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Existing research on innovation has mainly focused on how to promote technological innovation in megaprojects and management innovation (MI) in megaprojects is still an unknown research field. The purposes of this study are to examine the effect of MI on megaproject performance and how the top management team (TMT) regulatory focus affects the use of MI in projects. At the same time, the moderating effects of project uncertainties are also tested.

On the basis of an explorative/exploitative ambidextrous analysis framework, this study divides MI into two dimensions: explorative and exploitative MI, and integrates the theoretical perspectives of the TMT regulatory focus and project uncertainties into a research model. Taking 314 responses from megaprojects’ TMTs in China as research data, this study empirically tests the above model.

Results show that exploratory MI has a U-shaped relationship with megaproject performance; whereas exploitative MI has an inverted U-shaped relationship with megaproject performance. The TMT promotion focus has a positive effect on exploratory and exploitative MI; and the TMT prevention focus has a negative effect on exploratory MI but has a positive effect on exploitative MI. Project uncertainties have a positive moderating effect on the positive relationship between TMT promotion focus and exploratory MI, whereas it has a negative moderating effect on the negative relationship between the TMT prevention focus and exploratory MI.

By empirically measuring the relationship between two types of MIs and megaproject performance, this study clarifies the differential mechanism of the effect of different MIs on megaproject performance. This study also examines the MI of megaprojects from the perspective of the TMT regulatory focus and expounds how changes in uncertainties affect the relationship between the TMT regulatory focus and MI.

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.

New business practices and the globalization of markets force firms to take innovation as the fundamental pillar of their competitive strategy. Research and Development (R&D) plays a vital role in innovation. As technology advances and product life cycles become shorter, firms rely on R&D as a strategy to invigorate innovation. R&D project portfolio selection is a complex and challenging task. Despite the management's efforts to implement the best project portfolio selection practices, many projects continue to fail or miss their target. The problem is that selecting R&D projects requires a deep understanding of strategic vision and technical capabilities. However, many decision-makers lack technological insight or strategic vision. This article aims to provide a method to capitalize on the expertise of R&D professionals to assist managers in making informed and effective decisions. It also provides a framework for aligning the portfolio of R&D projects with the organizational vision and mission.

This article proposes a new strategic approach for R&D project portfolio selection using efficiency-uncertainty maps.

The proposed strategy plane helps decision-makers align R&D project portfolios with their strategies to combine a strategic view and numerical analysis in this research. The proposed strategy plane consists of four areas: Exploitation Zone, Challenge Zone, Desperation Zone and Discretion Zone. Mapping the project into this strategic plane would help decision-makers align their project portfolio according to the corporate perspectives.

The new approach combines the efficiency and uncertainty dimensions in portfolio selection into an integrated framework that: (i) provides a complete representation of the stochastic decision-making processes, (ii) models the endogenous uncertainty inherent in the project selection process and (iii) proposes a computationally practical and visually unique solution procedure for classifying desirable and undesirable R&D projects.

The purpose of this paper is to examine challenges faced by senior construction managers in managing cross‐cultural complexity and uncertainty. The rationale was to identify the key strategies that are considered essential for managing cross‐cultural complexity and uncertainty.

Interviews with 20 senior construction managers, ten in Kenya and ten in the UK, were recorded, transcribed and entered into the qualitative research software NVivo. Validity and reliability were achieved by first assessing the plausibility in terms of already existing knowledge on some of the cultural issues raised by participants. The findings were presented to the participants through workshops and group discussions.

The emerging key issues suggested that project leaders need to learn how to control their own characteristics and to use them selectively. An effective multicultural construction project team should focus on team output and attributes that characterise a multicultural team as a social entity.

Findings indicate that the role of construction project managers has significantly changed over the past two decades. In order to deal with cross‐cultural uncertainty, project leaders must have superior multicultural and interpersonal skills when managing global multicultural heavy engineering projects.

The research shows that leaders of global construction project teams need a good understanding of their culture, environment and the value of their individual contributions.

The purpose of this paper is to address the limitations of conventional risk matrix based tools such that both positive and negative connotation of uncertainty could be captured within a unified framework that is capable of modeling the direction and strength of causal relationships across uncertainties and prioritizing project uncertainties as both threats and opportunities.

Theoretically grounded in the frameworks of Bayesian belief networks (BBNs) and interpretive structural modeling (ISM), this paper develops a structured process for assessing uncertainties in projects. The proposed process is demonstrated by a real application in the construction industry.

Project uncertainties must be prioritized on the basis of their network-wide propagation impact within a network setting of interacting threats and opportunities. Prioritization schemes neglecting interdependencies across project uncertainties might result in selecting sub-optimal strategies. Selection of strategies should focus on both identifying common cause uncertainty triggers and establishing the strength of interdependency between interconnected uncertainties.

