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Assessing the Effect of Audit Compliance, Conflict Management and Bureaucratic Attitude on the Success of Public Projects
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Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the critical success factors (CSFs) for effective project stakeholder management at the local government level in Ghana.
Design/methodology/approach
The study used data from questionnaires administered to project stakeholders for identifying and ranking CSFs.
Findings
The study identified the top five CSFs for stakeholder management at the local government level in Ghana to be: communicating with and engaging stakeholders; identifying stakeholders properly; formulating a clear project mission statement; keeping and promoting good relationships; and analyzing stakeholder conflicts and coalitions.
Research limitations/implications
Generalization of the findings should be done with caution since the scope of data collection was limited to district assemblies in the Greater Accra region of Ghana. Nevertheless the results of the study are, however, useful and indicative and can lend direction to future research.
Practical implications
This paper has contributed to the growing body of knowledge related to CSFs for local government projects. The results should help understand factors which are of priority to stakeholders when assessing their involvement in projects. Further, the findings could form the basis for competency development of local government personnel in specific areas where improvements are required.
Originality/value
The paper identified CSFs for effective project stakeholder management at the local level. Most studies on critical factors in project environments have focused on CSFs and project success and thus this study delves into an area which has not received much attention in the literature.
The main objective of this work is to analyze the way in which Maurício Tragtenberg and Fernando Cláudio Prestes Motta conceived bureaucracy. The specific objectives are: to understand the main characteristics of bureaucracy according to Weber, the author who has most influence on the work of Tragtenberg and Prestes Motta; to arrive at an understanding of bureaucracy as expressed in the work of Tragtenberg, to learn how bureaucracy is understood in the work of Prestes Motta and to analyze the relationships that exist between the understanding of bureaucracy in Tragtenberg and Prestes Motta. In analyzing the authors consideration was given to their concept of bureaucracy, their intellectual trajectory, the order of their production, epistemologies, space and historical time, the semantic, ideological and cultural dimension and questions that are important for an understanding of the theoretical development of the concept. The conclusion was reached that, despite the differences in the intellectual paths of Tragtenberg and Prestes Motta, bureaucracy is understood by both as being organization, power and control.
Government procurement processes, no matter what the country or jurisdiction, demands a high level of transparency and accountability through its purchasing of goods and services. The need for increased approval levels in the process is seen as a requirement in order to protect taxpayers' funds and is cited as a reason for not being able to implement best or emerging practice as seen in private organisations. However, today's taxpayers are perhaps much smarter than ever before. As taxpayers, it is extremely rare that we sing the praises of governments who are undertaking inefficient procurement practices but use the excuse that it is in our own interests to do so! Taxpayers are fed up with inefficiency and want their governments to reduce the cost of the procurement process so more funds can be diverted to issues such as healthcare and other programs. This paper and presentation will discuss what some of the issues are and will quote some examples of inefficient practices and how they can be overcome, without necessarily losing transparency. The paper will also outline that within government accountability is held up as an ideal, but often given lip-service and this lack of true accountability is hampering the path towards efficient government procurement practices.
Purpose
This study examines the relationship between interactional justice, which is a specific type of organizational justice perception that reflects how a person is treated by an authority, and workplace internet deviance (or Cyberloafing) as a category of deviant workplace behavior. The tested model suggests that interactional justice affects cyberloafing by influencing fear of formal punishment –as an intimidation construct– which, in turn, prompts employees to reciprocate with deviant workplace internet behaviors.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were collected from 147 (19.4 percent) of the 758 non‐teaching staff at a Spanish public university. Accessibility of individual e‐mail accounts was similar for all employees. E‐mails asking for collaboration were sent in two phases. A questionnaire was posted on the university Intranet and could be accessed by clicking on a link in the e‐mails.
Findings
Structural equation modeling results support that interactional justice is an antecedent of fear of formal punishment that fully mediates the relationship between interactional justice and workplace internet deviance.
