Facing Turbulence: Driving Force for Construction Organizations to Regain Unlearning and Learning Traction

Abstract

Organizational learning (OL) is recognized as crucial in construction organizations’ performance. Nevertheless, scholars have argued that construction organizations do not seem to learn in a manner that fosters resilience in coping with changes in developers’ demands. Skeptics argue that OL should be facilitated by unlearning (UL)—a process of discarding obsolete beliefs and routines. While OL has emerged as a popular construction management research topic, it is a concept that has yet to be investigated empirically from an unlearning perspective. This paper reports a study that aims to (1) investigate the effect of OL and UL on the performance of construction organizations, and (2) investigate the role turbulence (TU) plays on triggering OL and UL. Data were collected from a questionnaire survey conducted in Hong Kong, and the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique was employed for data analysis. The results indicate that (1) TU triggers the process of UL and (2) UL significantly contributes to the practice of OL in construction organizations. These results imply that if construction organizations unlearn, they could be more capable of learning to enhance performance. Furthermore, turbulence is found to be a motivation for unlearning. This study contributes to the research of OL in construction by providing possible reasons leading to construction organizations being incapable of learning. Furthermore, additional research is recommended on ways to facilitate construction organizations’ unlearning.