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This study examines how project uncertainties (environmental uncertainty and participant uncertainty) affect guanxi and contractual governance and assesses the mediating role of guanxi governance between project uncertainty and contractual governance.

Data were collected in two stages from Chinese contractors. First, in-depth interviews were conducted with nine construction engineering project practitioners in different contracts as a pilot for questionnaire designing. Second, a cross-sectional questionnaire survey was conducted with professionals and practitioners of construction enterprises to collect primary data. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to test seven hypotheses based on data collected from 198 respondents.

Project environmental uncertainty promotes the use of guanxi governance, while project participant uncertainty hinders it; the relationship between both types of uncertainty and contractual governance is the same as with guanxi governance. Furthermore, guanxi governance promotes contractual governance and partially mediates project environmental uncertainty and contractual governance and a complete mediating role between project participant uncertainty and contractual governance.

As the interviewed samples are mainly from China, the study should be replicated using large representative samples from East Asian countries, such as Japan and South Korea, to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the influence of guanxi governance. Further, while the internal consistency reliability and convergent validity of the questionnaire data in this study align with the standards, a larger sample size would improve the reliability and validity of the research results and better represent the overall work situation of contractors, owners and public policymakers.

The results provide insights into project governance research and have implications for construction practitioners in deploying governance-related resources.

Inter-organizational collaboration is the organizational guarantee and key link to achieve the goals of megaproject management. Project governance has always played an important role in the construction of megaprojects, but the relationship between project governance and organizational collaboration is unclear. The purpose of this study is to explore the role paths of different project governance mechanisms in influencing the collaborative behaviors of stakeholders and collaborative performance and to elucidate the mechanism of project governance on inter-organizational collaboration.

A conceptual framework was developed based on a comprehensive literature review, termed the structural equation model (SEM). The hypotheses of the model were tested based on data obtained from a questionnaire survey of 235 experts with experience in megaprojects within the construction industry in China.

The results show that project governance positively contributes to the collaborative behavior of megaproject stakeholders and the collaborative performance of the project team. Collaborative behavior acts as a partial mediator between project governance and the collaborative performance of the megaproject inter-organization alliance. The complexity of the project modulates the relationship between the governance mechanism of the project and the collaborative behavior of the stakeholders, which affects the collaborative performance of the megaproject inter-organization alliance.

The findings provide theoretical and practical implications for promoting positive collaborative behavior among stakeholders in megaproject selection and improving the collaborative performance of megaproject inter-organization alliances.

An alliance portfolio can help latecomer firms to acquire the necessary knowledge and resources to catch up with market leaders. However, how latecomer firms construct an alliance portfolio in terms of the nature of windows of opportunity has not been fully analyzed. This paper aims to explore how latecomer firms can build appropriate coalitions according to the nature of the window of opportunity to achieve technological catch-up in different catch-up phases.

Based on a longitudinal case study from 1984 to 2018 of Sunny Group, now a leading manufacturer of integrated optical components and products, this paper explores the process of technological catch-up of latecomer firms building different types of alliance portfolio in different windows of opportunity.

This paper finds that there is a sequence when latecomers build an alliance portfolio in the process of catch-up. When the uncertainty of opportunity increases, the governance mechanism of the alliance portfolio will change from contractual to equity-based. Also, latecomer firms build market-dominated and technology-dominated alliance portfolios to overcome their market and technology disadvantages, respectively.

These conclusions not only enrich the theory of latecomer catch-up from the perspective of windows of opportunity but also expand research on alliance portfolio processes from a temporal perspective.

The purpose of this study is to determine how project governance influences project success. According to the authors, such an effect is mediated by organizational support and project team cohesion. The direct and indirect effects of organizational support and project team cohesion provided helpful information. The authors’ objective is to contribute to the project management knowledge of how project team cohesion plays a significant role in project success.

