Concluding discussion
In recent years there has been an increasing interest in the use of partnering in order to
improve collaboration among construction project actors (Bresnen and Marshall,
2000a). Cox and Thompson (1997) mean that confusion exists between the means and
the end in much of the partnering literature. There is a danger that collaboration
becomes the objective rather than a vehicle for achieving successful project
performance (Cox and Thompson, 1997, Bresnen and Marshall, 2000a). Our model
proposes that collaboration works in two ways. First, as collaborative procurement
procedures it acts as means to directly achieve better project performance. Second, as
collaborative tools and collaborative climate, it acts as a moderator influencing the
relationship between collaborative procurement procedures and project performance.
We encourage other scholars to put our proposed model to test in different contexts.
Most of the concepts we discuss are easily operationalized as there exist scales (e.g.
trust and commitment), or the concept can fairly easily be adequately measured (e.g.
level of use of the different procurement procedures and of collaborative tools). The
main challenge lies perhaps in collecting a large enough number of construction
projects from a similar context. There need to be multiple respondents for each project
(e.g. client, contractors, subcontractors, consultants) and to secure answers from all is
a challenge. Another challenge is that data collection, at least to some extent, needs to
P7 P8
Collaborative P1-P6
Procurement Procedures
Construction Project
Performance
Collaborative
Tools
Collaborative
Climate
15
be retrospective. At least if the data should be available within reasonable time. Then
the use of multiple respondents becomes even more important in order to be able to
assess reliability. Thus, the data collection will be challenging in some areas, but
rather straight-forward in others. We hope the challenges do not defer researchers to
put the model to test. The value that lies in having this model tested is potentially
great as the construction literature has many indications that cooperation and
collaboration may be a good strategy for achieving project success, but empirical
evidence delineating this in a more holistic way is lacking. We hope that this is just a
temporary situation