Relational Behavior Of Owner And Contractor:the Effects Of Contractor Opportunism

Owner–contractor relationships have a major impact on project performance in the construction industry.How to maintain a steady relationship is a critical issue for them.However,due to the one-off characteristic of construction projects and goal incompatibility,the relationship between them are adversarial and full of conflicts.Moreover,contractors as economic participants are natural for self-interest maximization.Consequently,they tends to be an opportunism to seek self-benefits at the expense of owners,which negatively impacts relationship maintaining and value creation.This arises a major problem that how to effectively manage contractor opportunism in owner–contractor relationships by using appropriate relational behavior.To answer this question,this dissertation explores the relational behavior of owner and contractor based on contractor opportunism.The main contents and innovations are as follows:From the risk perception perspective,the influencing mechanism of mediated power on contractor opportunistic behavior was explored.Risk perception was classified into relational risk perception and performance risk perception.Then the related hypotheses were developed and tested by quantitative data from questionnaire survey.The results indicate that the more risks a contractor perceives,the more tendency it conducts opportunistic behavior.Owner mediated power impacts contractor opportunistic behavior through relational risk perception,not performance risk perception.Based on the causing analysis of contractor opportunistic behavior,the dissertation further studies how owners make the choice between trust and formal control.Tolerance of opportunism is conceptualized and regulatory focus theory(promotion focus and prevention focus)is applied to describe the motivation orientations of owners.Meanwhile,the measuring scales of the two constructs were developed.Then the theoretical hypotheses were developed and verified with questionnaire survey.The results show that the higher an owner's tolerance level of contractor opportunism,the more likely it chooses trust,conversely,the owner is more inclined to choose formal control.Moreover,the results also find that the the owner's promotion focus is positively related to its tolerance of opportunism,but its prevention focus not.Finally,this dissertation examines the interactive effect of behavior tension and interdependence asymmetry on value creation in owner-contractor partnerships.Based on the above research results,the concept of ?behavior tension? is used to describe the co-existence of cooperation and competition in owner-contractor partnerships.In the light of balance idea,the theoretical hypotheses were developed and testified by questionnaire survey.The results find that compared with the situation of the dominance of cooperation or competition,value creation is higher when a limited level of opportunistic behavior is accepted and behavior tension balances.In addition,this effect is more significant when interdependence between owner and contractor is symmetry.This dissertation extends the boundary of the antecedents of opportunism by introducing risk management theory and power theory.Through exploring the influencing mechanism of owners' characteristics on their choices of project governance modes,this dissertation can help owners to wisely use project governance modes.Moreover,this dissertation suggests that tolerating a certain level of opportunistic behavior and maintaining the balance between cooperation and competition is beneficial to mutual value creation.This affords a new way for owners to use appropriate relational behavior to effectively manage contractor opportunism and provides helpful guidances for stakeholders to improve value creation in construction projects.