Informality in organization and research: a review and a proposal <s> Introduction <s> This article compares older traditional methods of management in the construction industry with newer, more bureaucratic methods. The theme of the article is that bureaucratic management techniques in construction has an ineffective impact on the construction work. The article outlines the construction work process and traditional styles of construction management. It then examines how the new techniques of computer programming and large staffing have resulted in inefficiencies and irrationalities in attempts to control the construction work process. In the discussion portion of the article the data are related to the notion that human interrelationships are the primary resources in any work organization and, this being especially true for the construction industry, reliance on authoritarian, mechanistic techniques in management results in failure in the attempts of management to control the work process. The author of the article is a construction engineer with twenty-five years experience in the construction industry. He compares his previous experiences as a project manager and project engineer with methods on his present project, a 200 million dollar research and engineering center for one of the major industrial corporations in the United States. The author is currently the chief engineer on his construction project. <s> BIB001 </s> Informality in organization and research: a review and a proposal <s> Introduction <s> Providing additional services to accompany the sale of products is increasingly central to the business strategies of manufacturing companies. Such packages of products and services have become known as ‘integrated solutions’ or ‘product-service’ modes of working. In construction, the concept can be traced to build-operate-transfer (BOT) projects of the 1980s, where a consortium would finance, design construct and operate a facility for a specified period of time. More recently this approach is evident in PFI/PPP projects. It has been argued that firms attempting to shift to an integrated solutions model have to transform their cultures, mindsets, capabilities and organizational structures. This paper presents the findings of research which is examining the potential human resource management implications of a shift from ‘product’ to ‘product-service’ in the construction industry. A case study was conducted at a leading UK construction company, based upon 15 semi-structured interviews conducted with a range of senior managerial respondents. The results reveal that delivering integrated solutions may be hindered by two distinct mindsets within construction organizations: ‘hunters’ and ‘farmers’. Whereas the former focuses on securing short-term wins within defined and time-limited relationships, the latter are more concerned with cultivating and nurturing the relationship over the long-term. The paper explores the tensions between, and the challenges of, the two mindsets in relation to drive for integrated service strategies within major construction organizations. <s> BIB002 </s> Informality in organization and research: a review and a proposal <s> Introduction <s> The journey from the concept of a building to the actual built form is mediated with the use of various artefacts, such as drawings, product samples and models. These artefacts are produced for different purposes and for people with different levels of understanding of the design and construction processes. This paper studies design practice as it occurs naturally in a real-world situation by observing the conversations that surround the use of artefacts at the early stages of a building's design. Drawing on ethnographic data, insights are given into how the use of artefacts can reveal a participant's understanding of the scheme. The appropriateness of the method of conversation analysis to reveal the users' understanding of a scheme is explored by observing spoken micro-interactional behaviours. It is shown that the users' understanding of the design was developed in the conversations around the use of artefacts, as well as the knowledge that is embedded in the artefacts themselves. The users' confidence in the appearance of the building was considered to be gained in conversation, rather than the ability of the artefacts to represent a future reality. <s> BIB003 </s> Informality in organization and research: a review and a proposal <s> Introduction <s> 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 substance. The new production philosophy thus arguably represents a process ontology radically different from the atemporal metaphysics underlying conventional methods and theories. Moreover, research in physics education has identified the disjunction between ontological categories of 'substance' and 'process' as a particularly acute barrier to understanding process phenomena. Studies are presented which demonstrate the possibility of specifying and classifying mental models, with regard to two important management solutions in construction. Thus, procedures typically adopted in quantity surveying and the implementation of structural engineering design are examined. Methods of measurement used in quantity surveying are designed to account primarily for physical, rather than temporal properties. In design, the emphasis is on representing properties of finished structures, rather than the construction processes. The process is then managed by treating the design and its execution as separate products. It is argued here that alternative, more effective management solutions are derived from a process ontology. <s> BIB004
An interest in informal and emergent features of construction industry organization has grown over the past two decades, particularly in the UK. It is also fair to say that the majority of this work can be broadly termed 'qualitative' and that this type of research is increasingly apparent in the literature. When the Tavistock study (Higgin & Jessop 1965) , the comparison of traditional and bureaucratic methods in construction management by BIB001 , and later Organizing Construction  were published, these all represented relatively isolated attempts to come to grips with the complexity of local organizational realities on construction projects. Since then much has changed and a number of such studies now exist. A selection from one recent year includes:  ; Chang & Kaka (2007) ; BIB002 ; BIB003 ;  ; BIB004 . These studies constitute a healthy and growing minority of construction management publications. Below, we discuss the best way to characterize these studies and suggest a way forward in developing them. We begin by examining the common assumption that research can be comprehensively classified as either quantitative or qualitative, using an example of quantitative research to illustrate the ways in which it requires considerable interpretative work to underpin the identification and measurement of variables. We suggest, then, that this categorization is misleading and describe an alternative approach that more clearly details the range of research alternatives on offer. Two major distinctions are proposed: [1] between theory driven and phenomenon driven research; [2] between descriptive and prescriptive theory. We warn against confusing organizational form and chosen research methods. While changes in organizational form and approaches to research may have developed simultaneously, there is no logically necessary relationship between the two. Finally, we propose an approach to construction management research that offers the possibility of capturing both the formal and informal aspects of organization in such a way as to support the emergence of practical management applications. The purpose of this proposal is two-fold, in addition to offering a practical proposal for research management, it is intended as an illustration of the relationship between prescriptive management theory and a management practice which is sensitive to the informal and emergent features of organization.