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The purpose of this article is to identify and explore pertinent conflicting factors in construction projects; which would be helpful for project planners and implementers in assessing and taking proactive measures for reducing the adverse effect of conflict.

To achieve the study objectives, a 43‐item questionnaire survey in a five‐point Likert scale was carried out to collect professionals' experience on conflicting activities in Korean construction projects. Responses from 124 professionals working for owners, consultants and contractors were analyzed. Furthermore, ten face‐to face interviews were also carried out to ratify the findings from the field survey. Later, analytical hierarchical process method was employed to find out the importance weighting as well as responsible party for the perceived conflicts.

This study has found out six critical construction conflicting factors pertinent in Korean context. These factors with importance weighting are: differing site condition (24.1 percent), public interruption (22.5 percent), differences in change order evaluation (21 percent), design errors (17.1 percent), excessive contract quantities variation (8.2) and double meaning of specifications (7.1 percent). The study has revealed that owner (35.6 percent) and consultant (34.18 percent) are mostly responsible parties for conflicts in construction projects.

As the previous researches have been indicating increase in conflicts in construction field, this paper is very topical at the moment. This work has tried to explore the underlying problems of the construction field. The study provides field level experiences from which the inexperience construction site professionals could learn the instances of conflicts and not repeat the mistakes in their projects.

Purpose – The main purpose is to provide ideas about an intellectual framework for considering the role of “economic factors” in conflict and to suggest some potentially useful future areas of research. I selectively reference some relevant findings from the other chapters in this volume.

Methodology/approach – This chapter is speculative, but raises important issues. It might seem that economic factors should be considered “hard” constraints on the dynamics of large-scale conflict and peace, whereas political factors are “soft.” I propose the opposite. I argue that we should consider political factors as causally primary and economic factors as contingent on them. I present statistical analyses that call into question some recent research on the apparent primacy of economic factors in international conflict.

Findings – These models challenge a strong belief in the primacy of a “capitalist peace” or “economic peace” over political factors such as democracy. But my purpose here is no more than to suggest that this is a promising area for further inquiry. Economic factors are of course hugely important, but they are filtered through norms and institutions, which are political creations. If the basic logic of my thinking holds, similar results would be obtained for studies of civil conflict initiation and escalation.

Originality/value of paper – This chapter raises the issue of the appropriate place of economic and political factors in understanding organized conflict at various levels of analysis. It suggests how the chapters in this volume help advance thinking about the relationship between economic factors and conflict in this context and provides some novel empirical results to suggest the plausibility of the argument that economic factors may be less theoretically fundamental than political ones.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and analyze a model of factors influencing interpersonal conflicts.

This research was conducted using a mixed method approach. In the qualitative study, the conceptual model of the factors affecting interpersonal conflicts was extracted from semi-structured interviews with 17 relevant experts using a theme analysis technique. Then, three hypotheses were developed based on the model and relevant theoretical evidence. Using a researcher-made questionnaire which was developed earlier based on the qualitative results, a quantitative-based survey was performed to assess the interpersonal conflicts and also the standard scale of the level of interpersonal conflicts (Jehn, 1997). The hypotheses were tested on a sample of 160 employees of Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari Province Gas Company (CBPGC).

The results of the qualitative study indicated that individual factors including personality dimensions and individual differences; organizational factors including five dimensions of organizational culture, organizational structure, management characteristics, intra-organization factors and human resource systems; and environmental factors influenced the creation of interpersonal conflicts. The results of the quantitative study indicated that organizational factors with an effect size of 0.502 were identified as the most important factor influencing interpersonal conflicts.

The findings of this study can provide a roadmap to managers of the CBPGC to be aware of the contributing factors to conflict within their organization.

The use of mixed method to identify the causes and factors of interpersonal conflict and analyzing a context different from previous studies can be considered as the innovations of this study.

