Lau, E and Rowlinson, S (2005) The value base of trust for the construction industry. Journal of Construction Procurement, 11(1),
Abstract
Adversarial relationships, between clients and contractors, tend to result in disputes, arbitration and litigation. It is a sign of lack of trust. Trust is about the human side of management. Now that, there has been a paradigm shift towards partnering and relationship management in construction, the basic concepts and building blocks of trust need to be studied. Trust is multi-faceted: it can be viewed as a process and can also be viewed as an outcome. The culture specific nature of values also affects the way we view trust, and trust would have different meanings to different people because of their different priorities in values. Through examining the multi-faceted nature of trust, to find a common base to study trust, a value base is identified and sharing values is taken as a form of trust relations. A value base study was carried out in the Hong Kong construction industry to examine trust relations between clients and contractors, and the result highlighted the differences and similarities of values between the clients and the contractors. Trust factors were identified, and a model of trust relations inside and outside the firm developed from this research study is presented.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | trust, values, relationships, business |
| Index terms: | meaning, relationship management, paradigm, construction industry, arbitration, partnering, Hong Kong, trust factor, dispute, litigation |
| Subjects: | dispute resolution, management, education and knowledge transfer, sociology, partnership management, industry analysis, psychology, Geography |
| Topics: | Organizational Design, Human Resources, Stakeholder Management, Research Practice, Legal Issues, Geographical Context |
| Descriptive scope: | 3 PCT |
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