Literature Search:2 December 2005

Paul W ChanSchool of the Built EnvironmentNorthumbria UniversityEllison Building (A221B)Ellison PlaceNewcastle upon Tyne NE1 8ST+44 0 191 227 4219paul.chan@unn.ac.uk

Ph.D. thesis on construction labour productivity

Research interests: People in construction, Skills, especially keen on blue-collar workers

Formerly researcher in University of Salford

Joined Northumbria University July 2005 “Constructing Futures” team at Salford:

Prof. Rachel Cooper, Carl Abbott and Prof. Ghassan Aouad

Personal Profile

Trust and psychological contracts Strategy Human resources management Knowledge intensity (secondary) Dynamic capabilities and core

competencies (secondary)

Key Themes

Politis, J D (2003) The connection between trust and knowledge management: what are its implications for team performance. Journal of knowledge management, 7(5), 55 – 66.

Importance of trust in knowledge sharing Lack of depth and specifics as to what knowledge is

shared (and how types of knowledge is distinguished) Study looked at self-managed teams comprising

unionised workers from an intra-organisational perspective in the manufacturing sector (aerospace)

Adler, P (2001) Market, hierarchy, and trust: the knowledge economy and the future of capitalism. Organisation science, 12(2), 215 – 234.

High trust institutional forms to proliferate Growth in knowledge intensity increases reliance on

trust Conceptual paper that subscribes to Marxist theory (in

particular the concept of ‘community’ Need to modern forms of reflective trust

Trust and psychological contracts

Resource-based view of the firm Hamel and Prahalad’s notion of core-competencies (the

challenge and need to identify clusters of ‘know-how’) Drucker suggested that knowledge has a shelf-life and

constantly necessitates refreshing Harrison, R and Kessels, J (2004) Human resource

development in a knowledge economy: an organistaional view. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.

Classifying knowledge Explicit versus tacit knowledge Mode I and Mode II knowledge (also Popper’s Mode III) Propositional, procedural and dispositional

Agency theory versus Stakeholder theory Inter-play between the state and industry (lessons

on social partnership in Continental Europe; also the Singapore example)

Strategy, dynamic capabilities and core competencies

Taylor, R (2002) Britain’s world of work: myths and realities. Gloucestershire: ESRC Publications. 90% of the workforce have permanent contracts

(shifts towards flexible workforce) On average, these workers stay in the same

organisation for seven years and four months (contrast with Japan)

Dominance of the cognitive perspective of knowledge sharing Lack of unifying body of knowledge addressing

group and organisational level of analysis Ambiguous notion of knowledge (analogies and

metaphors) “Honest probing is needed now, rather than glib

answers

Human Resources Management

Studies undertaken by the Work and Employment Research Centre (WERC)The need to excite knowledge

workers with interesting workDevelopment of knowledge workers

has to be done inductively rather than top down

Sample of research and technology organisations

Knowledge Intensity