A construction project requires a multitude of people with different skills and interests and the coordination of a wide range of disparate, yet interrelated, activities. Such complexity is further compounded by the unique characteristics of a project and many other external uncertainties. As a result, construction is subject to more risk than other business activities. In a risky situation, individuals or organizations perceive the situation in their own ways and behave differently to meet their own interests. Many researchers have asserted that divergent risk attitudes are sources of mismatched risk perceptions and inconsistent behaviors among project participants in different organizations, which can disturb proactive and consistent organizational activities. The research on risk attitude has, therefore, been advocated to exploring ways to consistently arouse people‘s cognition, affection, and behavior among stakeholders. However, previous research has been a widely misunderstood concept and remains a fragmented focus in the construction field. Evidence on the construction of risk attitude and how it manifests itself is unavailable. To date, prior researchers have suffered from an issue-oriented focus that has resulted in simplified models by studying single level of antecedents of risk attitude and consequences of management performance, rather than multi-level. Moreover, previous studies only focused on the direct relationship between risk attitude and management performance instead of providing a profound conceptualization of the indirect relationship between risk attitude and management performance or empirically exploring risk attitude‘s antecedents and consequences. The current study seeks to bridge this research gap. Triangulation research is employed as an appropriate research methodology in which both qualitative and quantitative data collection are used to test the research propositions. The research plan draws upon ontology and methodological pluralism. By adopting the Critical Incident Technique (CIT), coupled with an intensive literature review, one can explore the manifestation of risk attitude and its antecedents by analyzing critical incidents derived from preliminary interviews. Cognitive Motivation Theory (CMT) and Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) provide rationales to combine a processed view of risk attitude and the antecedents and management performance of individuals and organizations into a multi-level model of risk attitude. Responses to a questionnaire survey of 239 individuals nested in 61organizations were analyzed with a blend of Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) to establish and examine the hypothesized relationships in the theoretical model. To capture the practical manifestation of risk attitude and its influence on management performance, case studies of two ongoing construction projects were performed. The findings summarized from both qualitative and quantitative studies indicated that risk attitude diverged due to the multi-level influences of its antecedents on project participants, resulting in inconsistent risk perception and risk inclinations. Risk attitude has two levels of manifestation – an individual and organization level. Individual risk attitude manifests itself as cognition, affection, and behavioral inclination, while organizational risk attitude mainly shows up as managerial trust, formalization, an ambiguity of goals and objectives, and a merit system. The findings confirmed that motivated individuals tend to present more consistent risk attitude and be more willing to and capable of exhibiting good management performance. The motivation behind this study is beyond the traditional motivational means. It extends from internal motivation with its locus of control and self-efficacy to external motivation with its interpersonal exchanges, external controls, and observational learning. The risk attitudes of motivated people to evoke better management performance, especially in the process of integrating risk management into a safety management system and the outcome performance of a stakeholder‘s satisfaction and potential to organizations. The research attempts to advance risk attitude theory by re-conceptualizing the antecedents of risk attitude and the consequences of management performance make the underlying theorizing mechanism explicit and testable. This study also provides practical indications of concrete interventions by managers to make risk attitudes converge and then strengthen safety risk management. The thesis contributes to multi-level analysis in the management research field and differentiates the different levels of participants in construction projects. Methodological pluralism and blended qualitative and quantitative research methods will be addressed to demonstrate the different and complementary perspectives of research. Due to limited samples, the generalizability of the findings in the different project types or across other levels needs to be further verified. / published_or_final_version / Real Estate and Construction / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

M.Com. (Business Management) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

by Choi Wai-ming. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1981. / Bibliography: leaves 134-135.

