A literature synthesis: is construction industry low responsive to change and development?

Abstract

Construction faces many challenges, but one of its principle challenges is lack of innovation and research. This research tries to understand why the construction sector is slow to innovate and whether the industry needs to innovate. Further it discusses the role of academia as a prominent researching body in such a change. There are many reasons behind the slow responsiveness of the industry and it has been identified that economical characteristics of construction industry could be a major reason which creates lack of performance-based competition. Further, the inherent characteristics of the construction sector influence this slow innovation. Despite this slowness, there is a need for the industry to innovate with the global challenges taking place in the industry. Academia has an important role to play here in merging academic research to industry development needs. However, academics’ choice in research area is mainly driven by the context, availability of funding and personal interest, rather than on industry requirements. It is believed that the Sri Lankan industry could be innovated with the correct cooperation of academia with the evidence from other countries. The PhD research which this research paper is based aims to merge academic research into construction industry requirements to build a better responsive industry. As a preliminary step, this paper reports on the literature findings on whether the industry is slow to innovate and the reasons behind this.