Nystrom, J (2006) The naivety of partnering assessments. In: Boyd, D (ed.) Proceedings of 22nd Annual ARCOM Conference, 4-6 September 2006, Birmingham, UK.
Abstract
Construction managerial literature often argues that gains are to be made by using partnering in terms of reduced cost, reduced delays and/or increased quality. Voices have been raised to approach partnering in a more critical perspective i.e. to look at both advantages and disadvantages when investigating the concept. This paper is an attempt to go in that direction. In order to assess the effects of partnering in a valid way, the evaluation needs to (i) be based on project facts and not personal perceptions, (ii) make a comparative analysis including both partnering and non-partnering projects and (iii) control for other variables that affect cost and quality in order to extract the unique effect of partnering. The existing partnering evaluations, divided into surveys, case studies and comparative studies with many observations, does not fulfill all three conditions. Instead partnering should be evaluated by a quasi-experiment or with a regression analysis and focus on quality and cost, the variables that creates value.
| Item Type: | Conference Paper (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | evaluation; partnering; project success; quasi-experimental methods; regression analysis |
| Index terms: | comparative analysis, experiment, survey, partnering, case study, project success, regression analysis, comparative study |
| Subjects: | data collection methods, research design and methodology, data analysis and analytics, project management theory and practice, statistical analysis, partnership management |
| Topics: | Stakeholder Management, Project Management, Research Practice |
| 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