Study on the Factors Influencing and Mechanisms Shaping the Institutional Resilience of Mega Railway Construction Projects

Abstract

With mega railway construction projects (MRCPs) facing various natural disasters and extremely difficult engineering construction tasks, there is an urgent need to improve the resilience management capability of engineering construction to cope with complex and changing internal and external risks. As a key element of the construction management system, the level of institutional resilience directly determines the adaptability of the construction system in the face of crisis. However, the research on the influencing factors and the formation mechanism of institutional resilience is slightly insufficient. Therefore, this paper defines the connotation of institutional resilience in MRCPs on the basis of existing research. Secondly, it codes authoritative journals and expert interview reports related to MRCPs in China by applying a rooting theory. Finally, the paper analyses the formation mechanism of institutional resilience based on an Interpretative Structural Modeling and proposes strategies to enhance it. The results show that the institutional environment is the fundamental influencing factor, institutional implementation, institutional supervision, institutional guarantee and institutional feedback are the direct influencing factors, and institutional stakeholders and institutional design are indirect influencing factors. The mechanism of interaction between the institution and the institutional environment, the mechanism of interaction between the institution and the institutional stakeholders, the mechanism of generation of institutional rules and the mechanism of operation of institutional rules work together to generate institutional resilience. This paper, as an exploratory study on institutional resilience in the field of engineering management, has sorted out the ideas for the subsequent research on institutional resilience in this field and provided the directions for project managers of MRCPs to improve their institutional systems.