Developing a knowledge taxonomy for business development in construction companies: A case of Turkish construction industry

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Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, Mühendislik Fakültesi, İnşaat Mühendisliği Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2012

Tezin Dili: İngilizce

Öğrenci: Amin Haghgooie

Asıl Danışman (Eş Danışmanlı Tezler İçin): Irem Dikmen Toker

Eş Danışman: Mustafa Talat Birgönül

Özet:

The term business as an economical activity brings along many issues related to; managerial activities, competition, marketing, finance, risk, etc. which all of them include a high level of decision making that need to be supported by trust able knowledge. Due to the unique specifications of the construction industry and the high sensitivity regarding the decisions made accompanied with the business, knowledge and knowledge management have been considered essential for the industry. As a fundamental step of a well structured knowledge management system, classification of the knowledge plays an important role in organizing and representing a domain. Among the many aspects of decision making, decisions regarding the business development of a company play a crucial role in the survival and growth of an available business. However up to now, the literature has a shortage on a comprehensive work which attempts to classify the knowledge in this specific domain of the construction industry. In an effort to cover this gap in the literature, this study focuses on developing a knowledge taxonomy for business development management in a construction company based on semi-structured interviews with Turkish construction professionals. The taxonomy designed by referring to expert opinion is comprised of five major concepts: Business environment, Clients, Partners, Related parties, and own Company. The presented taxonomy is tested on real cases and believed to be used for representing, storing, sharing, retrieving and in general, managing knowledge related to business development management of a construction organizations for decision supporting purposes. More over in order to demonstrate how the presented taxonomy can be used in a company a knowledge management tool has been designed. .