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Koch, C (2018) Productivity Measurement: The Social Construction of Reduction through Expansion. In: Gorse, C and Neilson, C J (Eds.), Proceedings 34th Annual ARCOM Conference, 3-5 September 2018, Queen’s University, Belfast, UK. Association of Researchers in Construction Management, 677–686.
- Type: Conference Proceedings
- Keywords: productivity, construction, social construction, Sweden
- ISBN/ISSN: 978-0-9955463-2-5
- URL: http://www.arcom.ac.uk/-docs/proceedings/4a3342cc15ac08fe59d99e2baa4ca3c2.pdf
- Abstract:
A recent large-scale measurement of productivity in Swedish construction involved some 880 respondents and around 800 projects. It covers office buildings, public institutions, such as schools, civil engineering.
The respondents were engaged in measuring, through questionnaires and telephone interviews, aspects of productivity such as project start and end, project costs, use of manpower, major disturbances in the process.
The results showed a remarkable variety in cost levels per square-meter building and meters infrastructure (roads, bridges, pipes etc.).
The aim here is to critically scrutinize the construct of such an investigation. What kind of value does it represent for stakeholders? What kind of inclusions and exclusions are made to stabilize the result? What kind of negotiations has been carried out.
Drawing on Science Technology and Society concepts, such as qualculative devices and sociology of quantification, it is argued that the social construction of this investigation actually merely represent an everyday event in a society completely penetrated by auditing regimes. Building up the social network backing the investigation, involves negotiation of relevance and rigor.
Methodologically the scrutiny builds on self-reflection of the main author of the productivity investigation and interviews with key stakeholders.
There is no more need to be modest about productivity measures, than many other big data bombardments of everyday life. Actually, most productivity measured are built on respondent’s interpretation. Of course, this goes for national statistical bureaus, but it also goes for most productivity research.
Reduction is a central social construction and recurrent in the process of the investigation. To reduce the value of a building to square-meters or the value of a road into kilometers. But also, to reduce the initiation of a building into one date, or to measure the number of man-hours spent in the contractors headquarter on a given project.