Zhang, L and El-Gohary, N M (2016) Discovering stakeholder values for axiology-based value analysis of building projects. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 142(4): 04015095, ISSN 0733-9364
Abstract
There has been an increasing demand for maximizing the environmental, social, and economic value of built infrastructure. However, a major gap still exists in the area of value analysis; there is no formal model to conceptualize, represent, and reason about value and valuation of built infrastructure. This paper presents the authors' work in the area of formal axiology-based value analysis of building projects. Axiology is a theory of value and worth. The formal axiology is a theory-based, semantic model for analyzing and assessing the value (worth) of building projects based on the environmental, social, and economic values of stakeholders (e.g., energy conservation, safety, economic growth). The first step towards developing the formal axiology is discovering stakeholder values in the context of building projects. Value discovery is the process of identifying the values that are relevant to a particular system. In this paper, the authors focus on presenting their value-discovery work for residential, commercial, and educational building projects. Stakeholder values were discovered from project documents, value literature, and a stakeholder survey. The paper discusses the survey design, implementation, and results. Overall, the results show that, on average, all values are at least moderately important to all stakeholders. The results also show that although there is a general agreement on the importance ranking of values among stakeholders, there are significant differences in the ranks across different stakeholder groups and across different project types. This research contributes to the body of knowledge by providing both theoretical and empirical knowledge on stakeholder value discovery; it could facilitate value-sensitive decision-making by embodying stakeholder values into project planning and design towards better synergy between human values and the built environment.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | axiology; infrastructure management; project planning and design; stakeholder values; value analysis |
| Index terms: | synergy, stakeholder value, energy conservation, decision-making, economic growth, infrastructure management, implementation, human values, documents, survey, project planning, educational building, built environment, built infrastructure, body of knowledge, value analysis |
| Subjects: | infrastructure and transport systems, professional development, participation process, economic development, building construction, contractual arrangements, energy systems, financial analysis, partnership management, control systems, knowledge management, infrastructure engineering, health behaviours and lifestyles, decision analysis, data collection methods, construction type |
| Topics: | Stakeholder Management, Procurement, Construction Technology, Sustainability, Risk Management, Engineering Principles, Research Practice, Cost Management, Information Management, Urban Studies, Project Management |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCEA |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here