Emerging E-Communication Technologies and Their Usage in Project-Based Organizations

This article examines how the introduction of electronic communication in the Architectural-Engineering-Construction (AEC) industry is impacting on two domains of management, namely production management and project management. In the study, traditional organizations are associated with production management, and project-based organizations are associated with project management. By looking at the usage, we want to pin down which e-communication tools are more tightly coupled to the management and how can firms benefit the most from these tools. The data for the study were collected through two surveys, one total population survey in the Finnish and Swedish house building industries as representatives of traditional organizations (TOs) and the other a focused survey in the project-based industries. Our results showed that electronic document management and scheduling were more prominent among project-based organizations, as these firms exhibits more inter-organizational communication.
Keywords: e-communication, project management, production management