Environments of construction

Development of strategies and long‐term decision making play important roles in construction due to the considerable service length of its products. In construction firms long‐term decision making is normally accomplished within formal, rational processes. A considerable trust is thereby paid to public macro‐economic forecasts. A different way of handling strategy formation and long‐term decision making is to treat them as emergent phenomena in which organizational learning plays a key role. Effective learning requires a deep understanding of the nature of the environment of the organization. This paper presents the nature of development of construction in Sweden during this century. The presentation constitutes the basis of the ‘general environment’ model of construction. This model is aimed to facilitate the understanding of environmental aspects of construction.