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Open Policy has been implemented in China since 1979. A lot of measures have been adopted to improve the performance in different economic domains. Agent Construction Management (ACM) system was introduced in 2004. It is a new project management mode based on agency theory and empowerment theory. It is introduced in the construction industry to improve the performance of government funded projects. This research aims to analyze how to improve project performance by improving the project managers‘ performance through competencies and empowerment based on organizational learning in ACM system. Local project managers‘ competencies are analyzed to find out the disparity between project managers in China and developed countries. The relationships between organizational learning, competencies of Chinese project managers and empowerment are also explored. The competencies of Chinese local project managers are analyzed based on Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors‘ (RICS) Assessment of Professional Competence (APC). A theoretical framework is developed based on the related literatures and theories. Three hypotheses are established to depict the causal relationships between learning, competency, and empowerment of project managers in ACM system. A field study is carried out to quantitatively test the hypotheses by means of questionnaire elaborated theoretically and situationally. The survey subjects are “A” level project managers in construction consulting organizations in China. 194 valid questionnaires are randomly collected from 75 project management firms in China. SPSS and Structural Equation Modeling techniques (SEM) using AMOS are adopted to analyze the collected data. Most of the hypotheses are supported by the empirical data collected in this research. The empirical data supports that competency level is positively related to learning orientation. The results show that a project manager‘s learning orientation has a significant influence on his/her competency level. While, empirical data shows that there is no direct and significant relationship between competency and job performance of project managers, while empowerment has significant effects on job performance. Based on the understanding of the effects of learning, competency and empowerment on project managers‘ job performance, measures can be adopted to improve the competency and empowerment of project managers, hence leading to better job performance and project performance. Though job performance is not directly related to competency, competency is still a necessary of job performance and can not be neglected. Project management firms should create a learning culture in the firm, and improve the learning orientation of the employees, which will improve employees‘ competency. Empowerment is highly related to job performance which suggests that project managers should be empowered to improve job performance. / published_or_final_version / Real Estate and Construction / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

The construction industry is full of kinds of claims, disputes, adversarial confrontation and bad performance. Therefore, cooperative behaviors among the contracting parties on the project are very critical to the success of the project, but to some extent it is hard to attain certain level of cooperation. The reality of the construction industry is that, the projects are normally implemented by the temporary project organizations formed by the contracting parties having different interests, which would lead to complicated project environment during the whole project life. Meanwhile, the prevalent evaluation criteria of project success just put emphases on the final project outcomes, especially project schedule and project cost. This reality truly leads to the situation of self-consideration of their own interests, not the success of the whole project, which is detrimental to the development of cooperative behaviors among the contracting parties. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the current state of the construction industry on the Mainland China, and further propose a framework which can resolve the current problems and promote the cooperative behaviors. This study wishes to develop the principles for the branch of knowledge of construction management, which mainly focuses on the issues of contracting and project management. In this study, three theories (Resource-Based View, Transaction Cost Economics and Relational Contract) are adopted to form a combined theoretical foundation for analyzing the current problems and proposing a theoretical framework for cooperation in the construction industry. This study investigates the level of cooperative behaviors among the contracting parties through analyzing the behaviors of the individual members among different functional groups on the project. Cooperation is considered as the behaviors which can facilitate the achievement of the project objectives, and can be categorized into four sub-dimensions for detailed examination. The complicated project characteristics and the constant adaptation among the contracting parties bring about the requirement of analyzing the process-based issues of cooperative behaviors. Through the adoption of the questionnaire survey and the semi-structured interview, the antecedents of and the alternative tactics for cooperative behaviors are investigated. As a result, based on the research findings, a theoretical model for cooperative behaviors has been proposed. Both the research findings confirm the first priority of self-expressive motives (attitude and value) for the development of cooperative behaviors. Compared with self-expressive motives, the influence of the incentives/sanctions mechanism is not strong. In addition, the collectivism-individualism construct also demonstrate more on cooperative behaviors than the incentives/sanctions mechanism. Meanwhile, the status construct (within-group status and group status) shows significant relationships with the attitude and value of the individual group members. The sub-dimensions of interactional justice and procedural justice significantly influence the individuals’ status evaluation and the assessment of the results and the fairness of the incentives/sanctions mechanism. / published_or_final_version / Real Estate and Construction / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

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