform their work quickly and correctly. In his words, Williams, Fugar and Adinyira (2018) has identified the wireless technology as the backbone of the knowledge transfer in the construction industry. There is no doubt that with the advent of the globalisation the expansion of the corporate activities has been escalated in a rapid pace. There are innumerable approaches that the corporate business houses introduce in order to facilitate a better and profitable outcome. For an instance, the practice of workplace diversity is considered to be an important and phenomenal practice that the companies are imbibed in their organisational structure so that it can generate more innovation and creativity. In this context, the relevance and significance of an effective communication is highly essential to carry out for the construction industry as well as the corporate business environment as a whole.
Subsequently, the practice of knowledge transfer comes into prominence with the increase of the global competitiveness. According to Clough et al. (2015) transfer of knowledge is referred as a benevolent practice of the companies that is beyond any geographical boundaries. The role of globalisation causes a significant transformation in the course of the corporate business. In this regard, Din and Bernold (2017) advocated that the possession of knowledge in any part of the company is identified as an asset but without its practical implementation the value of the knowledge will be futile. Moreover, the projects of a construction are highly dynamic and accompanied by a number of concepts and process that are extensively depended upon the communication. Therefore, Subramani, Annamalai and Priyanka (2017) suggested implementing a digital visualisation strategy that fosters better framework to establish effective communication. In the construction sector, this visualisation process encompasses the traditional tools with an information board that fills with valuable data and project planning and timeline. As a result of the use of such conventional tools the process of communication will become transparent and easy to understand. Furthermore, the visualisation also requires the help of the information technology in order to make contact with the entire team. On the other hand Griffith, Stephenson and Watson (2014) recommended implying the MIM model to establish a better communication model. It can be asserted that with the increase of competitiveness in the construction market and growing complexities it becomes important for the construction companies to acknowledge the relevance of the communication system and implement it as soon as possible. The Building Information Modelling (BIM) tool is one of the major discoveries in present times that encapsulate all the important aspects related to a construction project such as the architecture, engineering and the construction (Jankowski, Prokocki and Krzemi?ski 2015). Moreover, the model is based on a three dimensional mechanism that is characterised by parameters like the mass, length and manufacturer.
In course of the discussion, it can be argued that the implementation of a communication tool is not enough to get better result. There should be a management process that deals with the development of communication in a construction process. Therefore, Clough et al. (2015) argued that the role of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is pivotal with the purpose to facilitate a better communication framework. Despite of having less practice of communication for the construction industries, there are some advantages related to the ICT mechanism. The role of the ICT in the construction company can be resembled with the site positioning, design requirements, materials selection, budget constraints and the availability of the raw materials. In his research Williams, Fugar and Adinyira (2018) showed that due to the intense competition in the construction market and high fragmentation the construction companies are not willing to incorporate the traditional communication means like face to face meetings and exchange of documents and papers. It takes too much time and has a negative impact on the professional approach of the construction industry. As a matter of fact, there is no point for the construction industry to imbibe the practice of high speed, large volume and quality information transfer tool to create more effectiveness in its activities.
Moreover, the role of the communication can also be seen in case of making connection with the primary stakeholders. The construction industry heavily relied on the knowledge sharing process where the projects require the intervention of the communication form the development to the life cycle process. Henceforth, it is pertinent to incorporate the primary stakeholders in the process of the construction. In this context, communication plays the role of a medium of exchange of interests and knowledge through which the stakeholders can share message and information related to the ongoing project. As far as the research of Murata et al. (2017) is concerned, it highlighted a successful construction project is not only relied on the cost effectiveness or punctuality rather the role of the stakeholders also considered to be one of the major aspect that the organisation should be practised. In response to that there are three major stakeholder entities in the construction business in terms of owners, consultants and the contractors. The role of an effective communication is to create an effective connection among those entities and tries to wipe out all the possible risk factors (Kamalirad et al. 2017). However, it is not possible for the communication tool to identify all the challenges. In that case by creating a healthy environment the communication tool can create a major influence on the decision making process.
Conclusion
In a conclusion it can be argued that the focus of this literature review was associated with different issues and challenges that the construction companies faces in their daily schedule. In this context, the literature review pointed out four genuine issues in terms of workplace safety hazards, lack of technological advancement, in effective organisational structure and the absence of communication. Based on the research and understanding it can be argued that those factors are able to create a better framework for the construction industry by generating more effectiveness and creativity in the process. Henceforth, this literature review is contextual and pragmatic.
Reference
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