Shared knowledge in project-based companies' value chain

Abstract

The issue of communication inside the project company's value chain – whether it is sufficient enough to fulfil customer requirements – was investigated, discussing particularly the concepts of value chain, knowledge sharing arena and organisational learning. The special focus was on the double-loop learning and expansive learning in the project context. In practice, we often hear allegation that in the production organisation, sales and marketing department promotes sales without ensuring the common understanding between the planning and executing organisation. The question remains whether the statement 'salesmen are selling and the rest of the organisation is struggling in order to serve the customer' is true in project-based knowledge-intensive organisation. An extensive multiple-case study was conducted to find out the qualitative factors affecting project-based organisations' management. The opinions of 54 project managers and project team members about knowledge sharing in the value chain from ten project-based organisations were introduced. The study focused on communication between marketing, planning, research and development departments and the customer. Surprisingly, based on empirical evidence, the above-mentioned allegation is not strongly supported in the knowledge-intensive project environment.