Knowledge Creation and Sharing in the Malaysian Housebuilding Industry

This chapter examines how knowledge management (KM) develops within the Malaysian housebuilding industry. The objectives of this chapter are twofold. First, it explains how innovation is able to encourage or influence housing developers in generating the new Build Then Sell (BTS) system. Second, it identifies the characteristics of successful adopters so that other developers can imitate them and funnel resources to those areas that successful adopters emphasise. Focus group and semi-structured interviews were conducted to obtain in-depth responses from one house buyers‘ organisation and successful BTS adopters. The effort to implement BTS is seen as being the result of a strategic investment in new knowledge by developers responding to the pressure they have experienced on the part of the house buyers and the government. Discussion and the sharing of both explicit and tacit knowledge between the main stakeholders have generated the finer details of the BTS. A strong learning culture and the development of KM tendencies also lead to successful BTS implementation.