Towards a taxonomy of management in construction: Exploring the structure of management

Managing the complexity of construction, in terms of handling, controlling and directing organizations and projects to achieve success, forms part of the current work in the research project 'Value chain management in construction', being undertaken in collaboration with a major construction company. Some of the early work has pinpointed deficiencies in current management thinking and practice within the subject company. One hypothesis is that organizational and project success is linked to the extent to which a company or other organization is able to understand all the issues of management, independent of the fact that one manages a small project or manages a large company. In order to be in a position to understand the true extent of management, linguistic breakdowns have been performed to try to establish consistency in the various meanings1 implied by the word 'management' and how these measure up to current thinking and practice. To produce the taxonomy, an established methodology was used to give a more structured approach and to enhance the validity of the research. As a step towards the development of this taxonomy, a preliminary structure to define the subject of management is presented. This first pass through the linguistic landscape has produced a rough taxonomic representation for understanding management in construction.