| With the industrial upgrading of China’s construction industry and the promotion of national policies,the EPC project general contracting model has developed rapidly.At this stage,due to the lack of "big and strong" general contracting enterprises in China,it is necessary to cooperate with subcontractors through subcontracting strategies to jointly complete the project.In the context of general subcontracting of EPC projects,relational governance is an important means to improve the cooperative performance.In the relational governance,the relational norm is the starting point to improve the cooperative performance.The relational behavior is the key path to improve the cooperative performance.However,the existing researches generally assume that the relational norms are parallel and independent,and test the influence of a single variable and its different dimensions on the relational behavior through structural equation model and other methods.These researches ignore the possible complementary,substitutive,cumulative or interactive effects of each relationship specification and its different dimensions.In light of this,this paper selects two important and special relational normative variables-dependency and trust,and studies the influence of the combination of different dimensions of these two variables on the relational behavior.Firstly,by reviewing the literature on inter-organizational dependence,trust and relational behavior,combing with the general subcontracting situation of EPC project,this paper divides the subcontracting dependence into two dimensions: resource dependence and relational dependence,and divides subcontracting trust into three dimensions: system-based trust,cognition-based trust,affect-based trust.Secondly,based on the configuration theory,a research model of the influence of the combination of dependence and trust on the relational behavior of between the subcontractors is constructed.Finally,through the issuance of questionnaires and data collection,this paper explores the influence of the interaction of five factors on the relational behavior by useing the fussy-sets qualitative comparative analysis method.The research results indicate that under the EPC mode,there are four configurations of dependency and trust combination that promote the general contractor to adopt relational behavior,which are:(1)high resource dependence * high relational dependence * high cognitive trust * high emotional trust;(2)high resource dependence * high institutional trust * high cognitive trust;(3)low resource dependence * high relational dependence * high cognitive trust * high emotional trust;(4)low resource dependence * high institutional trust * high emotional trust.In addition,the four configurations reflect the matching relationship between trust level and dependence degree,which indicates that when the trust level of the general contractor to the subcontractor matches the dependence degree,it is easy for the general contractor to take the corresponding relationship behavior.Thus,the performance of bilateral cooperation can be improved.In this study,the fussy-sets qualitative comparative analysis method is used to study the combination of dependence and trust that promote general contractors to adopt relational behavior,which not only provides a new research perspective for the study of inter-organizational behavior,but also expands the application of this method in the field of management research.In addition,it provides practical guidance for the general contractor to manage the subcontractors. |
