Gunathilaka, S; Lall, J and Sagoo, A (2026) Formation of collective sensemaking against calamities in global construction engineering projects. Construction Economics and Building, 26(1), pp. 1-22. ISSN 2204-9029
Abstract
Collective sensemaking is key to the teams in global construction engineering projects (GCEPs) in order to establish resilience against encountered calamities. Both natural and man-made calamities that occur in these projects influence team performance adversely, and these teams need to develop resilience against them. Therefore, they need to engage in collective sense promptly to know what is going on around the work environment. However, making collective sense is a significant challenge for them because the team members do not have face-to-face interactions in physical proximity due to their virtual team setup. Therefore, knowing how collective sensemaking takes place can facilitate their identification of the best practices for its formation, but the components of collective sensemaking in these projects remain a knowledge gap in the literature. Thus, this paper conceptualizes the model of collective sensemaking with its components by reviewing literature and confirms its model fit through the results of a questionnaire survey among the team members in GCEPs. Both exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis have been applied to confirm this model with its components as the main findings. As a contribution to practice, the teams in GCEPs can use this model to understand what aspects are to be prioritized for the formation of collective sensemaking to become resilient against calamities. These findings can also become an original theoretical contribution to the construction management research domain because future researchers can use the model and associated survey instruments to develop further theories and practices.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | calamities; collective sensemaking; global construction engineering projects; team performance; team resilience |
| Index terms: | questionnaire, confirmatory factor analysis, survey, face, management research, exploratory factor analysis, sensemaking, team performance, interaction, work environment, global construction, best practice, virtual team |
| Subjects: | psychology, strategic management, behavioral psychology, cognitive psychology, research design and methodology, business, data collection methods, statistical analysis, information systems, management |
| Topics: | Research Practice, Business Strategy, Organizational Design, International Construction, Digital Applications |
| 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