Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
Economic and Industrial Democracy
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Right arrow Citation Map
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in ISI Web of Science
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via ISI Web of Science (1)
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Koch, C.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati  
What's this?

The Tyranny of Projects: Teamworking, Knowledge Production and Management in Consulting Engineering

Christian Koch

Technical University of Denmark

Consulting engineering is a business service industry, which relies heavily on project teamwork in producing knowledge for its professional service products. Engineering practices and knowledge areas encompass mainly civil, mechanical and electrical engineering, buildings physics, project and construction management, which are typically pictured as knowledge-intensive activities. Such practices are here understood as local cultures, communities of practices, with a continuous and inherent sociopolitical element of negotiations of knowledge claims. Drawing on a ve-month participant observation and interview study, the article illustrates how teamworking occurs under continuous pressures from structural, organizational, professional and individual sources. The organization attempts in its knowledge production to combine practical experience, formalized information, external alliances and customer demands. Corporate management and project teamwork are in a state of latent con.ict. A series of management initiatives, including IT, address the production of knowledge. This can be seen as a combination of responses to external contingencies and at the same time development of internal resources within the conditions of possibility. Due to a continuous regime of ‘getting things done’ on the ongoing projects – what the author terms the tyranny of projects – cross-project learning and knowledge transfer are hindered.

Key Words: consulting engineering • knowledge • professional services • project • teamworking

Economic and Industrial Democracy, Vol. 25, No. 2, 277-300 (2004)
DOI: 10.1177/0143831X04042492
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?