Resolving learning paradoxes within a UK new-build housebuilder

Abstract

The build quality of new UK homes is negatively affected by poor quality management practices during the construction process. By implementing stringent quality management (QM) standards, housebuilders can improve build quality but implementing these organization-wide changes relies on housebuilder staff, designers and sub-contractors learning new working practices. This paper explores the tensions which emerge within housebuilders, as they implement new QM procedures. A longitudinal qualitative case study was conducted, where time was spent with housebuilder staff in three regional offices, two years apart. Methods include participant observation, semi-structured interviews and a review of organizational documentation. The findings highlight several learning paradoxes which arise at different stages of the housebuilding process and show how actors manage (or cope with) these paradoxes through their daily practices. This includes processes of simplifying and applying, improvising and problem-solving and aggregating and analyzing. Whilst these either-or approaches enable staff to resolve the immediate tensions that arise from different organizational processes, they often fail to meet longer-term learning objectives, detrimentally affecting build quality over time. Without structural changes to the way volume housebuilders annually report to both the UK Government and their shareholders, organizations in the UK housebuilding sector face challenges in reconciling different learning processes.