Stakes and struggles in liminal spaces: construction practitioners interacting with management-consultants
Journal article, 2014

Although external consultant interventions are usual in construction organizations to mediate strategic change, micro-level analyses of these interactions remain scarce. We draw on rich data from a qualitative case study and focus on observations of a set of three management-consultant strategy workshop interventions, aka away-days, with top, middle and project managers, respectively, in a large construction company in Sweden. Our analysis uses the conceptual construct ‘liminality’ to frame the intervention practice and elements of Bourdieu’s theory of practice to examine the unfolding of the interaction at the boundary interface. The consultants failed to achieve take-up of their novel ideas, and the workshops became sites of contention in which power struggles were played out between two very different fields of expertise. Using an integrated framework provides better understanding of power struggles at intra- and inter-organizational boundary interfaces.

cultural misalliance

strategy away-days

construction

liminality

habitus

Boundary interfaces

symbolic capital.

management-consultants

Author

Christine Räisänen

Chalmers, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Construction Management

Martin Löwstedt

Chalmers, Civil and Environmental Engineering

Engineering Project Organization Journal

2157-3735 (eISSN)

Vol. 4 2-3 123-133

Areas of Advance

Building Futures (2010-2018)

Subject Categories

Other Humanities

Sociology

Other Social Sciences

DOI

10.1080/21573727.2014.918033

More information

Created

10/7/2017