Effect Of Fairness Perception On Contractors’ Cooperative Behavior In Construction Projects

Interorganizational cooperation is fundamentally critical to successful construction projects,especially the cooperation between an owner and contractor in a project.Existing research on interorganizational cooperation in project management field mostly focus on contract governance and relational governance,including the effect of contractual functions,contract completeness,trust and commitment on interorganizational cooperation.In social psychology and organizational researches,organizational justice is an increasingly important construct and is considered to shape people’s willingness to cooperate.Scholars in organizational management field increasingly emphasize and pay attention to organizational justice,however only a few studies have investigated justice in construction projects.Besides,most of the extant researches on organizational justice stem from intraorganizational level,and especially on individual level,leaving interorganizational justice less examined.In an effort to fill the above gaps,this paper explores whether and how fairness perception influences contractors’ cooperative behavior in construction projects,and the moderating effect of owners’ asset specificity based on organizational justice theory and relational exchange theory.In order to test all of the hypotheses,this paper used questionnaire survey method and collect the data from 258 construction practitioners from contractor companies.Based on the results of hierarchical regression analysis,we found that contractors’ cooperative behavior will be facilitated if they perceive higher procedural justice or interactional justice.However,there is no significant relationship between contractors’ perceived distributive justice and their cooperative behavior.Furthermore,owners’ asset specificity can negatively moderate the impact of interactional justice on contractors’ cooperative behavior.The findings contribute to project management research,organizational justice research and interorganizational cooperation research.It is recommended that owners pay more attention to the implementation of the contract and interpersonal treatment quality to contractors in projects.