Loosemore, M and Lim, B (2016) Why unfair business is bad for business. In: Chan, P W and Neilson, C J (eds.) Proceedings of 32nd Annual ARCOM Conference, 5-7 September 2016, Manchester, UK.
Abstract
Unfair business practices appear to have become institutionalised in the construction sector, persisting for many decades despite the repeated criticisms of numerous government reports, researchers and commentators. It is argued that this intransigent culture is in part a result of no theoretical or empirical evidence to link unfair business practices with project performance. To address this problem, theories of organisational justice are used to ascertain the constituents of and dimensions of fairness in construction, examine how each dimension of fairness affects the behaviour of project stakeholders and to explore how this translates to overall project performance. A survey of 135 construction project participants from across the supply chain in the Australian construction industry reveals that there are three main types of unfairness in construction business relationships that are related to project performance: distributive and procedural fairness; interpersonal fairness; and informational fairness. It is significant that these categories diverge from mainstream organisational justice theory, suggesting that it needs adapting for a construction context. Based on this new evidence and refinement of mainstream justice theory, it is concluded that that project managers should develop strategies to improve these three types of fairness on their projects if they wish to drive better project performance.
| Item Type: | Conference Paper (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | business; fairness; justice; project management; project performance |
| Index terms: | project management, construction sector, dimension, construction industry, project performance, evidence, project stakeholder, construction project, fairness, survey, strategy, business relationship, project manager, justice |
| Subjects: | strategic management, profession, evaluation and assessment methods, data collection methods, legal systems, health monitoring assessment and metrics, management, production management, project management theory and practice, sociology, industry analysis, leadership |
| Topics: | Legal Issues, Organizational Design, Project Management, Research Practice, Health and Safety, Business Strategy, Stakeholder Management, Roles and Professions |
| 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