Data were collected from 350 employees working in Pakistan’s oil and gas industry. Four prime oil and gas exploration companies were selected as samples based on their contribution to the revenue. SPSS v23 and AMOS v23 were used for constructing structural equation modeling and path analysis to examine the direct and indirect effects.

The results revealed that project governance is positively related to project success. Furthermore, organizational support and project team cohesion mediated the relationship between project governance and project success.

Team cohesion has been primarily a topic of interest in sports psychology literature, education and medical sciences. There is an expressed need to investigate team cohesion issues in the broad domain of organizational development, specifically the project management literature. This study contributed by discussing team cohesion in the project context. Second, project governance was investigated using the conservation of resources theory. The lens of intellectual capital was applied to examine intangible resources of project governance like rules, regulations and directives for project success.

While the theory and practice of open innovation networks are flourishing, green innovation in manufacturing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is stagnant. This study explores the mechanism driving green innovation in manufacturing SMEs under open innovation networks based on the role of innovation platforms' relational governance.

A quantitative study was conducted using questionnaires to collect data from 270 manufacturing SMEs in Zhejiang Province and employing a structural equation model to test the developed hypotheses.

The results revealed that innovation platforms' relational governance positively affects green innovation in manufacturing SMEs. Furthermore, the collaborative innovation atmosphere and risk perception mediate this relationship through a respective mediating role and a chain-mediating role.

This study is the first to empirically investigate the mechanism of the influence of innovation platforms' relational governance on green innovation in manufacturing SMEs, provide a new perspective for understanding the antecedents of green innovation under open innovation networks, and expand the theoretical research on open innovation management.

Trust is the glue that holds cooperative relationships together and often exists in an asymmetric manner. The purpose of this study is to explore how to mitigate the issue of losses or increased transaction costs caused by opportunistic behavior in a soft environment where trust asymmetry is quite common and difficult to avoid.

This study focuses on examining asymmetric trust between the government and the private sector in public-private partnership (PPP) projects. Drawing upon both project realities and relevant literature, the primary conditional variables influencing asymmetric trust are identified. These variables encompass power perception asymmetry, information asymmetry, interaction behavior, risk perception differences and government-side control. Subsequently, through the use of a survey questionnaire, binary-matched data from both the government and the private sector are collected. The study employs fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to conduct a configurational analysis, aiming to investigate the causal pathways that trigger asymmetric trust.

No single conditional variable is a necessary condition for the emergence of trust asymmetry. The pathways leading to a high degree of trust asymmetry can be categorized into two types: those dominated by power perception and those involving a combination of multiple factors. Differences in power perception play a crucial role in the occurrence of high trust asymmetry, yet the influence of other conditional variables in triggering trust asymmetry should not be overlooked.

The findings can contribute to advancing the study of trust relationships in the field of Chinese PPP projects. Furthermore, they hold practical value in facilitating the enhancement of trust relationships between the government and the private sector.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between absorptive capacity, relational capital and interorganizational relationship performance and examine the moderating effect of contractual governance on this relationship.

This study used a quantitative design, analyzing data collected through a survey questionnaire. The sampling frame consisted of 111 cross-industry, small and medium-sized manufacturers in Malaysia. The research model was analyzed using structural equation modeling.

The results show that interorganizational relationship performance is positively influenced by relational capital and absorptive capacity. While absorptive capacity has a positive effect on relational capital, this study finds empirical evidence that contractual governance weakens the effect of absorptive capacity on relational capital. Furthermore, this study also examines the hitherto under-researched moderating effect of contractual government on absorptive capacity and relational capital and their relationship with interorganizational relationship performance.

This study provides insights into the interorganizational relationship among SMEs and explains the nature of knowledge management in this context. This study shows the potential role of absorptive capacity in building close cross-border interorganizational relationships.

Transaction cost economics sees a broad spectrum of governance structures spanned by two types of economic adaptation: autonomous and cooperative. Stakeholder theorists have drawn much inspiration from transaction cost economics but have not paid explicit attention to the centrality of the idea of adaptation in this literature. This study aims to address this gap.