Thesis (B.Sc)--University of Hong Kong, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 143-147)

Construction project organisation is a complex human system. Despite the formal governance structure of project, construction works and activities still rely primarily on informal personal contacts of the participants. It is the “here-andnow” interactions and mutual adjustment of project participants that underpins daily construction operations. From the perspective of social learning theory, human interactions in project organization involve learning. In this context, the social nature of learning comes to prominence. Learning embodies the accommodation and adjustment of the project participants’ expectation and tacit nuances prevalent in the interactions among participants. As a human system, the organization of project participants in a project forms a social network. The relational links of participants embedded within the network act as an important resource. This resource, especially the goodwill engendered among the participants, can be used to facilitate actions. Such goodwill is referred to as social capital. The combination of these two perspectives enables the construction of a model of the project team. Social capital engendered in the project organization can be appropriated to facilitate positive actions. In this line of conception, the network of relationships among the project participants may offer mutual support for the cultivation of reflective practices and learning in terms of adaptation, integration, and cooperation. Because social capital is the primordial form of social phenomenon, it is postulated that social capital provides the conditions necessary for learning to take place, and learning, in turn, contributes to project success – that is, project learning mediates the impact of social capital on project success. To test this hypothesis and a series of other related propositions, empirical studies had been carried out within the Hong Kong construction industry. Both quantitative and qualitative approaches were adopted in the empirical studies – questionnaire survey and case studies were conducted. Findings reveal that a more integrative procurement arrangement, management commitment, project team appraisal system that emphasises team working, participants’ intensive interactions, positive personality all contribute to the formation of project social capital, while multiple managerial hierarchies, subcontractor-induced problems, government transparency requirement, goals mismatch, and bureaucratic contract administration all impede its formation. In project organisation, the overlapping of both formal and informal organisational structures occupied by personnel with both technical and managerial capabilities improves project organising efficiency. Indeed, with the mediational thesis generally supported – the impact of social capital on project performance is mediated through learning - and the emergence of a new personal dimension, social capital is a critical antecedent to project organising. However, because social capital and learning affect the soft rather than hard success criteria, other factors need to be considered for overall project performance. These other factors are the capabilities of all project parties and the adoption of relational contracting norms and behaviours. It is the combination of all these factors with social capital as the substrate of participants’ interactions that are most likely to lead to overall project performance. / published_or_final_version / Real Estate and Construction / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

No description available.

