Facilitation of interorganizational teams: An exploratory literature review

Collaboration is important in a project-based industry like construction. The deterministic approach to project management implies the possibility of planning, managing and controlling the construction project phenomena and project actors' roles. This belief is dominant in the industry and the practice of collaboration will be influenced by it. The need to improve collaboration and move the project forward can be addressed a facilitation, however, it is unclear how facilitation takes place in inter-organizational project teams. This study is part of a larger project, which aims to address the skills and competencies needed for professionals in the industry to encourage collaboration and co-configuration between the actors to minimize the effect of the fragmentation within the industry. An earlier study in a Danish school setting suggests that the deterministic approach towards project management contradicts with the need for disruptive breaks from routines, which encourages co-configuration as seen in knotworking. The deterministic approach demands a certain mind-set among the actors, when delivering a known product in a known production process with a known division of labour, while the mind-set of co-configuration entails upsetting these relationships. It is possible to organize the breaks from the deterministic approach and it has previously been demonstrated, how a facilitator can help making the switch between the two mind-sets. A literature review is carried out to investigate which perspectives facilitation theory can bring to improving collaboration in the construction project. The literature presents a belief in facilitation as a way to improve collaboration although no single unified recipe for facilitation was found. A further investigation into how to approach facilitation of collaboration so focus can become on how to share critical resources for project efficiency as well as learning is recommended.