The authors develop a novel conceptual framework applying the distinction between the two types of economic adaptation to stakeholder theory.

The authors argue that the idea of cooperative adaptation is particularly useful for describing the firm’s collaboration with primary stakeholders in the joint value creation process. In contrast, autonomous adaptation is more relevant for firms interacting with secondary stakeholders who are not directly engaged in joint value creation and may not have formal contractual relationships with the firm. Accordingly, cooperative adaptation can be seen as vital for resolving team production problems affecting joint value creation, whereas autonomous adaptation addresses how the firm maintains legitimacy within the larger stakeholder environment.

Similar to its significance for transaction cost economics, the distinction between the two types of adaptation equips stakeholder theory with a new systematic understanding of a potentially broad spectrum of firm–stakeholder collaboration forms.

Integrating transaction costs economics and task-technology fit theory, this study distinguishes two categories of social media–enabled interactions, namely task-related interactions and tie-related interactions, and explores the match between these two and firms' use of contracts in achieving safeguarding and coordinating purposes in interfirm governance.

Two studies were conducted to test the hypotheses. In Study 1, this study collaborated with a professional market research firm and collected responses from Chinese manufacturing firms in a survey. In Study 2, this study designed a scenario-based experiment and collected 239 participants from the Credamo platform.

This study categorized social media–enabled interactions into task-related interactions and tie-related interactions and conducted two studies to reveal that the safeguarding purpose of contract specificity is amplified by tie-related interactions, whereas the coordinating purpose of contract specificity is strengthened by task-related interactions.

This study assumes that firms permit and encourage the use of social media. However, some firms might prohibit the use of social media due to risk issues, or their partners may be prohibited from using social media.

Given that social media–enabled interactions have joint effects with contracts in achieving safeguarding and coordinating purposes, a firm's employees should match their goals with an appropriate type of social media–enabled interactions.

This study enriches the interfirm governance literature by uncovering the roles of these two types of interactions in matching contract specificity to achieve safeguarding and coordinating purposes, which provides actionable insights for managers in governing interfirm relationships.

With the continuous improvement of public–private partnership (PPP) projects, the participants' value creation goals are not only limited to achieving the basic performance objectives but also to realising value added. However, the effect of traditional contract management on realising the value creation objectives of PPP projects is limited. According to the view of multifunctional contract, joint-contract functions that integrate contract control and flexibility are likely to be effective in enhancing the value creation of PPP projects. This study aims to explore the effects of joint-contract functions on PPP project value creation and relevant influencing mechanism by investigating the mediating effect of in-role behaviour and extra-role behaviour.

After collecting 258 valid questionnaires from PPP professionals in China, this study used structural equation modelling to validate the hypotheses.

Contract control and flexibility can improve PPP project value creation. Specifically, contract control improves the achievement of the basic contract objectives of PPP projects, whereas contract flexibility enhances the achievement of the value-added of PPP projects. Moreover, only in-role behaviour mediates the effect of contract control on value creation. In addition, the mediating effect of extra-role behaviour on the impact of contract flexibility on value creation is stronger than that of in-role behaviour. The mediating effect of in- and extra-role behaviour is mainly reflected in the realisation of basic and value-added performance, respectively.

The findings of this study can help realise value creation in three ways. Firstly, new perspectives for PPP project value creation should be proposed by combining the improvement of contract objectives and the realisation of the participants' implicit demands. Secondly, the effects of different contract functions on value creation should be analysed instead of a single dimension of contractual governance. Thirdly, the mediating effects of different types of cooperation behaviour that may influence the relationship between contractual governance and value creation should be evaluated.

This study verifies the impacts of different contract functions on PPP project value creation. In addition, cooperative behaviour is embedded as a mediating variable, and the mediated transmission path from contract function to cooperative behaviour and further to PPP project value creation is systematically analysed.