Collaborative Behavior in Relational Contracting Projects in Hong Kong—A Contractor’s Perspective

Abstract

The construction industry in Hong Kong has adopted relational contracting (RC) as a way forward to address frequent conflicts in construction projects and to promote sustainable development. Despite this effort, adversarial behavior of project team members is still prevalent, stemming from conflicting agendas, which hinders the successful implementation of RC. There is a need to improve collaborative attitudes and behavior among project team members in RC projects, but there is still a lack of understanding of factors that can promote this inter-organizational collaboration. Therefore, using the theory of planned behavior, this research investigates factors that form relational attitudes, collaborative intentions, and collaborative behavior, and their relationships in RC projects in Hong Kong. Quantitative data were collected from experienced practitioners in RC projects and were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM). The results reveal that senior management commitment and relational norms are needed to nurture relational attitudes, which in turn influence the development of collaborative intentions. These intentions can eventually promote collaborative behavior, which is expressed by teamwork, affective trust, and extra-role behavior (striving beyond roles to maintain collaboration). The findings advance knowledge and contribute to practice by providing a structured process to nurture collaboration in RC projects for sustainable development.

Meeting Design Supporting Sustainability in Early Planning Practice: A Combination of ‘Hard and Soft’ Characteristics

“…This is in line with the previous literature on collaboration in construction, which emphasizes interprofessional engagement and communication as important aspects for achieving collaboration for sustainability [5]. The findings also provide a pragmatic result with respect to the request for more research on collaborative project relationships, e.g., [35]. Case 3 pushed design limitations and became the world s second tallest hybrid wooden construction with a passive energy standard, and it was built with local materials.…”

“…The 'soft' characteristics introduced exercises in which participants were engaged in social activities for building relationships, trust, and open communication across disciplines. These issues-trust [31,34], relationships [35], and open communication [30,32,33]-have been identified in research on collaboration in construction to be important in terms of creating a collaborative atmosphere among multidisciplinary participants. Although collaboration between multidisciplinary actors is fundamental for delivering sustainable construction, e.g., [9,11,23,35], there is a gap in both construction management research and the general meeting literature in terms of how to achieve that during meetings.…”

“…These issues-trust [31,34], relationships [35], and open communication [30,32,33]-have been identified in research on collaboration in construction to be important in terms of creating a collaborative atmosphere among multidisciplinary participants. Although collaboration between multidisciplinary actors is fundamental for delivering sustainable construction, e.g., [9,11,23,35], there is a gap in both construction management research and the general meeting literature in terms of how to achieve that during meetings. The meeting characteristics in this study supported decisive factors for collaboration among multidisciplinary actors in early-phase meetings.…”

“…The findings in this paper indicate that meeting processes with 'soft' characteristics support trust, open communication, and building relationships between multidisciplinary actors. The following have previously been identified as important for collaboration in construction: trust [32,33], creating shared frameworks and learning [6], balancing power struggles [34], and building relationships between different professional roles [35]. Furthermore, in case 3, the participants experienced that interdisciplinary and interprofessional engagement and communication improved during and after the workshop, and the design team was able to combine competences and different professionals' perspectives to the benefit of a shared understanding of sustainability throughout the continued process, i.e., the project they were engaged in together.…”

“…The literature also mentions features that have been suggested to support collaboration, i.e., trust and open communication [30,32,33], the involvement of key participants early in the process, teamwork, and the alignment of interests [30]. The importance of interplay between formal and informal communication [33] has also been suggested to balance power struggles [34], and more research on relationships in collaborative projects has been requested [35]. Even though collaboration and integrated ways of working are necessary for sustainability [36], the construction management literature does not go into detail about the design of meetings in collaborative projects.…”