Exploring the Quantitative Measures for Multi-Organization Integration in Malaysian Construction Projects

Abstract

ABSTRACT Construction literature in past decades has reflected a steadily increasing interest in the assessment of organizational integration practices. This interest has led to the development of a multi-organizational team integration performance index based on five weighted key determinants (KDs) for Malaysian construction projects as follows: commitment from top management; team leadership; focus on goals and objectives; communication; and trust and respect. In order to advance the index into a full working model, this paper aims to identify the appropriate leading and lagging quantitative measures (QMs) based on their importance, measurability, and obtainability to evaluate the five KDs. A two-fold research approach was adopted; first, structured face-to-face interviews with eight practitioners were conducted to identify the candidate QMs; followed by two rounds of a rating-type Delphi survey with 18 experts to rate the candidate QMs. The findings indicate that the recommended leading QMs were influenced by the output-oriented measures, while lagging QMs were framed within the scale-oriented measures, depending on the characteristic of the KDs. The establishment of these measures advance the existing index for a quantitative-based assessment of multi-organization performance. The present study adds to the construction literature by enhancing the learning of measuring organizational performance in the Malaysian context.