Organisation, ‘anchoring’ of knowledge, and innovation in the construction industry

explanation for the relatively poor innovation performance of the industry. Using survey data from the Danish construction industry the paper investigates the importance of learning and ?anchoring? of project specific knowledge within the firms for facilitating engagement in innovative activities at the firm level. The data refer to the overall Danish construction industry, as well as a specific region, North Jutland, which is relatively specialised in construction. By using latent class and regression analysis the results show that firms, which to a high extent make use of partnering and other interorganisational features, combined with internal product and process evaluation and knowledge diffusion, are more likely to engage in innovative activities than firms that make less use of what we label ?knowledge anchoring mechanisms?. This indicates that there are ways for firms to compensate for the problems that temporary interorganisational projects may cause in relation to continuous learning at the firm level. These results may also have implications for project organising firms outside the construction industry. A characteristic feature of the construction industry is the widespread use of project organisation.The temporary character of the firm boundary crossing projects has been raised as one possible