Investigating underlying factors of collaboration for construction projects in emerging economies using exploratory factor analysis

Abstract

Competing relationships and a lack of collaboration are common in the construction industry. Consequently many reasons, such as lack of trust, unfair risk sharing and ineffective communication are highlighted by actors as challenges in the construction sector. Collaboration has been demonstrated as a solution for these challenges for the construction industry. However, collaborative environments are still far from effective in emerging economies with a lack of research and information available for such countries. We have used the Kurdistan region of Iraq to investigate and explore these challenges using systematic enquiry, utilising quantitative and qualitative methods. This article aims to explore these challenges, by reviewing past literature and investigating construction practices to better quantify those factors that underlie collaboration. A comprehensive review of the literature was conducted to identify the most critical factors. Then, a questionnaire was used to survey the opinions of practitioners, analysed through Exploratory Factor Analysis. Six factors were identified: project vision, participant behaviour, communication, relationship definition, contractual agreements and systematic process. Additionally, the paper provides suggestions as to how industry might apply such factors. This article contributes to a scarce literature regarding construction projects in Kurdistan region and emerging economies in general. Keywords -Collaboration, critical factors, construction, project management, factor analysis, emerging economies, Kurdistan, Iraq. overruns, win-lose culture and adversarial relations (Chan et al. 2004). To overcome the issues of TCM, PM has been used. PM models try to control cost, time and quality in a project-based system to achieve client needs; however, this approach also has faced many difficulties (Shen and Wu 2005).After an investigation to solve the problem of fragmentation and underperformance in the UK construction industry (Latham 1994), partnering was suggested as a solution to replace traditional methods of project delivery. Partnering delivered better results than traditional approaches to project management. However, relationships in partnering still need to be improved to overcome the underperformance of construction industry projects (Meng 2012).Many authors have insisted that the construction industry needs to improve collaboration and to adopt new ways of working to remain competitive and meet the expectations of increasingly demanding clients (Shelbourn et al. 2007;Cao et al. 2015;Morrell 2015).While problems of fragmentation and lack of collaboration in construction exist globally, the case is more severe in developing economies, where the construction sector is more fragmented. Additional problems confront construction projects in these countries, compared to developed economies, which include social, cultural, organisational, economic and process-related obstacles (Ofori 2000;Elkhalifa 2016;Haron et al. 2017). This observation is apparent in the Kurdistan region of I...

Identifying factors of collaboration critical for improving health and safety performance in construction projects: A systematic literature review

“…Mutual objectives, sharing of information, trust, commitment, culture, gain/pain sharing, as well as clear roles and responsibilities typify the collaboration process (Hughes, Williams & Ren, 2012: 365;Meng, 2013: 4260;Faris et al, 2019: 4).…”

“…Factors critical for collaboration include top management support, selection of an appropriate partner, and commitment to a win-win attitude (Hasanzadeh, Hosseinalipourb & Hafezi, 2014: 816), no-blame culture, communication, fair distribution of responsibility, and proactive problemsolving (Msomba, Matiko & Mlinga, 2018: 152), mutual goals, gain-pain sharing, early involvement of key participants, and trust (Faris et al, 2019: 4). Other factors such as continuous improvement (Meng, 2012: 191), mutual goals (Hosseini, Wondimu, Bellini, Tune, Haugseth, Andersen & Laedre, 2016: 250;Meng, 2012: 190) and trust between actors (Dietrich et al, 2010: 70;Hosseini et al, (2016: 244), communication, conflict resolution, and understanding roles (Rahman, Induta, Faisol & Paydard, 2014a: 417;Dietrich et al, 2010: 70;Mensah, 2016: 16) have been mentioned as critical for collaboration.…”

“…This search consisted of literature published between 1 January 2010 and 31 December 2019. First, the Identification Test from Wu, Greenwood & Steel (2008) and Faris et al (2019), which reviewed 35 articles/papers on factors of collaboration for influencing project performance in the CI from 2000 to 2018, was used to identify related keywords based on their frequency rate (Wu et al, 2008: 5). The Identification Test resulted in 11 most prevalent factors of collaboration (Table 1).…”

“…Poor collaboration between project participants has been identified as a serious impediment to achieving project objectives (Sebastian, 2011: 179;Akintan & Morledge, 2013: 2;Faris, Gaterell & Hutchinson, 2019: 2), including H&S objectives. Scholars have criticised the CI for, specifically, relationships between clients, designers and contractors, where poor collaboration is identified as one of the shortcomings (Sebastian, 2011: 179;Akintan & Morledge, 2013: 2;Faris et al, 2019: 2).…”

Collaboration in construction supply chain in developing countries

“…Embora a colaboração seja apontada como uma solução para os desafios da indústria da construção, este sector não tem sido capaz de se beneficiar plenamente da estratégia de gestão da cadeia de suprimentos, e este problema é mais grave nas economias emergentes (Faris et al, 2019;Costa et al, 2019).…”