PARTNERING IN CONSTRUCTION

Partnering in Construction

Partnering in Construction

Analysis

The Study

The enlisting of the 14 trust attributes helps to put the study on trust in partnering in perspective. However, to assist management to direct their effort to foster partnering success, it is essential to identify first those trust attributes that are most effective in building trust. In this connection, Gill and Butler argued that relying on contract terms is a feature hampering partners trust. Morgan and Hunt emphasised that fostering longterm cooperation would enhance partners trust. These studies were mainly anecdotal and a more systematic treatment would be invaluable.

Hence, the first objective of this study is to identify the relative importance of the trust attributes in affecting the partners trust level. Contracting involves principally two groups of participants: (a) clients and consultants and (b) contracting organisations. Although in partnering both groups should strive for common goals, however, with different backgrounds and business objectives, the study results are arranged in two groups for comparison purposes.

Furthermore, the 14 trust attributes are often discussed in different contexts. In an attempt to make the notion of trust in construction partnering more precise and amenable for analytical grip, the second objectives of this study is to group and interpret these 14 attributes by a smaller numbers of factors. The statistical technique of Principal Component Factor Analysis (PCFA) was applied to organise the 14 trust attributes down to a smaller and more manageable number of factors The factors identified generally could better represent the underlying construct in a concise and interpretable form.

The reasons for partnering - improving organisational learning

Earlier in this paper we argued that organisational learning needs to be focused clearly in response to the nature of the dominant forces on an organisation at any given time. Our research suggests, perhaps not surprisingly, that the dominant learning focus among most players in the case studies was on efficiency improvement.

Generally the case study clients had chosen partnering because they needed to carry out projects with specific requirements which could not be fulfilled using traditional procurement methods. A concern to reduce cost and overcome previous negative experiences of traditional competitive procurement approaches, especially the escalation of costs, was the common factor behind the decision to partner by all the clients. This was exemplified by a representative from Brown and Root, part of BP's “Andrew Alliance”:

…there is a trend abroad to do things in a different way, a wanting to do things cheaply, quicker, simply, … easier, … so, yes, there is a recognition within the company that the culture has to change … (Nevertheless) cost was the main driver.

However, some clients also recognised the way partnering could help promote organisational learning. McDonald's, for example, placed great emphasis on this, although like BP their basic driving force was efficiency improvement: … our mission … is continuous improvement, and lowering costs. The strap line we have is more for less with fewer people, and we have achieved that systematically after the heady start when we got everything ...