Knowledge Acquisition for Newly Graduated Project Managers in Construction Industry

Abstract

The profession of project management in the construction industry implies complexity and sensitivity, as managing a project is rather a challenging process from its start until its delivery. There are three basic goals which project managers struggle to accomplish while running projects which are completion within time and cost with the expected project quality. A project must meet all the three criteria simultaneously to be declared a success, which is rather a difficult task especially for new project managers. Taking the nature of project management into consideration, new graduators lacking work experience will be encountering various problems at workplace initially at the beginning of their career. Both on a physical and psychological basis. Thereby, they enter a period of intensive knowledge acquisition at site. The study demonstrates that the construction industry utilizes a traditional approach of knowledge management for teaching the new employees. Despite modern technology which is utilized for knowledge management in organizations such as databases, software, electronic instructions etc., the management of knowledge in the construction industry takes a practical shape. The newly employed graduators mainly get assigned to a supervisor by the company to teach them the profession gradually for a timeline until they get self-reliant. The study further illuminates that new project managers at site preliminarily utilize socialization of Nonaka’s SECI model of learning to acquire new knowledge. Subsequently, they apply the knowledge into practice, which the model refers to as internalization in a spiral model. Both the SECI model and knowledge management in construction demonstrate that learning emerges from doing which is practice. However, the study also demonstrates that the model is environment-compliant. It does not work as efficiently in every environment as individuals and their national and personal cultures are diverse.