Xu, J; Smyth, H; (2018) The constitution of supply chain relationships: A post-failure case study. In: Proceedings of the Thirty-Fourth Annual Conference 2018. Association of Researchers in Construction Management (ARCOM)

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Abstract

This study aims to investigate how relationships between main contractors and second-tier subcontractors are constituted, particularly after project experiences that deteriorated relationships. Trust is regarded as a structural property of relationship and the duality of trust provides an analytical perspective of investigating the constitution of relationship. This process-based research used case study method and collected data from semi-structured interviews with actors from both main contractor and subcontractor companies. Findings reveal five processes, learning, relating, collaborating, controlling and routinising, that helped constitute trust and thus supply chain relationships. It reveals that relationship failure had strong impacts on initial trust and practices at the front end. The research also shows that constituting relationship and trust is an intended but also an unintended consequence of project organising enabled and constrained by structures of project ecologies. This study contributes to knowledge in that it 1) provides an analytical approach, from the perspective of structuration theory, and relational approach to understanding construction supply chains, 2) empirically demonstrates the dynamics of trust, in the shadow of the past as well as contemporary lifecycle of the construction project, and 3) links construction project management field with the wider field of social science.

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