Erfolgsorientiertes Wissensmanagement fuer General- und Totalunternehmen - Identifikation von Wissensclustern

摘要

Two major stumbling blocks preventing a broader level of acceptance and application of knowledge management in construction companies proved to be the unique character of each building project, and the lack of any practical tools for a company to use to pinpoint the knowledge that was of value to the said company and to identify the real benefit to be gained from systematically nurturing this knowledge. For this reason, the Institute for Construction Engineering and Management (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich) has developed a model approach for a project-oriented and cluster-oriented knowledge management process that focuses on these requirements and, as such, should make it possible to incorporate knowledge management into companies' everyday business. By doing so, these companies should be put in a position where they can exploit further potential for improvement when rendering their services and, in consequence, ultimately increase their competitive strength. A multiple case study was conducted in collaboration with various Swiss total service contractors to obtain further practice-related findings to be used for developing project-oriented and cluster-oriented knowledge management, and to verify the efficiency of the knowledge cluster approach, whereby four major and complex structural engineering projects were analyzed to identify their relevant success factors and knowledge clusters, which were then assigned to the individual phases of the overall construction process. Identifying, describing and discussing the knowledge clusters within the value creation process of a construction project enabled conclusions to subsequently be drawn using logical thought processes, which were valid for a project-oriented and cluster-oriented knowledge management mode! for the process of providing products and services on the part of total service contractors.