1 Organisational Learning : Conceptual Challenges from a Project Perspective

Organisational learning has been widely acknowledged as holding the key for companies to survive and prosper and has, in recent years, gained currency in construction management research. Much research centred upon the study of organisational learning as a process, as well as the view and understanding of companies as learning organisations. However, non-construction management researchers have recently begun to recognise the incoherence of the concepts presented in the literature and identified a lack of a solid theoretical and, more importantly, empirical foundation. To further exacerbate the challenge of embracing organisational learning in construction, the industry is largely project based, thus adding difficulties for organisational learning to occur. This paper presents some of the recent conceptual arguments put forward by the non-construction community, with the ultimate aim of exploring the challenges of creating a learning organisation from a construction project perspective. (140 words)