Using formative interventions to study emerging technologies in construction practices: the case of the Ground Penetrating Radar

Abstract

The potential impact of emerging technologies is challenging for construction management researchers to study, as these technologies have yet to become embedded in current organisational practices. Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) offers a method called formative interventions that may assist in this challenge. However, existing formative intervention methods are not adequately tailored to the study of emerging technologies, necessitating a more immersive engagement of the researcher-interventionist. This article proposes a renewed participatory take on the role of the researcher-interventionist and outlines the actions that researchers can undertake to investigate the future impacts of emerging technology. Specifically, we describe the interventionist role through a study of utility detection activities in which we intervened with emerging Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) technology at twelve construction sites. We analysed our role through an inductive coding approach using interviews and field visit data. Our findings reveal five interventionist action types for intervention studies with emerging technology. These include shaping conditions, exposing tensions, supporting problem resolution, operating tools, and facilitating reflection. The action types prompted subjects to reevaluate elements of the activity system and helped describe three potential future activity systems that integrated GPR as a new tool. These findings demonstrate that a participatory take on formative interventions provides a potent means to unveil possible activity systems incorporating emerging technologies. We contribute five formal intervention action types to the literature that equip interventionist researchers with methodological tools to use CHAT in a practice-based study of emerging technologies on construction sites.