Research limitations/implications
The researched employees have job conditions inherent to the peculiarities of the public sector which may limit the ability to extrapolate the findings in the private sector. The fear construct was assessed by a self‐supplied scale, and thus the presence of shades of other similar emotions could not be discounted. Findings provide a more understandable mechanism of the influence of supervisor disrespect on cyberloafing.
Practical implications
These findings contribute to an understanding of the ways in which organizations can control cyberloafing and provide reservations about the intimidator strategy efficiency.
Originality/value
The use of fear of punishment as a mediator on this link is unprecedented.
This paper is concerned with identifying universal criteria for prequalification and bid evaluation, and the means by which different emphases can be accommodated to suit the requirements of clients and projects. The information, assessment and evaluation strategies currently used by procurers for screening contractors are considered, and the results are reported of an extensive literature review and a Delphic interview study with a small select sample of construction professionals with extensive experience in prequalification and bid evaluation processes. The findings indicate that the most common criteria considered by procurers during the prequalification and bid process are those pertaining to financial soundness, technical ability, management capability, and the health and safety performance of contractors.
This paper develops and tests two efficiency wage models of corruption in the civil service. Under fair wage models, civil service wages are an important determinant of corruption. Under shirking models, the level of wages is of secondary importance, as potential bribes dwarf wage income. The empirical evidence points to a negative relationship between corruption and wages across developing countries. Tests as to the validity of the two different efficiency wage models are inconclusive.
Purpose
The Indian public sector construction industry is normally driven by traditional contracting practices. Though no formal partnering agreement is being used in public sector projects in India, improvement in Indian public sector organizations could be observed in the post-liberalization era, as they get the opportunities to work with multinational companies from countries with experiences in partnering. The purpose of this study is to explore the extent of partnering strategies being adopted by Indian public sector organizations and identify factors hindering the adoption of formal partnering.
Design/methodology/approach
Critical success factors for successful partnering were first identified through literature review. This guided the collection of primary data through semi-structured interviews with 36 top management personnel and secondary data in the form of organizational documents and site reports from several site visits of four public sector construction organizations. The evidence collected from four cases were arranged and compared against organizational strategies of successful partnering.
Findings
Most of the strategies adopted by the organizations were found to be in line with the suggested partnering practices. However, partnering performance of these organizations was found to be not satisfactory. This study has identified 14 factors hindering effective partnering such as reservations over joint risk-sharing process, limited bid evaluation criteria, difficulty in time-bound payment to contractor, absence of incentive mechanism, obsolete training procedures and absence of time-bound dispute resolution mechanism.
Research limitations/implications
The research findings are based on a case study with four public sector organizations only. Additional cases need to be undertaken to generalize the findings. Further study should also be undertaken to explore partnering relationships between contractors and subcontractors in public sector projects.
Practical implications
To improve project performance, top management of public sector organizations in India can take these factors into account while formulating strategies on introduction of project partnering in their organizations.
Originality/value
The work is novel providing insights into organizational strategies promoting and hindering partnering in Indian public sector construction organizations.
The adoption of relational contracting (RC) has been increasingly used by parties in various developed countries as one of the innovative tools in traditional contracting to achieve benefits such as cost savings, schedule reduction, reduced litigation, improved teamwork, increased trust, stronger relationships, and overall satisfaction. However, the adoption of RC in public-sector construction organizations has been observed to encounter difficulties when compared with implementation in private-sector organizations because of typical barriers, including a lack of understanding of partnering principles and personality indifference, in addition to a low offer mentality, ineffective top management, and a lack of positive working-level commitment. Studies in this area conducted with the objective of ensuring the effective implementation of RC in public-sector organizations are also limited. In view of this, this study aims at exploring the factors that will have an important impact on developing RC practices and the relationship between the contractor and the public firm. Previous studies focused on the identification of the success factors of RC, but those studies were limited to RC implementation from a top management perspective only. Thus, this study investigates the critical factors in RC that are necessary to produce successful relational partnerships in public organizations exclusively from the perspective of front-line employees. The front-line employees include junior engineers and assistant engineers, who are responsible for the day-to-day management of construction activities. An extensive literature review offered 9 important relational contract success factors that were identified and measured by 29 indicators. The data were collected from 202 operational-level employees at four public-sector construction organizations in India. The structural equation modeling technique was used for data analysis. The critical factors identified from the study are training, organizational change, commitment of top management, partner selection, and the assessment process. Organizational change for partnering emerged from this study as one of the new critical factors. The findings from this study could be used to improve the relational partnerships of public organizations.
