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Keywords
Communications, Alliances, Construction industry, Teams, Information, Project management
Abstract
Multiple parties are involved in completing a construction project. Such parties possess different skills and each sets out to be self-sufficient. However, it is accepted that communication between parties is critical to the success of an alliance. A supporting mechanism is developed, which determines the roles of inter- and intra-- organisational communication, and helps to achieve efficient and effective communication. Communication between construction alliance parties consists of several aspects. First, inter-organisational communication should take place in the alliance team. Representatives from individual organisations take the role for communication in the team. Second, communication channels are created for either close contacts or distant connections. Finally, the choice of channels depends on the amount of information, how instant it needs to be, and the efficiency and effectiveness of communication.
Introduction
In recent years, the value of effective human and organisational communication has been recognised with more and more organisations establishing and maintaining alliance structures. According to Gayeski (1993), communication can be seen to be a professional practice, where appropriate rules and tools can enhance the utility of information. It is understood that communication falls into different zones of meaning that enable interaction between organisations (Heath, 1994). It is the people in the organisations that translate the meanings, and disseminate, comprehend, receive and utilise the information (Gayeski, 1993; Checkland and Holwell, 1998). Clearly, it is essential that organisations have established and proven business processes that can support effective and efficient interand intra-organisational communication alliance structure.
Information is a general term and embraces meanings such as knowledge, processed data, skills, technology, etc. Inter-organisational relationships are used to improve the flow of information, and share knowledge, learning and experience. Framing a knowledge network to improve communication within a corporate community has been attempted by Swan et al. (2000), who have the following perspectives:
using the concepts "I-space" (information space) and "zones of meaning" that are raised by Boisot (1998) and Heath (1994) respectively to explain the nature of information and knowledge; adapting from Hakansson and Johansson (1992) to identify the key components (i.e. actors, activities and resources) of a network configuration; and introducing the knowledge-based value network of Wikstrom and Norman (1994) to emphasise that the flow...