Information sharing

Sharing information is a continuous challenge in most companies. The interviewees argued that sharing information in the case company is severely lacking. Having various information systems to store information and no clear consensus of what kind of information is stored where, it is no surprise that the people feel overwhelmed by the amount of information coming in. The information sharing was divided into three categories: best practices, information flow and feedback.

Best practices. Sharing best practices was unanimously perceived problematic by the interviewees. In the past the organization has produced news about singular success stories related to single Lean tools (e.g. concurrent engineering or Last Planner), but nothing more around them. Best practices are only shared mouth-to-mouth and according to one interviewee “the responsibility of learning is left to the listener.” No unified knowledge for best practices exists in the case company, and the information at worst disappears and at best stays with the individuals after a project is disbanded. It is possible that the individuals don’t have the necessary tools or knowledge to share these practices, since it was mentioned that the problems

related to sharing best practices “…might exist because no method to share and implement best practices have been found.” However, few interviewees argued that it hasn’t been a necessity to share best practices in the construction industry, and some best practices have been successfully shared at least in the past. While this might be true to an extent, as stated before, almost no standardization or a plan to share the best practices currently exists. The new management system GRIP should bring standardization to the organization, but in addition to it there are not any other initiatives to improve standardization as far as the researcher knows.

Information flow between people and systems was also determined problematic.

Again, no consensus on information sharing or storing exists. In a sense, even while most of the existing information is available for almost anyone, there is no

“collective” information. Rather, the information is fragmented into pieces around different information systems and databases, and there is not (to an extent) any set practices of what sort of information should be stored and where. A lot of information is created continuously, but it does not reach the right people on the right time, or there are too much of it. One of the interviewees suggested that this has led to a state where “The people don’t know where and which tools should be used to process information.” The amount of information systems and different tools was identified to play a major part in the overall confusion. For example, e-mail was partly criticized as a method to spread information, since there is so much e-mail to date that critical information might be lost during the process. Also, if one forgets to add someone as a receiver, the information does not necessarily reach that person. It was suggested that horizontal information flow should be increased by collaborative efforts between segments, and that the systems should talk more with each other to make automatic information update possible amongst the systems.

There are however some differences on how the interviewees perceived intrafirm information flow. Most of the interviewees thought that the information flow inside divisions is relatively good, but when it came to information flow inside segments (i.e. between divisions) and between segments, some felt that especially the information flow between segments is lacking. A few interviewees thought the flow is decent between segments, but it requires development. It was further argued that

the organization lacks transparency in this matter as there is no clear guidelines for information sharing. Additionally, it was emphasized that the intrafirm information flow is highly dependent on the personnel’s individual relations in the organization and where the person is located. It was suggested that the merger of two companies in the year 2018 had a negative effect on the organization’s information flow and this was acknowledged by multiple interviewees. An interviewee stated that “The merger made segments more isolated than before merger. - - now the organization has been separated in a way that it (collaboration) is impossible in practice.” It seems fair to assume that the merger has made isolation and the silo mentality more apparent in the organization.

Feedback. The interviewees’ attitude towards internal feedback varies a lot in the organization. Some feel like the amount of feedback is adequate and they can freely talk with their peers and foremen, while others think that the overall feedback is still well underdeveloped. The yearly opinion poll to employees and internal auditions are mentioned as examples of a working feedback system. The bi-annual performance appraisal is another example of internal feedback. However, while it is instructed that the half-year performance targets should be updated regularly, no one is surveying whether this is being done or not, and the responsibility for this is left to the managers. Also, no method exists to know if the performance appraisal even took place the way it was supposed to, since the conversations are informal, and the HR department does not have the resources to follow this process.

Ultimately this means that there is no way to know if any feedback is given, as once again there are no standardized practices to give feedback or to make sure that the people receive it. One of the interviewees argued regarding feedback that the negative aspects should be brought up more and their root causes analyzed, but this would require a change of culture since some might take negative feedback as a personal insult, when they should see it as a chance to learn new.

There have been some initiatives to develop the feedback system, for example by arranging a feedback meeting after submitting an offer in a bidding contest, to learn through self-reflection by going through successful practices and those that require improvements. Additionally, quarterly meetings have been organized to summarize

the quarter and to discuss how to improve things. There was minor critique that the feedback from subcontractors is collected only after a project and not during it.

Further, only scarce feedback from or regarding the subcontractors exist. While the company has a system for supplier evaluation, its use has been lackluster, making accurate supplier evaluation (at least based on the system’s data) nearly impossible.

Moreover, it needs to be emphasized that based on the researcher’s understanding the initiatives to improve feedback mentioned previously have been limited to one division in the infrastructure segment, meaning that no company-wide initiatives exist apart from the bi-annual performance appraisals and the yearly opinion poll.

One of the largest problems in the organization seems to be the lack of analyzing failures and successes, whether they are related to personal or organizational attributes.