As the pressures of global competition become more pronounced and the client's need to develop strategic partnership grows, performance expectations increase correspondingly. Only firms that master the skills of early identification, selection, training, and development of project managers can expect to remain successful. Once the key project managers are in place, the firm's upper management must develop and implement a mutually beneficial reward and reinforcement process that recognizes the organizational reality that all revenues and profits are earned at the project level. In the long-term, upper management cannot be considered competent if the projects that generate shareholder value fail.
It is becoming clearer than ever that new ideas about conflict resolution lie in interdisciplinary research. This paper will look at the importance of cross-cultural leadership in avoiding and resolving conflict on construction projects. It will also review some recent work on dealing with conflict on international projects in which the number of participants is especially large, and thus the probability of conflict increased. This paper will also look briefly at some patterns of thinking from game theory that can broaden the scope of the discussion about conflict.
One of the functions of construction project management is to ensure success of the construction project. However achieving success in a construction project is not a small task. Moreover, measurement of performance of a construction project itself is considered to be a debatable issue as there are no universally accepted criteria for it. Traditionally schedule, cost and quality compliances commonly referred to as ‘iron triangle’ have been accepted as the most widely used criteria to measure performance. Further assuming that the project success is repeatable, researches have indicated certain attributes/factors which when present or absent in a project are likely to make the project successful. In the present study, 55 project performance attributes are identified and a two-stage questionnaire survey is conducted. While 11 success and nine failure factors are identified from the analysis of the first stage questionnaire responses, the second stage questionnaire survey has helped in evaluation of the extent of criticality of these factors with respect to a given performance rating of the project. It is found that extent of contribution of various success or failure factors varies with current level performance ratings of the project. The crux of the findings of this study has been the emergence of commitment, coordination, and competence as the key factors for achievement of schedule, cost, and quality objectives respectively. The results may be of a great help to construction professionals and researchers since it helps to identify value adding factors, fewer in number and allow them to focus on these select factors rather than attending to numerous factors that do not yield any commensurate returns.
This study aimed to identify a set of project success factors for design and build (D&B) projects and examine the relative importance of these factors on project outcome. Six project success factors (project team commitment, contractor's competencies, risk and liability assessment, client's competencies, end-users' needs, and constraints imposed by end-users) were extracted from factor analysis of data provided by 53 participants of public-sector D&B projects through a questionnaire survey. Project team commitment, client's competencies, and contractor's competencies were found to be important to bring successful project outcome from the multiple regression findings. Contractor's competencies also contributed to project time performance. Project team members should also recognize that time and cost performance as well as quality of design and workmanship represent the key elements of overall success of D&B projects. Practitioners are advised to focus on teamwork and partnering for successful project completion. More research should be conducted to further explore the relationship between procurement method and project success factors.
The construction industry, the largest industry in America, is in disarray because of high costs, sliding productivity, marginal profits, and high turnover. Research and development (R&D) in the industry is at present minimal, but could be a decisive factor needed to spark rejuvination. An R&D policy is proposed, with a discussion of creativity, the skills needed by R&D personnel, the interaction of R&D with bureaucratic activities, and negative side of R&D specialization. Construction education needed to supply research manpower, as well as to upgrade the skills and knowledge of construction personnel in general, may be the second decisive rejuvinating factor. The status of construction education in America is reviewed.
