Xu, J (2019) In the shadow of a negative past: Repairing and developing trust in construction projects. Proceedings of Institution of Civil Engineers: Management, Procurement and Law, 173(1), pp. 5-13. ISSN 17514304
Abstract
Trust is foundational to establishing and maintaining relationships. Construction project management research has long touted the importance of trust for project organisation and performance. Yet there has been less research interest in repairing and developing inter-organisational trust once trust has been violated and reduced. This study presents a process-based case study of restoring and enhancing trust in a main-contractor-and-subcontractor relationship after project experiences that deteriorated trust. Drawing on conceptual frameworks of trust repair and development, the research analysed the practices of both main-contractor and subcontractor companies. The analysis reveals that, although involving different project teams, the violation of trust in past experiences impacted relationships and interactions in the focal project. To repair and develop trust requires a process of discovering causes and accepting responsibility, forming interventions to repair dimensions of trustworthiness that have been damaged and evaluating the effectiveness of intervention. The research identifies three types of mechanisms that facilitated trust repair and development in construction: sense-making, structural control and relational approaches. This study contributes to knowledge in that it recognises the temporal embeddedness of inter-organisational relationships in construction projects and empirically demonstrates the process and practices of repairing and developing inter-organisational trust.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | business management; project management |
| Index terms: | project team, project management, interaction, dimension, effectiveness, construction project management, embeddedness, case study, business management, violation, subcontractor, repair, conceptual framework, construction project, project organization, drawing, trust repair |
| Subjects: | practitioner, psychology, maintenance engineering, theoretical framing, production management, organizational theory, behavioral psychology, business, data collection methods, technical documentation, project delivery, health monitoring assessment and metrics, performance management, project management theory and practice, sociology, regulatory law |
| Topics: | Health and Safety, Project Management, Legal Issues, Quality Management, Business Strategy, Research Practice, Roles and Professions, Design Practice, Organizational Design |
| 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