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In this study, we develop further understanding of how institutional change is created within a mature and local industry. In this pursuit, we examine how a collaborative large project governance model was institutionalized at an industrial sector-level through both industry-level activities and “institutional projects”.

This study builds on the foundations of institutional fields and institutional change, suggesting that projects are not only shaped by their contexts but also produce institutional change themselves. We conducted extensive fieldwork on the institutionalization of a collaborative project governance model in Finland.

The findings illustrate how institutional change in governance of large and complex inter-organizational projects is created at the institutional field level. The institutionalized collaborative project governance model includes aspects of both relational and contractual governance. The change was facilitated by temporal links between the institutional projects as well as vertical links between the institutional projects and the field-level development programs.

This is one of the first studies to address how a collaborative large project governance model becomes the norm at the institutional field level beyond the boundaries of an individual project or organization.

This article aims to address the confusion related to the meanings of interorganisational cooperation, control, coordination and collaboration in collaborative projects by developing a conceptual framework. From this, the authors aim to describe the links among these concepts in terms of development levels of stakeholder relationships. In addition, the authors aim to identify challenges and preconditions in relation to developing relationships at different levels.

The authors have adopted the directed approach of qualitative content analysis method to validate and extend the conceptual framework of this study. The context of this study is a large hospital construction project located in northern Finland.

The findings of this study suggest that collaboration is a multilevel process of active engagement of multiple stakeholders. These stakeholders must have a high degree of shared understanding in terms of cooperation, control and coordination to achieve the mutually desired outcomes. This study also identifies the challenges that project stakeholders could face in developing collaborative relationships and propose preconditions for the same.

This study provides a better understanding for project managers to manage interorganisational collaborative construction projects successfully. The outcome of this research would be beneficial to project management team to deliver dispute-free construction projects.

Existing practical research on the development of relationships at different levels in collaborative construction projects is limited. This study offers a framework for the same which is validated in a real-life project.

Early contractor involvement (ECI) faces many barriers because it differs from traditional business practices. Public owners, especially, face a major challenge because they must comply with international and national legislation. The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework that illustrates the various approaches that public project owners can take to implement ECI.

In addition to a literature review, three groups of case studies were carried out. The case studies were based on 54 semi-structured in-depth interviews with key personnel from 21 Norwegian public projects and document study.

In all, 25 approaches to ECI were identified during the research. Twelve of these were used in the cases studied.

There are several approaches to ECI that are suitable for public owners. However, the contractor’s contribution depends on which approach is implemented and how it is implemented.

As original contribution, this study presents a novel framework that defines options for implementing ECI in public projects. Furthermore, this paper provides insights on how ECI can be implemented in public projects based on Norwegian experiences. Although the empirical data of the study is limited to Norwegian public projects, this study contributes to knowledge about how to implement ECI internationally.

Integrated project delivery (IPD) and building information modeling (BIM) have been discussed as prominent collaborative concepts in recent architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) literature, thus recommended for more advanced value creation. However, they have been studied predominantly as discrete even though they are typically highly interrelated. This study aims to enhance collaboration in AEC projects by tracing recent trends in IPD and BIM literature by making sense of trends and by exploring how their interplay has been discussed and conceptualized.

This systematic literature review draws on Scopus and Web of Science as the primary databases. In total, 120 academic papers and review articles were sourced. Yet, the final sample includes 71 sources from the past decade (2011–2020), focusing on both IPD and BIM.

This study identifies 11 interrelated and overlapping themes that are indicative of trends in the recent IPD and BIM literature. This research found that among the identified themes, the clusters of sustainability, transformation and increasing the competence level of staff in the AEC industry, in addition to the concept of quality, require more extensive research in the context of IPD and BIM. Additionally, this study identifies four different approaches to the interplay of IPD and BIM, indicating an absence of scholarly consistency.

Based on the systematic analysis of the recent literature, this study indicates that IPD and BIM have several joint fundamental cornerstones. It is evident that both concepts support the implementation of each other. The success of implementing either one is strongly related to the other. Additionally, we have not found earlier systematic literature reviews that examine the interplay between IPD and BIM in the recent AEC literature.

The purpose of this paper is to elaborate the understanding of socialization in the context of temporary operations and organizational settings, using project alliance – the most contemporary approach to the management of large and complex projects – as an example. In particular, the paper also assesses how informal and formal socialization mechanisms are used to facilitate relational capital in such a setting.

Data were collected by two case studies of complex infrastructure projects in a Northern European city. The analysis focuses on how socialization is managed across organizational interfaces within the alliance organization during the project tendering and development phase to create relational capital.

The findings indicate that significant emphasis is put on socialization in project alliances. However, while in the tendering phase both informal and formal socialization mechanisms are used to create relational capital; in the development phase informal socialization mechanisms are associated with higher levels of relational capital and formal socialization mechanisms are used to maintain the level of relational capital.