The purpose of this research is to quantify the effect of stakeholder conflicts on project constraints in the construction industry using ordinal regression analysis. For this purpose, the most significant project constraints and factors that cause stakeholder conflicts found in the literature are measured.

Factors causing stakeholder conflicts and project constraints are extracted through a content analysis of the published literature. Further, a questionnaire survey is conducted involving 170 professionals to assess the effect of conflicts on project constraints. Finally, to obtain a more objective assessment, a statistical model is developed, and to highlight the most severe factors causing conflict and impacting project constraints, ordinal regression analysis is performed.

The results show that in the construction industry, all project constraints are affected by stakeholder conflicts. Factors that result in stakeholder conflicts indicated a positive relationship with cost, time and resources. This means that any increase or decrease in the effect of stakeholder conflicts will directly influence these three project constraints. Similarly, a negative relationship was observed between stakeholder conflicts and quality, workforce productivity, protection of environment and safety regulations in the construction industry, indicating that increase in the effect of stakeholder conflicts will decrease these four project constraints and vice versa. The results for cumulative ordinal regression model highlight that lack of communication, poor quality of completed works and change orders and rework have intense effects on project constraints collectively.

A small number of studies have been undertaken to examine the emergence of project constraints in the developing countries. And even more, its relationship with stakeholder conflicts in the construction industry is limited. This research highlights the most significant project constraints and factors that result in stakeholder conflicts in the construction industry. Therefore, this study adds to the existing body of knowledge by developing an ordinal regression model that will help decision-makers and top management control this enigma of stakeholder conflicts in the construction industry.

This paper aims to determine various factors that cause conflict among professionals in the Nigerian construction industry.

This study made use of quantitative approach. Questionnaires were used as a form of data collection, and it was distributed to construction professionals such as quantity surveyors, architects, builders, civil engineers, project managers and construction managers in Ondo and Lagos state to ascertain various factors that cause conflict among professionals in the Nigerian construction industry. A total number of 150 questionnaires were distributed, but 135 were received from the respondents that represent 90 per cent of response rate. In this study, the descriptive analysis and exploratory factor analysis were used.

The findings from this study show that the major cause of conflict among the professionals is favouritism. This is followed by role ambiguity that occurs due to improper definition of the role of different construction professionals, and it leads to a misunderstanding culminating into conflict. Also, other major causes of conflict among construction professionals in Nigeria include differences in professionals’ experience, differences in level of education, differences in personalities and differences in professionals’ goal and views.

It should be emphasized that professionals must avoid and desist from any factors that can cause conflict among them. Strict adherence by construction professionals in Nigeria will encourage free flow of ideas and will help them progress. This will actually lead to improvement on professionals tasks.

This article describes the development of a measure of role conflict. Role conflict was conceptualized as consisting of four dimensions: intrasender, intersender, interrotle, and person‐role conflict respectively. Study 1 (N = 65), which was conducted to pilot test the 96 item questionnaire (reduced from 224 items after expert rating), resulted in the reduction of the questionnaire to 43 items with three interpretable dimensions. Study 2 (N = 100) was carried out to examine the construct validity of the scale and confirm the factor structure. There was convergence with the findings of Study 1. Cronbach alpha for each subscale was adequate, and evidence of concurrent, convergent, and discriminant validities was found. Study 3 (N = 242) attempted to provide some normative data for the measure, in addition to carrying out a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) using LISREL. The findings of Study 2 were almost duplicated, and the CFA results lent greater support to a three‐factor structure of role conflict.

Conflict was recognized as a major cause of inefficiency and limited performance of construction projects. Factors pertaining to conflict in construction are vast; however, there have been less recognition of these factors in international construction projects. The purpose of this paper is to provide in-depth understanding of conflict in this context and analyze how it influences project performance.

A questionnaire survey was used to collect data from 161 professionals working in Malaysian companies, which are undertaking construction projects overseas.