The study reported herein addresses the research question, "To what extent do excellent performing UK construction contracting organizations demonstrate and employ recognized Learning Organization processes?" It utilized a case-study based approach as that approach was seen as being most useful for exploring the processes that may or may not have been clearly defined by each participating organization. The study sought to move beyond the theories of knowledge created by the accepted seminal works on The Learning Organization model and the largely positivist works on construction contractor performance, which have focussed on ‘output’ measures only. The literature reviewed indicated minimal understanding of excellent contractor performance from the perspective of the customer within the construction industry and even less understanding of the practical application of Learning Organization processes within the industry. It suggested the need for research to address the issue by examining how construction customers viewed excellent contractor performance and what processes excellent performing contractors actually employed. The assumption behind this research is that the organization adapts and responds to its environment and takes action to survive and flourish dependent upon its understating of that environment. This is the same behaviour as a living organism in nature displays, and thus requires the researcher to view the organization as a sentient being. Such a view underscores the epistemological perspective, that is the assumption of what knowledge is and how it may be discovered, adopted in this thesis. The research herein reported therefore follows a post-positivist standpoint. The methodological position for the research sits within a functionalist paradigm, a paradigm that enables consideration of the participating organizations within the construction industry to be viewed as a ‘whole’ and as having interrelated parts. This position was considered to be the most useful for the research. The particular approach chosen was that of multiple case studies carried out on the same subject. Carrying out multiple case studies across different organizations provided case-based themes, which was seen to give the research a greater credibility. By definition, the method was therefore one of a collective case study (Creswell, 2007), where several cases were brought to bear on a single issue. It was intended to draw practical examples of Learning Organizations together so that the commonalities and differences between and among them could be integrated in a reformulated Learning Organization model for the construction industry. During the data collection phase, two elements of the research were abandoned as unnecessary and impractical respectively. The unnecessary element was the questionnaire element of the contractor case studies, which was abandoned due to the breadth and depth of data gathered through the other elements of the research (interviews, focus groups and field observation). The impractical element was the intended comparative study on poor performing contractors. This was abandoned as customers almost without fail noted that poor performing contractors were generally not retained on their programmes and therefore their supply chains tended only to range in performance from adequate to excellent. Secondly, it was realized following discussions with customers that poor performers were likely to be aware of their poor performing status and therefore be unlikely to want to participate in the research. The customer organizations identified a number of clear areas where they identified excellent contractor performance. The clear position was that the standard output performance indicators of project completion to time, cost, quality, and health and safety were no longer indicators of excellent performance in the industry. These indicators were now the minimum performance required to satisfy the customer and there was seen to be a further suite of more behavioural measures which were the indicators of excellent performance. These findings were drawn together in a single model for procurement and performance management. The contracting organizations nominated as excellent performers fell largely into the ‘medium sized’ bracket of the construction industry. Indeed, some of the participating customers noted that the larger contractors were actually poorer performers at behavioural aspects of service delivery. The nominated contractors’ processes were examined against the Learning Organization framework provided in Senge et al (1990, 1994) to establish the extent to which recognized Learning Organization processes were being employed. It was noted in the conclusions that whilst all of the organizations employed some Learning Organization processes, none could be said to be a model Learning Organization possessing all of the processes which Senge et al (1990, 1994) suggested. The fact that each organization possessed some Learning Organization processes was accepted against the critique of Ortenblad (2007) that Senge et al’s (1990, 1994) model is all-encompassing in terms of accepting processes into the Learning Organization model. Implications for industry practice were identified based upon the backdrop of procurement and performance management. It was argued that, based on what is noted as really important to construction customer organizations, the procurement and performance management functions should be better aligned to identify Learning Organization processes and their manifestation as excellent contractor performance from the perspective of the customer. For contractor organizations, there was identified a need to attend to developing Learning Organization processes. There also appeared to be a need for the customer to support the journey of their contractors towards becoming a Learning Organization. Senge et al’s (1990, 1994) model was then adapted for the construction industry to reflect this need for customer involvement if the contractor was to adopt Learning Organization processes. This adaptation was considered necessary due to the construction industry model of the customer being more involved in the design and construction phases of their product, coupled with the fact that a single construction customer can represent a large volume of their contractors’ turnover (up to 20% is not uncommon). Furthermore, the low contractor profit margins driven by a lowest price tendering culture (often 2-3%) leave little money for internal investment. The support of an informed customer which does not use a lowest price tendering process was therefore deemed necessary. A number of recommendations for further research may be seen to emerge from this study. Questions were raised as to the reason why larger organizations do not appear as able to provide behavioural excellent performance as medium sized contractors which was considered to be an area for further exploration. In addition, the concept of ‘family’ atmosphere (raised several times by participants during the contractor case studies) and its impact upon the ability for the organization to learn and provide excellent performance was seen to be worthy of further study. Finally, there was deemed to be the potential to examine the applicability of the extended Learning Organization model developed herein to other industries and/or organizational cultures.

This thesis is concerned with the application of project management techniques and systems implemented in the United Arab Emirates. Areas of current weakness in the application of project management in the Gulf area were identified, examined and analyzed. Three case studies regarding the implementation of project management, in the UAE were used as a basis for detailed examination. The author's extensive field experience, together with research into current practices in project management both in the U.A.E. and internationally, was combined to critically appraise the particular case studies. Findings indicate that the implementation of project management techniques, systems and approaches in the U.A.E. is comparatively new, and is not being effectively implemented, particularly in the areas of:- -Early participation and preparation of the project brief. -The formulation of the feasibility study. -Establishing project strategy. -Monitoring design criteria. -Monitoring and controlling construction activities. -Controlling commissioning, maintenance, handing over and the close-out activities. -Client and cultural impact. Recommendations are made that would facilitate improvements.

No description available.

University of Macau / Faculty of Science and Technology. / Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering