Martin Löwstedt

Chalmers University of Technology · Department of Technology Management and Economics

In the project management literature, projects have often been conceptualized as mere implementation sites of organizational strategy. However, such rationalization seldom draws on empirical evidence of strategy as it unfolds at the micro-level and at the interfaces between projects and the organization. Drawing on rich case-study data, this articl...

Research concerned with standardization of the construction process has generally considered the challenges from only rational and instrumental perspectives. The purpose of this paper is to foreground a social perspective of this challenge. Specifically, the work of construction site managers is explored through a professional work lens in order to...

The conceptualization of construction as a loosely coupled system has been widely used to explain behaviour within the industry. In this article, we revisit the concept by exploring what it means to work at the micro-level within this system. Adopting a practice lens, this study focuses on the daily work of site managers, a category of workers who...

Leadership has increasingly been advocated as a potent organizing practice, linked positively to several performance dimensions as well as successful organizational development and change. Despite these alleged promises, the specific characteristics of leadership processes as they unfold in a construction context have not been fully captured by con...

Site managers have been said to perform one of the toughest jobs in the construction industry, which often requires them to work excessively long and irregular hours. Although previous research has reported on the detrimental effects of overwork on site managers’ wellbeing, few studies have examined their subjective reasoning related to these work...

Tidigt 2021 beviljade SmartBuilt Environment finansiering för projektet ”Innovationshubben skills – Systemdemonstration av hållbar omställning i ekosystem genom digitalisering och affärsutveckling” (SKILLS), vars syfte var att på skarpt manér organisera en strukturerad innovationsprocess för samhällsbyggnadssektorn i form av en innovationshubb. Fem...

It is well recognised that knowledge transfer in the construction industry, characterised by its intricate project organising, poses significant challenges. This has attracted plentiful attention by construction scholars and studied in such volumes that it now qualifies as a 'traditional research question'. To honour this year's conference theme, t...

The construction industry's digital transformation renders consequences that are hard to predict and how new need for leadership evolve. Here, the construction management literature prescribes functionalistic views, while how managers cope with the technology-intense context in their leadership is missing. Exploring this problem, the paper focus ma...

Abstract Purpose – Drawing on the literature on pastoral power, a term introduced by Foucault that denotes a specific form of authority based on the subordinate’s open communication regarding aspirations, interests and personal concerns, having the full faith in the leader’s care of the subordinate’s welfare, this article report empirical material...

Digital transformation (DT) refers to a process of integrating digital technologies that will lead to new forms of relationship among actors; organisational processes; and business models. It is frequently portrayed as something that can improve; but also, potentially disrupt; the construction sector (CS) as we know it today. As DT requires distrib...

Researchers have noted an apparent decoupling between construction production strategies formulated at upper management, and their top-down translation into onsite practices. In this paper, we revisit the research question of how and why there is such a decoupling and use that to conceptualise a primarily bottom-up schema of production strategizing...

Purpose-The purpose of this paper is to explore how a multitude of demands and challenges faced by public facilities management organizations' (PFMOs) particularly in relation to a large building stock in need of measures' are acted upon and negotiated in practice. Specifically this study asks: What are the institutional logics (IL) that constitute...

Growing cities, new governmental sustainability directives, and a large building stock in need of acute measures put pressure on public facilities management organizations to transform their operations. However, the complex organizational context encompasses multiple, sometimes competing, institutional logics where long-term demands on sustainabili...

In mainstream literature, strategy is conceptually viewed as future-oriented; top management responds to prevailing external factors by cognitively constructing an abstract means-end representation of a perfect future. This representation is encapsulated in predefined mission, goals, master plan and (sometimes) actions. Simultaneously, much of the...

Meta-organizations - organizations made up of organizations - are increasingly prevalent today, especially to tackle societal challenges. Meta-organizing is a strategizing activity characterized by particular types of inter-organizational relationships. We adopt the Strategy-as-Practice perspective to explore the strategizing practices of participa...

There is an increasing stream of leadership-related rhetoric, organisational discourses and training interventions stemming from policy-makers, media and management consultants concerning the ‘right’ kind of leadership needed in order for industries to meet their current and future challenges. Yet seldom is the concept itself problematised or viewe...

NOTE: FULL CHAPTER CAN BE PROVIDED UPON REQUEST Human bodies are under-researched in organisational theorising. This chapter brings out the perceived experiences and emotions of a physical body-in-context. Using a narrative approach and life-story analysis, the authors examine the interplay between strongly entrenched masculine corporeal inscriptio...

Det framförs ofta kritik mot att den svenska byggbranschen har en låg förändringsbenägenhet generellt. Denna kritik cirkulerar delvis som självkritik inom branschen, men kommer i större utsträckning från forskarhåll samt en rad statliga och branschspecifika undersökningar utförda under de senaste 20 åren. Denna bild delas dock inte av alla och det...

In construction, site managerial work has often been depicted as ‘muddling through’, skilfully solving problems as these inevitably crop up and trying to be everywhere at the same time. This perspective seems to give precedence to structural conditions in the industry when explaining micro-level practice on construction sites. Recently, however, or...

There has recently been a growing interest for ethnographic studies in construction, predicated upon the belief that ethnographic research in the construction industry can provide a powerful way of illuminating construction practices in new ways. Focusing on the ethnographic method, it is demonstrated how a self-reflexive ethnography can contribute...

The starting point of this thesis was an identified lack of strategy-related research within the construction industry as well as a lack of comprehensive strategy management at the organizational level in construction. A growing number of researchers have highlighted the importance of strategy research in construction in regards to increase underst...

A social identity lens and theories of self-reinforcement are used to explore identity work and processes of identification at the micro-level in a large construction company. Rich data from a qualitative case study show that a strong collective identification is self-defining for the vast majority of managers in the organization, regardless of the...

Although external consultant interventions are usual in construction organizations to mediate strategic change, micro-level analyses of these interactions remain scarce. We draw on rich data from a qualitative case study and focus on observations of a set of three management-consultant strategy workshop interventions, aka away-days, with top, middl...

There has recently been a growing interest for ethnographic studies in construction. This interest is predicted upon the belief that ethnographic research to the construction industry can provide a powerful way of illuminating construction practices in new ways. The purpose of this paper is therefore to explicate how ethnography could be used to an...

This paper draws on empirical data from a longitudinal study of strategy management in a large Swedish construction company. We examine strategy-in-the-making at the micro level of discursive practice during a two-day strategy workshop with middle managers. We show how strategic sense-making is achieved through creating a coherent link between past...

Ever since its origins back in the 1960´s, strategy researchers have been engaged in an ongoing discussion about what strategy actually means. Over the historical development of the strategic-management field strategy has gone from something that top managers formulated; it has gone from including a rather limited analytical process, to being a pat...

What does change mean for organizational members? Although researchers have attempted to capture its intrinsic complexities, there remains uncertainty as to what change really is and how it happens. Drawing on a longitudinal interpretative case study of change in a large Swedish construction company, a narrative approach is used to elicit middle ma...

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Strategizing can be seen as a balancing act between aggregating knowledge and experiences from an organization‟s past business cycles and forecasting future possibilities over a longer period of time. Yet knowledge about strategizing over business cycles and in rapidly changing market conditions in the construction sector is scarce. This paper take...

That change is a part of organizational life has been well documented in the literature, but how change emerges over time and is interpreted warrants further research. Much of the existing literature portrays organizational change as detached episodes – based on a single perspective, accounting either for the content, the context, or the process. T...