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The use of partnering has grown within the public sector of the UK construction industry. Central to partnering is the use of the partnering charter. The charter establishes the mutual objectives of the project team. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the types of objectives that are identified and the potential reasons for them.

A number of partnering workshops have been undertaken through one of the University of Salford's Enterprise Units, the Centre for Construction Innovation. Each of these generated a workshop report, which captured the discussions during the day. These have been analysed in order to establish the different mutual objectives that have been identified for different projects.

The results show that while the key issues of time, cost, quality and safety are still central to what teams identify as successful project delivery, issues surrounding management of relationships including external stakeholders, such as the public, are also prevalent. In addition, there is an increase in identified objectives surrounding sustainable development issues, covering social and environmental goals.

The findings provide strong indications that construction is moving towards a more complex regime of objectives in the context of value procurement and partnering arrangements. The objectives identified by the different project teams show that construction projects are now considering both soft management issues and sustainable development as central to the successful delivery of projects.

The philosophy that underpins this paper is that partnering needs the partners to set mutual objectives — these objectives are agreed upon and stipulated within a project charter. Objectives within the charter should be regularly reviewed and performance assessed. The question addressed is — can this mechanism, which has proved successful in a commercial context, assist in applying safety legislation, rules and management systems to a construction project? Also, partnering advocates an open and trusting relationship between all parties — can this ‘philosophy’ be used to assist the management of site safety? Implementing the partnering concept in the construction project environment provides an opportunity for the continuous improvement of safety performance. This paper addresses partnering as a concept and draws from examples of partnering in the UK and Hong Kong. A number of characteristics of partnering agreements have been identified that can all assist in promoting safety. These characteristics are: continuous evaluation, the project charter, mutual objectives and team building. The context in which partnering in safety can be undertaken is reviewed and a discussion takes place of how the global trend to move away from prescriptive legislation towards performance‐based legislation in the regulation of safety provides an ideal opportunity to adopt partnering as a methodology for safety improvement.

The purpose of this paper is to present practical difficulties in attempting to implement a partnering approach.

The paper comprises empirical evidence from case studies in Norway and Canada and an extensive literature review on partnering.

The authors identified a lack of shared understanding of key partnering concepts, missing initial effort to establish shared ground rules, communication difficulties in inter‐organizational relationships and unclear (perceived) roles and responsibilities. In existing partnering literature, a large number of construction studies have identified conceptual partnering models. However, studies that describe partnering models to take these practical difficulties into account have not been found and the paper develops a practical model that outlines the phases of a typical partnering effort.

Partnering has both a legal/contractual side and a management/collaboration side. This paper looks at the management and collaboration aspects of partnering only.

The paper will be a very useful source of information and advice for project managers who are attempting to implement partnering in projects.

The paper presents organizational challenges and difficulties in attempting to implement partnering and a practical model which takes these difficulties into account.

The purpose of this paper is to report on research into investigating ways in which construction clients can overcome barriers to partnering through the adoption of purposeful procurement procedures within an overall project management context.

Data were collected through interviews, document analysis, surveys and workshops as part of a longitudinal case study using an action‐research approach.

Analysis reveals how the early involvement of partners, selected for their long‐term perspective and willingness to use collaborative working arrangements, can help to overcome cultural and organizational barriers.

The research results are based on empirical study for which reasonable generalisations could be made, albeit cautiously. Clients' implementation of partnering requires an appropriate use of a broad range of suitable procurement procedures that are quite different from more commonly used procedures. Hence, clients need to reassess their procurement procedures and tailor them to different project situations. Additionally, a long‐term perspective is crucial in order to facilitate continual improvement over time.

The case study data support the analysis of how utilised procurement procedures affect project results.

This paper aims to explore the applicability of construction partnering in Mainland China, and to provide useful suggestions and possible implications for decision‐makers to adopt this collaborative approach to project procurement.

Document analysis was first employed to identify the favourable conditions and potential difficulties in the application of partnering in Mainland China. A series of face‐to‐face semi‐structured interviews targeting academic experts and industrial practitioners was undertaken to solicit their perceptions of the benefits and difficulties of implementing partnering in Mainland China, coupled with their overall assessment of the applicability of, and suggestions for, the implementation of partnering in the region.

The results of document analysis indicated that the cultural roots of co‐operation and mutual trust, together with the increasing need to improve the current state of project performance in Mainland China, underpin the application of partnering in the construction market, although its application and generalisation still encounter some significant difficulties. The perceived benefits, potential barriers and effective strategies for partnering application in Mainland China were determined from the interviewees. The interview results further supported the applicability of construction partnering and provided constructive and practical suggestions for possible implementation in the Mainland Chinese construction industry. The partnering approach is evaluated as being practicable and appropriate in this study for the construction industry in Mainland China.

Although it is essential to base the analysis of partnering applicability on a qualitative study, an empirical quantitative investigation of the benefits and difficulties of partnering application could further reinforce the quality of analysis. Future research could look into the project‐based assessment of partnering application in terms of the perceived benefits and potential difficulties of, and success factors for, partnering implementation in Mainland China.

Policy‐makers aiming for the introduction of the partnering approach could be equipped with stronger confidence from favourable cultural environment and industrial needs. Restrictions to the application of partnering underlying in the current working culture could be mitigated when appropriate strategies are taken by the initiators of the partnering approach.

Increased worldwide attention on construction partnering has shed light on the construction industry in Mainland China to achieve better value for money in project procurement and management. This paper provides valuable reference for decision‐makers to consider the adoption of partnering based on the qualitative analysis of the applicability of partnering in the construction industry in Mainland China.

