Search results

This study aims to examine how embeddedness influences consultants' information seeking when making decisions within a social network of relationships, and how these social networks evolve throughout the project delivery stages. The study is grounded in social network theory and examines embeddedness from three perspectives: structural (network cohesion), relational (tie strength in terms of friendship and knowledge awareness) and actor prominence.

A social network analysis (SNA) questionnaire was administered to a team of consultants working on a management consultancy project in Shanghai, China. The SNA measures of density, degree centrality and betweenness centrality were used to analyse relationship patterns among project team members, permitting comparison between the networks. Networks were also compared across the three project delivery stages of collect, consider and create.

Structural embeddedness was observed in the active information seeking behaviour among consultancy team members. The moderate network density of the self-organising information seeking networks across the project delivery stages ensures that the team remains connected but avoids information redundancy and overload. Relational embeddedness was evident through the multiplexity of ties among team members with overlapping friendship and information seeking relationships. The knowledge awareness network's sparseness indicates a team of autonomous knowledge workers with distributed expertise. Project managers were the most prominent actors across the three project delivery stages, underlining these actors' relational leadership role.

The study provides a deeper understanding of collaborative decision-making behaviours in dynamic-project environments. Limited attempts have been made to visualise and analyse the relationships involved in small consulting teams. The novelty of the network approach adopted stems from its ability to offer a structural view of the relationship among consultants, thus offering a distinctive and arguably more complete picture of consultancy team dynamics.

The study validates the social network theory of embeddedness in a real-world collaborative decision-making setting and provides a deeper understanding of information seeking behaviours for decision-making in dynamic-project environments. From a project management process viewpoint, the evolving nature of the information seeking network as it changes across the project stages with associated actors' roles was also visualised graphically, offering a distinctive and arguably more complete picture of consultancy team dynamics.

This study explores the role of organisational culture in promoting collective coping strategies in construction project teams in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Three collective coping strategies were examined, including problem-focused, relationship-focused and emotion-focused coping strategies.

O'Reilly et al.’s (1991) organisational culture profile (OCP) assessed organisational culture values. Data were collected through an online questionnaire from practitioners in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) construction organisations.

The findings show a high correlation between competitiveness culture values and problem-focused team coping strategy. Relationship-focused team coping strategy was found to have a high correlation with emphasis on rewards and performance orientation values. Conversely, an emotion-focused team coping strategy correlates highly with competitiveness, supportiveness and emphasis on rewards cultural values.

The cross-sectional design of the survey and the UAE context may present limits to the generalisability of findings.

Limited attempts have been made to study collective coping in construction project teams. The study paves the path for exploring emergent socio-psychological concepts in construction organisations, including the impact of organisational culture on team collective coping with adverse events.

Understanding the pivotal impact of culture on successful team coping provides managers with valuable insights into managing situational adversity in construction project teams.

This study aims to assess the essential elements of internal organisational capability that influence the cybersecurity effectiveness of a construction firm. An extended McKinsey 7S model is used to analyse the relationship between a construction firm's cybersecurity effectiveness and nine internal capability elements: shared values, strategy, structure, systems, staff, style, skills, relationships with third parties and regulatory compliance.

Based on a quantitative research strategy, this study collected data through a cross-sectional survey of professionals working in the construction sector in the United Kingdom (UK). The collected data was analysed using descriptive and inferential statistical methods.

The findings underlined systems, regulatory compliance, staff and third-party relationships as the most significant elements of internal organisational capability influencing a construction firm's cybersecurity effectiveness, organised in order of importance.

Future research possibilities are proposed including the extension of the proposed diagnostic model to consider additional external factors, examining it under varying industrial relationship conditions and developing a dynamic framework that helps improve cybersecurity capability levels while overseeing execution outcomes to ensure success.

The extended McKinsey 7S model can be used as a diagnostic tool to assess the organisation's internal capabilities and evaluate the effectiveness of implemented changes. This can provide specific ways for construction firms to enhance their cybersecurity effectiveness.

This study contributes to the field of cybersecurity in the construction industry by empirically assessing the effectiveness of cybersecurity in UK construction firms using an extended McKinsey 7S model. The study highlights the importance of two additional elements, third-party relationships and construction firm regulatory compliance, which were overlooked in the original McKinsey 7S model. By utilising this model, the study develops a concise research model of essential elements of internal organisational capability that influence cybersecurity effectiveness in construction firms.

The allocation of risk among project participants is an important determinant of innovation success in construction projects. The purpose of this paper is to examine the capacity of risk allocation to encourage the implementation of environmental innovation, particularly sustainable energy innovation (SEI), within the private finance initiative (PFI) project delivery model.

A four-case qualitative research methodology is adopted within the context of the UK government’s building schools for the future programme.

The findings identify that SEIs are encouraged on the innovative projects by the perceived clarity, appropriateness, and manageability of the risks associated with the project’s energy performance on the PFI contract. The main SEIs were largely developed as strategies to manage long-term energy performance risks allocated to private sector actors and safeguard their long-term commitment to the project. However, the findings indicate that excessive perceived innovation-related risks, particularly capital cost risk, may restrict further SEIs to be implemented.

The qualitative case study approach adopted may limit the generalisability of the findings.

