Learning mechanisms for addressing improvement in construction companies

This paper presents on-going research within the department of Civil and Building Engineering at Loughborough University on learning of a company as a corporate entity, which is becoming an important feature for corporate improvement. The study focuses on learning media or tools that companies employ to imbibe knowledge and other stimuli from their internal and external business environments for purposes of learning new ways of working. Therefore, the paper presents the results of a survey on the application of various learning mechanisms for addressing improvement to UK construction contractors. Organizational learning concepts and the mechanisms for learning are introduced and the research approach for the initial stage of the study is discussed. The results of the survey show that the use of most learning mechanisms was low.