First, the purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze the role of the components in the creation of a partnering way of working; second, to illustrate how the achievement of such collaborative state is dependent on a hierarchy of constructs.

The paper builds on a large case study of a successful Swedish partnering project. The case, studied through extensive interviews and observations, was process-oriented and analyzed using a theoretically driven thematic analysis.

It is shown that components exist on different levels and constitute different types of building blocks in striving toward a “true” collaborative climate. It is also shown that as the project progressed, even the non-partnering sub-projects were infused with a collaborative way of working. To this end it is suggested that there might be a certain stickiness related to this way of working. As trust, openness, and mutual understanding are constructs on an interpersonal level, it is on the interpersonal level partnering endeavors are won or lost.

The paper provides a new conceptualization of the partnering components and also an understanding of how the components contribute to the creation of a collaborative climate. Because the research was built on a case study, one has the limitations common with that approach.

The importance of understanding that individual expectations are the basis for the action and learning that interact in a constant feedback loop, as the partnering pyramid is climbed.

This understanding should be of interest for both practitioners and academics working with partnering.

This paper presents the development of a conceptual model of construction partnering. This model aims at exploring the relationship between two types of partnering (project and strategic) by studying the key factors that affect the partnering process stages. It also helps to determine the critical success factors (CSFs) of the two types of partnering. The paper commences by reviewing the literature on project and strategic partnering to develop the conceptual model. A survey was conducted to test the model. Results indicate that there are some critical factors (i.e. top management support, mutual trust, open communication, and effective co‐ordination) affecting both types of partnering, while some are specific to project (i.e. facilitator) or strategic partnering (i.e. long‐term commitment, continuous improvement, learning climate, and partnering experience). Practical implications are given to advise how to facilitate the implementation of partnering. Future research directions are also given to suggest how to improve our understanding of the concept of partnering.

This paper explores openness within new product development (NPD) projects. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of breadth, depth and partner newness on product innovativeness and product competitive advantage. The authors also seek to examine the contingent effects of the appropriability regime. The authors make suggestions to academics and practitioners based on the findings.

The authors use a structured survey instrument producing an empirical analysis of 205 NPD projects in the manufacturing sector in the UK. The authors use an ordinary least squares regression model to test hypothesised relationships between openness (breadth, depth and partner newness), product innovativeness, product competitive advantage and the appropriability regime.

The authors find that each of the three dimensions of openness, depth, breadth and partner newness, have a significant but differing impact on product innovativeness. Specifically, the study indicates that breadth has a positive effect but only in the presence of a strong appropriability regime, partner newness has a direct positive effect, and depth a direct negative effect. The authors also find that product innovativeness has a positive impact on product competitive advantage.

Further research should focus on replicating the findings in other countries, search for further moderating factors, such as the stage of the NPD process, and analyse the longitudinal impact of openness within NPD projects.

Organisations are encouraging managers to be more open in their approach to NPD. The authors’ findings suggest that managers need to think about the three dimensions of openness, breadth, depth and partner newness. Their engagement with each of these dimensions depends on the desired outcomes of the innovation project and the strength of patents.

The research extends the extant supplier involvement in new product development literature to examine the effect of up to 11 types of external actor in NPD projects. The authors test a new multi-dimensional measurement scale for the openness construct. The authors show that each dimension has a different relationship with product innovativeness.

Partnering has been at the top of the management agenda in the construction industry for many years as a means of improving performance. Previous research shows that partnering has not reached the desired level of strategic partnering, but stopped at project partnering. The purpose of this paper is to provide an analytical framing for transformation from project partnering towards strategic partnering with suppliers.

The framework is based on two building blocks: a case study of a contractor involved in implementing strategic partnering with four of its suppliers and a literature review dealing with partnering in construction; and models for close and long-term buyer-supplier collaboration in other contexts.

Transformation towards strategic partnering should preferably be based on extension of project partnering in two dimensions: extension in time through relationship development with suppliers and extension in space through increasing network orientation across projects.

Succeeding with relationship development and network orientation requires contractors to abandon two significant aspects of established construction logic that serve as significant implementation barriers. Competitive bidding in single projects needs to be replaced by collaboration over series of projects. The decentralisation of authority to the project level needs to be supplemented with increasing centralised decision making.

Previous research showed that despite the considerable interest in partnering there is a lack of systematic theorizing of the phenomenon. This paper contributes to theoretical anchoring through the combining of the case study and the literature review in the abductive approach applied.

Partnering has drawn attention from both academics and practitioners in the construction industry in the context of construction and facilities management. The past decades have seen a number of articles reporting the application of partnering in construction. The Chinese construction industry is one of the largest industries in the world; however, to the authors' best knowledge, no project in mainland China has adopted this procurement approach in a formal and systematic manner as yet. This paper presents a timely study that aims to investigate the feasibility of implementing the partnering concept into Chinese industry and to understand the current barriers to this concept in China.

The study employed a qualitative approach to investigate the factors that support or impede the implementation of partnering in mainland China. The methodology encompassed a critical review of relevant laws, regulations, and policy documents; and semi‐structured interviews.

The findings indicate that the partnering practice is feasible in the construction industry of China due to the large demand brought about by China's strong economic growth and government support. However, the implementation of partnering in the Chinese construction industry is being impeded by the restrictions of the current Chinese regulatory framework and tender evaluation framework, the incompatible features of Chinese culture and the general lack of trust.

Six strategies that help to facilitate the implementation of partnering in China have been developed based on the supporting and impeding factors identified in this study. It is worth noting that not all aspects of Chinese culture are compatible with partnering principles. This study offers a useful reference to implement collaborative contracting models such as partnering in developing countries with a consideration of new factors such as political environment and emerging economies.