The identification of key factors for construction project success enables appropriate allocation of limited resources. Most of the related past work only identified critical success factors for construction projects in general. The present study seeks to distinguish these factors according to the project objectives of budget, schedule, and quality. The analytic hierarchy process is adopted to determine the relative importance of success-related factors. A hierarchical model for construction project success is presented. Sixty-seven success-related factors are considered. These factors are grouped under four main project aspects, namely, project characteristics, contractual arrangements, project participants, and interactive processes in the hierarchical model for project success. A questionnaire was developed to facilitate systematic data collection in this study. Experts with an overall average of 20 years of experience in the construction industry were invited to participate in the survey. Critical success factors addressing budget performance, schedule performance, quality performance, and overall project success are identified. Some pertinent findings of the study are discussed. Comparisons with findings of previous studies using neural network approach are also presented.
Achieving success in public construction projects is difficult because it requires economy, efficiency, quality, fairness and transparency. Such projects are taken up on the requisition of owners/clients and almost always involve multiple entities and are also accountable to external financial audit and vigilance agencies. Identification of the success factors is considered the key to achieving success in these projects. Through an extensive literature review, 36 success attributes were identified and a questionnaire-based survey was undertaken to elicit views of professionals on these success attributes. The responses from 105 professionals with an average of 22 years of experience in public construction projects in India were collected and analysed. The factor analysis yielded four success factors: awareness of and compliance with rules and regulations; pre-project planning and clarity in scope; effective partnering among project participants; and external monitoring and control. These four success factors were also used in multivariate linear regression in order to explore their relative significance for overall performance, and compliance with anti-corruption and financial norms. The most significant factor for overall performance is awareness of and compliance with rules and regulations. The results would be helpful to public construction project professionals in taking proactive measures for successful completion of public projects.
Despite extensive efforts, corruption in public procurement has reached epidemic proportions and has become one of the major challenges for management. Because corrupt practices mostly occur under wraps, the task of combating corruption becomes even more difficult. In the course of a review of the extant literature on the theme a number of independent constructs with the potential to develop anti-corruption strategies have been identified. A research model was developed on the basis of the hypothesis that anti-corruption strategies lead to corruption free performance in public construction projects. A questionnaire survey was administered and 105 responses were collected. ‘Anti-corruption strategies’ was defined as a second order construct composed of four latent constructs: leadership, rules and regulations, training and fear of punishment. The structural equation modelling (SEM) technique was used to test the hypothesized positive inter-relations between anti-corruption strategies and corruption free performance. The significance of the role of management leadership, rules and regulations, training, as well as fear of punishment is highlighted to help policy makers and construction institutions in understanding the role of various anti-corruption strategies in public construction projects so that they may contribute to this important endeavour in achieving the goal of promoting economy, efficiency, quality, fairness and transparency.
Although extensive research has been undertaken on factors influencing the decision to tender and mark-up and tender price determination for construction projects, very little of this research contains information appropriate to the factors involved in costing construction projects. The object of this study was to gain an understanding of the factors influencing contractors' cost estimating practice. This was achieved through a comparative study of eighty-four UK contractors classified into four categories, namely, very small, small, medium and large firms. The initial analysis of the 24 factors considered in the study shows that the main factors relevant to cost estimating practice are complexity of the project, scale and scope of construction, market conditions, method of construction, site constraints, client's financial position, buildability and location of the project. Analysis of variance, which tests the null hypothesis that the opinions of the four categories of companies are not significantly different, shows that except for the procurement route and contractual arrangement factor there is no difference of opinion, at the 5% significance level, on the factors influencing cost estimating. Further analysis, based on a factor analysis technique, shows that the variables could be grouped into seven factors; the most important factor grouping being project complexity followed by technological requirements, project information, project team requirement, contract requirement, project duration and, finally, market requirement.
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