Guo, W; Lu, W; Kang, F and Zhang, L (2024) How to foster relational behavior in construction projects: Direct and mediating effects of contractual complexity and regulatory focus. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 150(4): 04024011, ISSN 0733-9364
Abstract
Maintaining the interorganizational relationship is a vital goal in the construction industry, and how to promote relational behavior in the project has received widespread attention. A contract is one of the commonly used control mechanisms in project management. Due to the contradictory conclusions of existing research, there is a lack of explicit guidance and detailed elaboration on how a contract impacts relational behavior. According to regulatory focus theory, this paper examines how different dimensions of contractual complexity affect motivation for different relational behaviors. This research decomposes contractual complexity as control, coordination, and adaptation from a functional perspective, classes regulatory focus into prevention focus and promotion focus and differentiates relational behavior as flexibility, information exchange, and solidarity. By conducting a questionnaire survey, the results reveal that the paths of three contractual functions on relational behavior and the mediating roles of prevention and promotion focus differ. Specifically, contractual control directly affects three dimensions of relational behavior, contractual coordination increases information exchange by triggering a prevention focus, and contractual adaptation enhances flexibility, information exchange, and solidarity by evoking a promotion focus and also directly enhances solidarity. These findings explain the motivation of behaviors in interorganizational relationships from the perspective of social psychology and offer new insights into how to cultivate relational behavior and the linkage between contractual and relational governance in construction projects.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | construction projects; contractual complexity; regulatory focus; relational behavior |
| Index terms: | questionnaire, construction project, complexity, psychology, motivation, information exchange, survey, coordination, project management, dimension, interorganizational relationship, prevention, construction industry, governance, promotion, adaptation, linkage |
| Subjects: | management, financial risk, project management theory and practice, production management, systems engineering, behavioral psychology, industry analysis, user focus, business, data collection methods, psychology, health monitoring assessment and metrics, data science |
| Topics: | Digital Applications, Design Practice, Human Resources, Organizational Design, Health and Safety, Business Strategy, Cost Management, Engineering Principles, Research Practice, Project Management, Governance |
| Descriptive scope: | 5 PCTEA |
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