Abstract
Inefficiency is usually one of the perceived ills within the construction projects and relationships among participants needing improvement. With the rising trend of partnerships in engineering construction projects, trust as an essential element in partnerships has become of increasing concern too. A growing stream of study has discussed the importance of trust in promoting interpersonal relationships among project participants. And formal contract has been closely watched which can mitigate exchange hazards. However, the relation between trust and contract is controversial. Based on cross-sectional survey data, regression analysis was used to test the impact of trust on satisfaction with working relationships and project performance in engineering construction projects in China. Likewise, the moderating effect of contractual mechanism on the relationship between trust and working relationships is explored. The results show that working relationships are positively associated with trust and satisfying working relationships have significant impact on project performance. The empirical findings also support the moderating effect of contractual mechanism. The conclusions enrich the research of working relationship, and provide some practical implications for enterprises.
Highlights
Fragmented is a typical nature of engineering construction projects [1]
The results show that working relationships are positively associated with trust and satisfying working relationships have significant impact on project performance
The convergent validity was tested by composite reliability and average variance extracted (AVE), and discriminate validity was measured by AVE and constructs’ correlations
Summary
The enforcement process of a project involves a plurality of different organizations with different goals, cultures, and professional skills; in order to improve project performance, the question of how to promote cooperation among participants is a common problem for researchers and practitioners of project management. Trust as a unique, valuable and key resource [2] is an extremely important tool to obtain competitive advantages, and build sound cooperative relationships which, in turn improve project success. Based on relational exchange theory (RET), trust among participants can develop an effective coordination mechanism and plays an important role in preventing opportunism, reducing transaction costs, simplifying decision making and promoting the structure of the cooperation stable [3]. The problems which are urgently solved depend on whether the trust built up in such an environment can significantly improve collaborators’ satisfaction with working relationships and how contractual mechanism affects trust
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