Knowledge management in construction companies in China

Abstract

Knowledge management (KM) has emerged over the last decade to become one of the most debated management concepts, but in the construction industry KM has not achieved the same scale of applications and empirical research as in other fields. This paper presents the first state-of-the-art survey of empirical KM research in the construction field, and reports on a case study of a major construction company. The result shows that The Chinese construction industry, with scarce academic qualifications, and limited use of IT, depends on knowledge sharing, and, crucially, on tacit knowledge; the industry depends on human knowledge, with limited systems support. A shared concern for health and safety provides the surest guarantee of sustainability of both knowledge and the company. © Springer-Verlag 2012.