Construction the Third Way or The Internet Challenge to Television

Construction the Third Way: Managing Cooperation and Competition in Construction

Author: John Bennett

This book describes current best practice in managing construction. It is based on case studies of leading practice responding to demands from customers that construction match the value and quality that international competition is forcing on their own businesses. The case studies show that major customers now partner with construction firms to find more efficient ways of working.



The resulting best practice adds to these cooperative approaches a drive for efficiency and innovation based on benchmarks of world class performance that empower teams to set themselves competitive targets. So the new approach balances cooperation and competition.

This is why Professor John Bennett's book is called ''Construction: The Third Way.'' The third way in modern politics balances the extremes of cooperation and competition in the interests of the whole community. At its best it encourages sustainable economic growth within a fair society. These aims are echoed in leading practice where teams able to balance cooperation and competition deliver better value for their customers and yet earn sustainably higher profits for construction.

The new approach requires managers to rethink construction using ideas from fundamental science that see human organizations as self-organizing networks of relationships. This throws new light on the strengths and weaknesses of both competition and cooperation, and provides the basis for a new paradigm to guide key construction decisions. The book describes this background and provides advice about organization structures that are responsive to changing markets and technologies, and construction processes that enable the industry to earchfair profits by providing customers with the levels of value and quality they now demand.

*Based on case studies of world-class construction
*Links best practice and leading edge management theory
*Helps customers get good value and quality and construction firms be efficient and profitable

Booknews

Based on case studies and consideration of customer demand, Bennett (construction management and engineering, U. of Reading) describes the current best practice in managing construction. He goes on to advocate a cooperative approach paired with a drive for efficiency and innovation. He considers the strengths and weaknesses of this approach, and outlines a new paradigm to guide key construction decisions. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Table of Contents:

	Preface
1	The new paradigm	1
2	Competition	27
3	Cooperation	50
4	New framework	81
5	Structures	112
6	Processes	156
	References	201
	Index	205

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The Internet Challenge to Television

Author: Bruce M Owen

After a half-century of glacial creep, television technology has begun to change at the same dizzying pace as computer software. What this will mean—for television, for computers, and for the popular culture where these video media reign supreme—is the subject of this timely book. A noted communications economist, Bruce Owen supplies the essential background: a grasp of the economic history of the television industry and of the effects of technology and government regulation on its organization. He also explores recent developments associated with the growth of the Internet. With this history as a basis, his book allows readers to peer into the future—at the likely effects of television and the Internet on each other, for instance, and at the possibility of a convergence of the TV set, computer, and telephone.

The digital world that Owen shows us is one in which communication titans jockey to survive what Joseph Schumpeter called the "gales of creative destruction." While the rest of us simply struggle to follow the new moves, believing that technology will settle the outcome, Owen warns us that this is a game in which Washington regulators and media hyperbole figure as broadly as innovation and investment. His book explains the game as one involving interactions among all the players, including consumers and advertisers, each with a particular goal. And he discusses the economic principles that govern this game and that can serve as powerful predictive tools.

Kirkus Reviews

An instructive, if misnamed, volume on emerging technology in the fields of television, telephony, and computers. Owens, an economist, tends to approach his subjects with the issue of cost-effectiveness foremost. He treats his material methodically from both historical and prognostic points of view, covering radio as a precursor to television and making predictions on the success of high-definition television (HDTV). In the case of telephones and televisions, there is a further division into analog and digital subsets, and with television additional stratification between broadcast and cable media. Much of this discussion is quite helpful, and Owen certainly renders the technical jargon far more clearly than a typical owner's manual for a product does. For instance, he offers an instructive discussion on the origins of the word "broadcast," employing a comparison with "narrowcast" to underscore the importance of bandwidth to predigital and non-computer-based forms of communication. Similarly, Owens makes strong use of charts and diagrams to elucidate his contentions. His political stance, on those rare occasions when it can be discerned at all, is innocuously laissez-faire, criticizing both monopolies and government-sponsored protection of the industry. However, the study eventually sinks under the weight of too much material crammed into too slim a volume: confusion inevitably results, despite the helpful glossary. More importantly, the issue of convergence between television and the Internet—the very phenomenon that the book's title suggests is central—comes late in the discussion and is given short shrift. Owen seems somewhat behind the curve, predicting thattelevision/computer convergence is further off than it may actually be, though his points about the requirements for higher computer speeds and greater memory capacity are well taken. Despite its future-oriented hype, more useful as a historical text than a handbook for the 21st century. (53 line illustrations) .