The study and provides practical guidance to policymakers and project managers in developing strategies to support the implementation of SEI in PFI projects.

The study attends to a significant gap in knowledge as there is a lack of conceptual and empirical work on managing innovative processes for sustainable energy in PFI projects.

Several studies have underlined the potential of supply chain management (SCM) in meeting the formidable challenges associated with fragmentation, adversarial relationships and insufficient customer focus in the delivery of construction projects. However, properly documented examples of successfully implemented SCM initiatives, particularly at the lower tiers of the supply chain, are scarce. The purpose of this paper is to extend the existing debates by adopting an alternative approach focusing specifically on the internal SCM organisation of both main contractor and subcontractor organisations, and their direct inter-relationships.

This study sets out to explore the enablers and barriers to the implementation of SCM at the lower tiers of the construction supply chain, particularly the problematic collaboration between main contractors and subcontractors. SC maturity levels are formulated according to relevant SCM concepts and based on Holti et al.’s (2000) seven principles of SCM organisation, and transformed into a conceptual model. An explorative study is conducted based on interviews from eight large main contractor and subcontractor organisations in the Dutch construction industry.

Discouragingly, across the organisations, more barriers than enablers to SCM are identified. Organisations are found to be particularly struggling to compete through superior value, manage costs collaboratively, and develop continuous improvement within their supply chains. The findings also underline the low SC maturity of main contractors and their inability to play the essential role of supply chain managers.

The study underlines the need for a greater degree of main contractor leadership and improved internal organisation of both types of firms in order to achieve greater collaboration at the lower tiers of the construction supply chain.

The study contributes to the subject of SCM in construction in two respects. First, the findings should prove valuable to both policy-makers and industry practitioners interested in the delivery of performance improvement in construction. Second, the developed SC maturity model can form the conceptual basis for the development of an applicable improvement framework towards successful SCM implementation.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the quality of collaboration towards Sustainable Energy Innovation (SEI) in Private Finance Initiative (PFI) projects. While the capacity of PFI to encourage collaboration towards innovation is largely advocated by its proponents; however, it remains to be supported by empirical evidence.

Adopting the Complex Product System (CoPS) innovation management model, the authors assess the quality of collaboration at the interface between the innovation superstructure of public sector clients and users, and the innovation infrastructure of private sector designers, contractors and operators. Two interactional elements are examined upon which the quality of collaboration is assessed: openness of communication and alignment of objectives. The authors apply the model to four new-built PFI school projects within the context of the UK government Building Schools for the Future Programme. Semi-structured interviews with total of 50 key stakeholders were used as the primary data collection method.

PFI has introduced a number of problematic issues weakening collaborative efforts towards innovation in the project environment. Particularly, the study underlines the restricting internal contractual relationships within the integrated Project Company and the misalignment of Design-Construction-Operation sustainability objectives. It also highlights ineffective communication with public sector clients and users brought in by the restricted nature of PFI engagement processes as well as the misalignment of public sector-private sector sustainability objectives.

The qualitative nature of the chosen research methodology limits the ability to generalise. The research findings need to be confirmed or rejected by means of quantitative research as representative of all PFI projects.

The study emphasizes the public authority’s role in relation to providing the necessary conditions for the creation of a collaborative environment conducive to SEI in PFI projects.

The study was able to expand the understanding of innovation and collaboration management processes in PFI projects in three respects: First, addressing the limited attention to innovation in PFI research, the study is the first to examine the quality of collaboration in PFI projects towards the implementation SEI. Second, examining the quality of collaboration in PFI projects through the lens of CoPS provides a new understanding of sustainability innovation and strongly indicates that the CoPS model should be expanded to account for the dynamics of innovation processes in the procurement of sustainable CoPS. Third, the explorative nature of the study was useful in generating research hypotheses that can form the basis for future research on SEI in PFI projects.

The purpose of this paper is to review the risk categories which are predominant in international projects and to rank them according to their effect on project success.

A literature survey of peer-reviewed journal articles, survey reports and books on project management is used as the research methodology. One among the various multi-criteria decision making methods named as Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to the Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) has been used to rank the risk categories according to their importance. The data for TOPSIS were collected through questionnaire as the research instrument.

The findings derived from evaluation of the publications led to the identification of eight different types of risk categories associated with international projects. The TOPSIS method resulted into political risks, technical risks and design-related risks as the top three risk categories in international projects. Contractual and legal risks and fraudulent practices-related risks are relatively low-ranked risk category.

The findings will be useful in successful implementation of international projects as the knowledge of risk categories and their ranking will help project manager to plan the risk response strategies. A larger sample size for decision makers and more variety of projects can give more exhaustive risk categories and their ranking.

This paper explores eight different risk categories in international projects. It represents the ranking of risk categories according to their importance in project success. This will be helpful to project managers for developing a general framework for planning the appropriate risk response strategies.

Governments of many countries around the world are encouraging their industries to undertake and successfully complete projects in foreign countries. However, many industries experience failure in projects as they fail to implement the risk management (RM) effectively in international projects. This research work provides the risk categories in international projects and their ranking which can assist in developing strategies to respond the risk appropriately.

This paper uses the TOPSIS method for ranking major types of risk categories in international projects. It might represent new opportunities for rigorous and relevant research that would contribute to an in-depth knowledge of RM methodologies.