Yung, P and Lai, L W C (2008) Supervising for quality: An empirical examination of institutional arrangements in China's construction industry. Construction Management and Economics, 26(7), pp. 723-737. ISSN 1466433X
Abstract
Most of the literature on the rapid changes in institutional arrangements in China's construction industry have either limited themselves to a description of these changes or relied on opinion surveys to draw conclusions. Few researchers have conducted serious empirical examinations, especially regarding the ownership of developers or contractors. To fill this gap, we empirically examined the effectiveness of compulsory construction supervision arrangements on the quality of construction projects in mainland China, explained the seemingly inexplicable phenomenon that projects undertaken by state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are of better quality than those undertaken by non-SOEs, explored the law of tort in relation to construction supervision firms, tested the published official data from 1991 to 2001 on construction 'good quality rates' with regression against per capita values and powers of machinery as well as the capital-output ratios of both SOEs and non-SOEs, identified the determining factors affecting construction quality, and demonstrated the limitations of using the principal-agent theory in analysing the construction industry. The results supported the corollary of the Coase Theorem that resource allocation in terms of output quality will be affected by changes in the institutional arrangements.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | coase theorem; construction quality; construction supervision; principal-agent theory; state-owned enterprise |
| Index terms: | construction industry, supervision, ownership, effectiveness, resource allocation, China, agent, construction quality, construction project, survey |
| Subjects: | Geography, production management, performance management, economics, quality assurance, industry analysis, practitioner, control systems, data collection methods, resource management |
| Topics: | Quality Management, Site Management, Organizational Design, Research Practice, Project Management, Geographical Context, Roles and Professions |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCTE |
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