Problems and issues at project level have been the main concern of the
construction management studies and construction professionals.
Consequently, the long-term strategic issues at corporate level remained
uncovered in construction companies. The complex and unique characteristics
of the industrial context of construction also limited the adoption of
strategic management concepts by the companies. Recently, however, changing
business environment, increasing competition in construction arena and
higher client expectations have been the drivers for a shift in perception
of strategic thinking experienced by construction executives. It is realized
that setting long-term strategies is the roadmap towards gaining sustainable
competitive advantage by the firm.
The focus on strategic management raised the question about the strategic
information sources for construction industry. Unless the required
information is provided to the professionals as an input, decisions of high
quality are unattainable outputs. This indispensable need for information
increased the awareness of the companies about information technology and
consequently strategic information systems which have great significance in
shaping the competitive strategy of the organization.
Although the significance of strategic thinking and information systems are
realized by construction companies, it is still a complex task to design a
strategic information system since the information needed to make the
critical strategic decisions are widely spread and lost among the other data
related to daily activities. The main objective of this thesis is to develop
a generic IT-supported strategic management tool integrating the scattered
information which can aid the decision making process of construction
executives. Strategic fields within the context of construction industry are
extracted from previous researches and discussed by experts in order to
reach the right information sources which are to be stored in a database and
accessed by the users through interfaces. The applicability of the developed
strategic information system is tested by a Turkish construction company on
real construction projects. Finally, the benefits, shortcomings and
potential future developments for the tool are discussed by referring to the
case study.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:METU/oai:etd.lib.metu.edu.tr:http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/2/12610185/index.pdf |
| Date | 01 December 2008 |
| Creators | Gunes, Tanyeli |
| Contributors | Toker, Irem Dikmen |
| Publisher | METU |
| Source Sets | Middle East Technical Univ. |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | M.S. Thesis |
| Format | text/pdf |
| Rights | To liberate the content for METU campus |
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