In his comment on Seymour, D.E., Crook, D.J. and Rooke, J.A. (1997). Construction Management and Economics, 15, 117-19 (Construction Management and Economics, 15, 299-302) argues that positivism provides the best insurance against bad research in construction management studies. He claims that...

This paper presents an analysis of a familiar aspect of construction industry culture that we have dubbed 'the claims culture'. This is a culture of contract administration that lays a strong emphasis on the planning and management of claims. The principal elements of the analysis are two sets...

Claims by contractors for additional payments have been identified by commentators as a major source of difficulty in the industry. Ethnographic research with industry members reveals some key features of planning practices that underlie such events. Claims are sometimes planned at tender stage...

Some quality managers in the construction industry are attempting to institute total quality (TQ) management. Having established quality assurance (QA) systems, these managers have realized that the benefits to be gained from this bureaucratic approach are limited. They now aim to transform the...

New approaches to production management can be conceptualized as treating production as flow rather than transformation. These alternatives can in turn be regarded as reflecting opposing ontological positions, holding respectively that reality is constituted of temporal process, or atemporal...

Since at least the Tavistock studies, the need to improve communication and coordination in the construction process has been stressed. This paper reports from a study of 25 construction projects where QA and a number of procedures were in use which might have been expected to bring such...

Training derived from an instrumental approach such as appraisal often leads to a passive response to training. It is more effective to encourage autonomy, yet to achieve it through negotiation between learner and manager, with the participation of a trainer. A specific programme using this...