Exploratory Study of the Knowledge Sources and Production in Construction Domain: the Sri Lankan Context

Knowledge, during the last few decades, has become the central capital, the cost centre and the crucial resource of the economy. The construction industry is a knowledge based industry and the production of knowledge is vital for projects and organizations, in order to tackle the fast changes and to be innovative. Knowledge production is influenced by variety of organizations, projects as well as by the nature of the industry in construction domain. This research has focused on establishing how the characteristics of the industry, individual projects and the organizational culture influence knowledge production by promoting or inhibiting the knowledge production within the Sri Lankan context. This study identifies and analyses different types of knowledge sources, main triggers of knowledge production and the promoters & inhibitors of knowledge production from project, organizational culture and industry perspectives. It was found that contracting organisations mostly rely on internal knowledge sources for their knowledge acquirement. The results indicates that the knowledge production takes place through ‘learning how’ and ‘learning why’ and identifies ‘learning how’ as the dominant process within the Sri Lankan construction industry. In addition it reports that knowledge production seems to focus on project delivery rather than strategic issues.