Power, interest and value in building project organisations

In the majority of building projects the project organisation is temporary and dissolves when the project is completed. This results in a short term cooperation situation where immediate performance has absolute priority. This combined with the tendency towards an increasing number of parties in the project result in a dynamic management environment where power, various interests and values are addressed. Power is the ability of an actor to extract valued output from a system and to affect the system's effectiveness and efficiency. The objective of this paper is to explore the concept of power in construction project organisations and to investigate how it can influence the management of projects. Furthermore, to relate the concept of power to Value-Based Management and to explore whether power should be a barrier to holistic management. The applied method is a study of selected relevant and significant literature concerning power. An explanation of how the concept of power can be understood in a construction project context is given. Finally, the connections between Value-Based Management and power are discussed. The principal result is a framework of how to perceive power in building project organisations.