While operations and supply chain management research argues that socialization is critical to manage organizational interfaces and to create relational capital in buyer-supplier relationships, research has mainly focused on ongoing operations. This study complements the prior research by developing further insight into socialization in the context of temporary operations and organizational settings; such settings create a unique empirical context, posing different managerial challenges as the results also indicate.

The research problem in this study is how a client (as a project owner) should organise early stakeholder involvement and integration in the front-end phase of a project. This study aims to create normative managerial statements as propositions from the client's perspective and to combine them into a set of activities enabling efficient organisation in the front-end phase of a hospital construction project.

Action design research (ADR) was carried out in a large hospital construction project where the first author acted as an “involved researcher” and the other authors acted as “outside researchers”.

The authors created seven normative managerial propositions that were verified by the case project stakeholders and developed a managerial framework describing the client's essential stakeholder involvement and integration activities in the front-end phase of a hospital construction project based on these propositions. The authors have also depicted the subphases of the front-end phase: value definition phase in the client permanent organisation, value proposition phase in the client Programme Management Office (PMO) and finally development phase in the alliance organisation ending on the final investment decision.

The collaborative contract delivery model enables the early involvement and integration of stakeholders. It has been somewhat surprising to note the extent to which collaborative contracts change the client role in the project front-end. The results offer practical activities for how clients can manage front-end activities in collaborative contracts.

The case project offered a platform to analyse how the collaborative contract delivery model changes the emphasis of activities in the front-end of a project. One of the key benefits of collaborative contracts is that development, design and delivery occur partially in parallel, thereby enabling contributions from production to be included in the design and development. The benefit of having a real-life case under study provides the possibility to triangulate and analyse rich data, however limited by the qualitative case method.

The emergence of collaborative delivery models and working practices in construction industry has created a potential area for project success research. Previous studies have addressed success factors of various collaborative delivery models (e.g. alliance and partnering). However, there is currently very limited research-based knowledge concerning core success factors for different collaborative delivery models, exploring the commonalities. Thus, this study aims to conceptualize a success model for collaborative construction projects by identifying and structuring their core success factors through the lens of project delivery elements.

A systematic literature review was conducted, and thematic as well as content analysis of the relevant studies led to the identification of mentioned success factors in the literature for different collaborative delivery models. Then, those common success factors were structured in a model based on factors' relation to project delivery elements.

The obtained results present eight core success factors (e.g. equality, mutual trust and commitment to win–win philosophy) for collaborative construction projects, structured in a model based on their contribution toward project organization, contractual relationships, and operational system in construction project delivery. Moreover, the differences between success factors for traditional and collaborative construction projects are discussed.

This study's findings provide insightful theoretical contributions on collaborative construction project success and providing a departure point for future studies based on the discussed differences between success factors of collaborative and traditional construction projects. The findings can be also practically insightful for the project professionals in collaborative construction projects to succeed in managing project organization, contractual relationships, and operational system.

The traditional construction delivery method is challenged by low trust and collaboration issues, resulting in increased project costs. The integrated project delivery (IPD) method is developed, through a contractual agreement, to overcome these challenges by creating a common set of terms, expectations and project goals.

A singular construction case was followed during a four-month period. Data collection consisted of contract documents and a series of semi-structured interviews with representatives from the owner, design-group and contractors.

The IPD contract was found to have a number of positive effects; it improved project behavior (e.g. trust, collaboration and communication), increased ownership among project participants and improved buildability of the design, leading to fewer surprises and interruptions in the construction phase. The study also revealed a number of challenges including contractual and legal challenges and involving too many participants in the early phases. Moreover, co-location was identified as a particular important supporting element, to build relations and improve collaboration.

This research identified lessons learned from the application, as well as initial barriers and persistent barriers for implementing IPD. To improve IPD application the top three lessons were as follows: 1) the contractual documents should be adapted and signed at an early stage as this increases financial transparency, 2) cost estimates should be carried as an iterative process and project main concept be freezed at an early stage to increase understanding and minimize risks, 3) only the most important project developers should be involved in the early phases, to avoid going into detailed design issues before the main concept is completed.

This paper aims to increase the current understanding of the connection between operational level information and communication technology (ICT) projects and national level digital transformation by researching how project governance structures and practices are applied in an e-government context.

An elaborative qualitative study through public documentary analysis and empirical multi-case research on Finnish central government is used.

The study constructs a multi-level governance structure with three main functions and applies this in an empirical setting. The results also describe how different governance practices and processes, focusing on project portfolio management, are applied vertically across different organizational levels to connect the ICT projects with the national digitalization strategy.

This study integrates project governance and portfolio management knowledge into public sector digitalization, thus contributing to project management, e-government and ICT research streams by improving the current understanding on the governance of ICT projects as part of a larger-scale digitalization. This study also highlights perceived gaps between current governance practices and provides implications to managers and practitioners working in the field to address these gaps.