Sharing Tacit Knowledge for Integrated Project Team Flexibility: Case Study of Integrated Project Delivery

The integrated project team has received wide attention and acceptance in the construction industry due to the adversarial nature of traditional contracting. With a growing trend toward the integration of all project parties, team flexibility emerges as an important factor to the success of more complex and dynamic construction projects. This research focuses on the flexibility of the integrated project team and explores its antecedents. Based on the literature that has found team flexibility is dependent on team dynamic capabilities, team dynamic capabilities was further studied and it was found that tacit knowledge sharing serves as a determinant of team flexibility at a deeper level. A case study was conducted on an integrated project delivery (IPD) project at its early stage. By using social network analysis, it was found that tacit knowledge sharing leads to the integrated project team flexibility through building connections between team members and increasing team dynamic capabilities. The primary contribution of this study is finding the linkage from tacit knowledge sharing to the integrated project team flexibility, which can provide a theoretical guide for the integrated project team to improve its ability to survive in the dynamic environment of construction projects. (C) 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.