This study has investigated and attempted to enhance understanding of the role of absorptive capacity in influencing a firm to adopt green innovation. Absorptive capacity which has been argued by previous study as an important factor to facilitate the adoption of innovation, may require some degree of pressure from regulators and customers, to be exerted on particular firms, to influence them to become involved in green innovation. Therefore, this study has also attempted to evaluate the extent of the moderating effect of regulatory and customer requirements on the relationship between a firm's absorptive capacity and its adoption of green innovation. A research framework was developed and three research questions were posited. An electronic questionnaire survey was created and distributed to general building firms from the construction industry in Scotland. Subsequent semi-structured interviews were conducted with a subset of participants from the survey as well as with a number of construction industry experts, to investigate further the results of the survey. A total of 84 respondents participated in the survey, while 13 respondents contributed invaluable input from the interview sessions. The findings suggest that, on the whole, the level of green innovation adoption by most of the general building firms in Scotland can be considered as relatively low. Their engagement in green-related activities, however, was focusing more on the technical and process side, which was directly influenced by firms' high levels of existing knowledge and efforts to build new knowledge through employee training. The green administrative practices, on the other hand, had not really been given attention by the building firms as it is a voluntary-based act, which does not demonstrate tangible, financial benefit to them. The evidence from the study also shows that neither environmental requirements from regulators nor customers could encourage the building firms to adopt green practices even when they have high levels of absorptive capacity. The low levels of compliance as well as poor environmental demand from the customers indicate the number one concern within the industry, that is, cost, which hinders the building firms from becoming 'greener'. Additionally, this study provided insights and further understanding regarding knowledge-based factors that could facilitate the adoption of green innovation. This study has also made a methodological contribution by providing evidence and support for the use of mixed method approach to enhance understanding of the construction industry, which has tended to be the focus of quantitative studies. The findings of this study also have a number of implications, especially for policy makers, to explore into strategy and stringent regulations that could encourage more firms in the construction sector, which are operating in one of the industries that contributes most to environmental problems, to seek to reduce their impact on the natural environment. As the government takes a leadership role in this regard, participation from the other stakeholders within the industry is of importance to prompt a wider adoption of green practices. Here, architects, in particular, are in a potentially useful position to have a very strong influence in encouraging building firms to become involved in green practices. Besides, both individuals within the organisations (e.g. the top management and decision makers) and the society outside the organisations (e.g. customers and users of construction outputs) need to be educated to motivate them to make better environmental choices in order to contribute to environmental protection or sustainability.

Understanding how innovation and renewal occurs in an industry is important for how to manage technical development for individual companies. It is also important for creating a beneficial industrial context for renewal, from both a political and an industrial perspective, in which new solutions can arise and spread through the involvement of several actors of the industry. How innovation and renewal occurs in the construction industry in Sweden is however viewed differently. One challenge that has been pointed to is that most of the work performed in the construction industry is organized in projects, which in turn should affect how innovation and renewal can be achieved.   The aim of this thesis is to provide an understanding of how the project organizing in the industry affects innovation and renewal. This is executed through a case study of the construction of Skandionkliniken, a proton therapy clinic, and by using an industrial network theory that challenges the traditional view of how innovation is achieved. One important understanding drawn from this study is that renewal is created in the interface between companies and their resources. The kinds of innovation and renewal that can take place in the projects highly rely on technical interdependencies and organizational features of the involved actors. Three conclusions are drawn from this study; firstly, innovation and renewal in the construction industry occurs gradually across projects, secondly, the type of innovation that occurs is not what is expected from a traditional point of view, and thirdly, therefore it is not necessarily obvious when or how it takes place, which has implications both for policy and company management.

In the increasingly competitive market, innovation has become important if not crucial for entrepreneurial survival. The construction industry, although argued to be a bit behind, is catching on. As the ambition to become more innovative rapidly increase, several challenges must be managed within the building sector and one of them is the implementation of innovations. The aim of this study is therefore to investigate the implementation process of innovation in a construction organisation’s projects. More specifically, to increase the understanding of the important aspects, which could result in a more effective implementation in the future. This will be done in collaboration with a large contractor firm in Sweden, NCC and with the help of an implementation framework developed by Sarah E. Slaughter. The framework will be used to see how well theory reflects practice and is especially directed towards the construction industry. It describes how innovations in general should be implemented, regardless of its type. The thesis is built around a case study and where a particular project within NCC has been chosen to study more closely. The project, which is addressed as the “Pilot Project” is a collaboration between NCC and an external supplier. In this collaboration they have worked together to implement an innovation, however, the process will be looked through the contractor’s eyes. The empirics has been collected through a qualitative interview study including individuals in different positions in the pilot project but also complemented with interviews with other individuals in the firm that have in some way been involved in an implementation of an innovation. Through the empirics, a number of significant aspects could be identified in the following categories: “Commitment”, “Communication”, “Organizing teams and Creating good Conditions” and last “Evaluation”. The result was that the majority of the most important factors were in line with the framework’s stages but that it should be complemented or modified with several aspects found in the empirics. It can therefore be concluded that the model, to a large extent, reflects reality in a good sense. / I den allt mer konkurrenskraftiga marknaden har innovation blivit viktigt, om inte en nödvändighet för ett företags överlevnad. Byggindustrin som har ansett ligga efter är nu på rätt väg. Då ambitionen att bli mer innovativ snabbt ökar måste flera utmaningar hanteras inom byggsektorn där en utav dem är implementering av innovationer. Syftet med denna studie är därför att undersöka implementeringsprocessen av innovation i en byggorganisations projekt. Mer specifikt att öka förståelsen för de viktiga aspekterna som möjligtvis kan resultera i en mer effektiv implementering i framtiden. Detta kommer att göras i samarbete med en stor byggentreprenör i Sverige, NCC och med hjälp av ett implementeringsramverk utvecklat av Sarah E. Slaughter. Ramverket kommer användas för att se hur bra teorin speglar praktiken och är särskilt riktat till byggindustrin. Den beskriver hur innovationer generellt ska implementeras oberoende av vilken typ det är. Uppsatsen är uppbyggd kring en fallstudie där ett specifikt projekt inom NCC har valts att studeras närmare. Projektet, som går under namnet “Pilotprojektet” är ett samarbete mellan NCC och en extern leverantör. I det här samarbetet har de tillsammans arbetat med för att implementera en innovation, dock kommer endast processen att studeras utifrån entreprenörens perspektiv. Empirin har samlats in genom en kvalitativ intervjustudie där olika roller i pilotprojektet har intervjuats men också kompletterats av andra intervjuer med individer från företaget som på något sätt har varit delaktiga i implementeringen av en innovation. Genom studiens empiri kunde ett antal faktorer fastställas som återfinns i följande kategorier: “Engagemang”, “Kommunikation”, “Organisera grupp och Skapa bra Förutsättningar” och sist “Utvärdering”. Resultatet blev att majoriteten av de viktiga faktorerna var i linje med ramverkets steg men att den i viss mån behöver kompletteras eller modifieras. Det kan därför fastställas att modellen, till stor dels reflekterar verkligheten på ett bra sätt.