General contractors' relationships with subcontractors: A strategic asset

Kale, S and Arditi, D (2001) General contractors' relationships with subcontractors: A strategic asset. Construction Management and Economics, 19(5), pp. 541-549. ISSN 01446193

Abstract

The general contractor-subcontractor relationship has been a focus of interest in the literature and yet its impact on a general contractor's economic performance remains a virtually unexplored area in the construction management literature. This research presents the findings of a questionnaire survey administered to 500 large US general contractors to explore this issue. The findings reveal that maintaining a relationship of high quality with subcontractors is positively and strongly associated with the perceived performance of general contractors responding to the survey.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: and economic performance; general contractors; relationship quality; social embeddedness; subcontractors; transactions
Index terms: general contractor, survey, subcontractor, questionnaire, embeddedness
Subjects: practitioner, data collection methods, sociology
Topics: Roles and Professions, 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