Analyzing the data using factor analysis revealed six new factors of conflict: external, internal, control-related, knowledge-related, mismanagement, and social conflicts. Further analysis of the data using partial least squares-path modeling (PLS-PM) affirmed a significant relationship between project performance and two factors of conflict only: internal and social. The results also showed that conflict contributes to about 27 percent of the variance in project performance.

This paper provided a clear picture for project managers and team members about specific aspects of conflict and how to mitigate them to attain better performance of international construction projects.

This study aims to analyze reform path for waste management policy implementation. With reference to the Bayesian theory, this study provides a dynamic policy conversion method through various context settings. Furthermore, this study attempts to present an empirical research paradigm.

Matland’s “ambiguity-conflict model” is applied to explain the problems and reform paths of China’s waste management policy implementation. Integrating structure discovery and bibliometrics into qualitative analysis, this study used search data from literature search engine with specific themes to achieve structure learning of Bayesian network with key factors refined in waste management policy.

The results show that China’s waste management policy implementation belongs to symbolic implementation with high ambiguity and high conflict. Four basic conversion paths for the waste management policy are proposed, which are classified by length and stability. Then, it is possible to locate the factors, paths and types of policy implementation through involvement analysis with features of each path and each district of policy implementation. Public education holds direct but unstable impact on waste management. Economic incentives hold continuous but gradually diminishing impact. Perceived policy effectiveness plays the crucial role like a central bridge. Resident conditions have a positive impact, which could be enhanced through economic development of China. The impact of subjective norm on waste management is not significant. But subjective norm has the potential breakthrough for solving stagnation of waste classification policy. However, the impacts from each factor may change along with economy growth and technology innovation.

This study uses the “ambiguity-conflict model” to position China’s waste classification policy and suggests that structure discovery methods help understand feasible reform paths for reform policy. The integration of theoretical analysis and quantitative simulation can achieve a comprehensive analysis of problems and solutions in waste management policy implementation of China. Promotion and education, economic incentives, perceived value, behavior control, subjective norm, perceived policy effectiveness, informal waste recycling system and residential conditions are explored as key factors for waste classification policy implementation as a representative in waste management policy. The role of each key factor and features of each conversion paths are integrated to position reform paths in the ambiguity-conflict model. This work helps to explain the stagnation of waste management policy implementation from the perspective of dynamic structure evolution, and some specific suggestions to get out of stagnation are proposed.

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between the Big Five personality factors and five styles of handling interpersonal conflict. The Big Five factors are extroversion, openness, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and neuroticism, and the five conflict styles are integrating, obliging, dominating, avoiding, and compromising. A total of 351 students completed questionnaires. As a check on generalizing the results beyond students, 110 managers also completed the same surveys. The main results indicate that extroversion, conscientiousness, openness, and agreeableness have a positive relationship with integrating style. Extroversion has a positive relationship with dominating, while agreeableness and neuroticism have negative relationships with dominating. Extroversion, openness, and conscientiousness have a negative relationship with avoiding, while agreeableness and neuroticism have a positive relationship with avoiding. Implications of the study and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Conflict between project parties is among the major risk factors in public–private partnership (PPP) in developing countries that has, in extreme cases, led to the failure or distress of many PPP projects. This paper aims to explore conflict prevention measures for PPPs in developing countries using Ghana as a case study.

From a comprehensive review of literature, a list of conflict prevention measures was derived; further, a questionnaire survey was conducted with PPP experts from Ghana. Kendall’s coefficient of concordance test, range normalization method and factor analysis were used for data analysis.

Results show four significant conflict prevention measures for PPPs in developing countries, they include extensive stakeholder consultation in decision makings, clear goals and mutual benefit objectives, clarity of roles and responsibilities of parties and transparent appeal procedures. Using the factor analysis technique, the prevention measures are grouped into three unrelated categories, they are efficient communication structure and risk assessments, transparency and openness and proficient service delivery.

The research findings inform policymakers and local practitioners of the strategic measures and procedures needed to minimize the occurrence of conflicts in PPPs in developing countries.