Preparing for organisational learning by HK infrastructure project joint ventures organisations

Abstract

Organisations often collaboratively seek ways such as partnerships, alliances and joint venture (JVs), to bridge gaps in their knowledge and capacity to provide goods or services. Infrastructure projects in Hong Kong often require clusters of resources, knowledge, skills and capabilities that are difficult to obtain in a single provider – it is often problematic for any single organisation to successfully complete these projects using only in‐house resources and knowledge. Thus, providers frequently form JVs and similar forms of relationships to undertake large‐scale infrastructure projects. While one motivation has been to spread financial and other risks, a strong motivation is to better capture learning, so that this hidden and intangible asset may be later applied to improve JV partners’ competitive advantage. Presents results from a pilot study that investigates the nature of the JV relationship, focusing upon the dimension of organisational learning intentions of JV representatives interviewed.