Addressing the need of transition by socializing and making new friends : A socio-technical perspective on large-scale change in construction

Sammanfattning: This research took its point of departure in the aspiration of large-scale change of the construction industry, where existing industry structures has been frequently criticized. To facilitate innovation and change in the Swedish construction industry, a strategic innovation program has been established based on the idea that research, innovation, and development should manifest itself through the mobilization of collaborative and actor-driven networks. Using a strategic innovation program to support inter-organizational collaboration and actor-driven change is a fairly new phenomenon in the context of construction and thus the subject of inquiry for this research. From a theoretical point of view, this can be understood in terms of a transition of a socio-technical system. Therefore, the purpose was to gain a deeper understanding of how a socio-technical transition of the construction industry could be facilitated.The research presented in this licentiate thesis has been conducted between September 2019 – March 2022 and has been a part of a research project called Program Generic Measurement Methods. This research has a qualitative inquiry and has been designed as a longitudinal case study to understand, and follow, this process of change. The data that has been collected consist of document collection, structured interviews, semi-structured interviews and an autoethnographic approach including observations and self-reflection. Actor-network theory, and specifically the concepts related to the translation process and black boxing, has been used as an analytical framework and facilitated the analysis of the collected data.This thesis increases the understanding of how a socio-technical transition in construction could be facilitated by analyzing the events that lead to the development of the strategic innovation program as well as events from the operational part of the program. Key actors in these processes are identified as well as their roles in a transition of the construction industry. The results indicates that this is far from a linear process that contains a lot of negotiation between participating actors. During this process, the role of digitalization changes when the intention of the program moves from its initiators to the actors engaged in different technological niches. A better integration of academia is asked for due to the complexity that digitally driven transition processes brings. Moreover, actors in the construction industry are encouragedto engage in technological niches to interact and collaborate in new, or modified, ways outside traditional construction activities since it stimulates learning and facilitate a deeper understanding of the challenges that actors in the construction process face together.