Arbitration for Supply Chain and Money Supply Cause Disputes in PPP Projects: Distilling Comparative Economic Interests from the Greek Legal System

Abstract

The worlds of arbitration and business infrastructure look at each other with ever greater intensity. The longevity, financial stakes and contractual features of PPP (Public-Private Partnerships) projects suggest that public, institutional and private stakeholders may not have overlapping decision-making portfolios. In a new transient domestic and international commercial and investment era, the economic drivers for arbitration in supply chain and money supply cause (third party) project disputes is not well documented. The present paper reports upon the institutional and legal environment of this dispute regime in the developing infrastructure market of Greece and identifying the impact of a legal environment upon the stakeholders’ business incentives to press ahead with arbitration. A critical appreciation of the contours of the legal and business risks involved in arbitration will confirm the need to invent a new procedural tool and practice standard, a “level playing field” which will be responsive to the project risk profile and the parties’ economic interests. The findings of the present study are two-fold. First, they confirm that the parties will be more inclined to embark upon arbitration at the end of the construction phase, and second, that domestic and international stakeholders’ economic interests in the regime are measured against their anticipated losses from non-completion of the PPP projects. The findings of this study further re-theorise arbitration as a “cyclical” or “counter-cyclical” dispute resolution regime. Construction management researchers will benefit from an exploratory and informed appreciation of unorthodoxies in the Greek legal system and gain from a fresh approach of economic incentives when they are faced with decision-making tasks as arbitrators or engaged in dispute resolution contract drafting.