Construction Knowledge Management focusing on Acquisition Types

Abstract

There was a strong Knowledge Management (KM) boom among the Korea Contracting firms in the late 1990s and the early 2000s. For the last ten years, Contracting firms have developed Knowledge Management System (KMS) and operated learning organizations since they realized the significance of managing knowledge to gain a competitive advantage over rival companies in todays fast-paced business environment. These efforts seem to have paid off. But the difficulties in evaluating the effectiveness of KM strategy make it hard to improve contracting firms KM strategy. This paper investigates how major Korea contracting firms employees exploit knowledge in construction sites to assess effectiveness of KM. It adopts the AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) methodology to carry out a survey on construction site employees knowledge acquisition route and the CA (Correspondence Analysis) to investigate the differences in knowledge acquisition route depending on employees project type, position (rank) and profession in their construction sites. The study finds that there is correlation between the pattern of knowledge acquisition and employees attributes that are rank and occupational type. The results of case study showed some interesting implications and it could be useful and basic information to set the KM strategy in contracting firms