This paper introduces a novel approach that integrates both facets of project uncertainties within a project uncertainty network so that decision makers can prioritize uncertainty factors considering the trade-off between threats and opportunities as well as their interactions. The ISM based development of the network structure helps in identifying common cause uncertainty triggers whereas the modeling of a BBN makes it possible to visualize the propagation impact of uncertainties within a network setting. Further, the proposed approach utilizes risk matrix data for project managers to be able to adopt this approach in practice. The proposed process can be used by practitioners while developing uncertainty management strategies, preparing risk management plans and formulating their contract strategy.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the interplay between risk management and uncertainty and the contextual variability of risk management practice. More precisely, the research empirically measures the relation between the extent of use of risk management and the level of project uncertainty.

The research defines risk management from an empirical perspective., i.e. from an empirically‐identified set of tools that is actually used to perform risk management. This toolset is derived from the results of an ongoing major worldwide survey on what experienced practitioners actually do to manage their projects. This paper directly relates uncertainty to the degree of project definition. It uses a sample of 1,296 responses for which the interplay between risk management and uncertainty could be measured.

The results are very coherent. They verify and empirically validate many of the propositions drawn from a review of the literature. But results challenge some of the propositions found in the conventional project management literature and some commonly held views. The research shows that the use of risk management practices and tools is negatively related to the degree of project uncertainty. This somewhat counter‐intuitive result is consistent with a general tendency for all project management tools and techniques to be used more intensively in better defined contexts.

The empirical investigation of actual risk practices and their contextual variability can help better understand risk management practice and manage risks better. The research also clarifies the concepts of uncertainty, risk and risk management.

The results confirm some well‐known assumptions about practices, but at the same time produced unexpected results that can stimulate the development of new practices adapted to highly uncertain contexts. The project management field needs to develop new responses for specific contexts for which it was not primarily developed. The results of this research point in the direction of such a need for ill‐defined projects and highly uncertain contexts.

Due to the increasing size and complexity of construction projects, construction engineering and management involves the coordination of many complex and dynamic processes and relies on the analysis of uncertain, imprecise and incomplete information, including subjective and linguistically expressed information. Various modelling and computing techniques have been used by construction researchers and applied to practical construction problems in order to overcome these challenges, including fuzzy hybrid techniques. Fuzzy hybrid techniques combine the human-like reasoning capabilities of fuzzy logic with the capabilities of other techniques, such as optimization, machine learning, multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) and simulation, to capitalise on their strengths and overcome their limitations. Based on a review of construction literature, this chapter identifies the most common types of fuzzy hybrid techniques applied to construction problems and reviews selected papers in each category of fuzzy hybrid technique to illustrate their capabilities for addressing construction challenges. Finally, this chapter discusses areas for future development of fuzzy hybrid techniques that will increase their capabilities for solving construction-related problems. The contributions of this chapter are threefold: (1) the limitations of some standard techniques for solving construction problems are discussed, as are the ways that fuzzy methods have been hybridized with these techniques in order to address their limitations; (2) a review of existing applications of fuzzy hybrid techniques in construction is provided in order to illustrate the capabilities of these techniques for solving a variety of construction problems and (3) potential improvements in each category of fuzzy hybrid technique in construction are provided, as areas for future research.

Uncertainty management (UM) in projects has been a point of attention for researchers for many years. Research on UM has mainly been aimed at uncertainty analyses in the front-end and managing uncertainty in the construction phase. In contrast, UM components in the design phase have received less attention. This research aims to improve knowledge about the key components of UM in the design phase of large road projects.

This study adopted a literature review and case study. The literature review was used to identify relevant criteria for UM. These criteria helped to design the interview guide. Multiple case study research was conducted, and data were collected through document study and interviews with project stakeholders in two road projects. Each case's owners, contractors and consultants were interviewed individually.

The data analysis obtained helpful information on the involved parties, process and exploit tools and techniques during the design phase. Johansen's (2015) framework [(a) human and organisation, (b) process and (c) tools and techniques)] was completed and developed by identifying relevant criteria (such as risk averse or risk-taker, culture and documentation level) for each component. These criteria help to measure UM performance. The authors found that owners and contractors are major formal UM actors, not consultants. Empirical data showed the effectiveness of Web-based tools in UM.

The studied cases were Norwegian, and this study focussed on uncertainties in the project's design phase. Relevant criteria did not cover all the criteria for evaluating the performance of UM. Qualitative evaluation of criteria allows further quantitative analysis in the future.

This paper gave project owners and managers a better understanding of relevant criteria for measuring UM in the owners and managers' projects. The paper provides policy-makers with a deeper understanding of creating rigorous project criteria for UM during the design phase. This paper also provides a guideline for UM in road projects.

This research gives a holistic evaluation of UM by noticing relevant criteria and criteria's interconnection in the design phase.

The paper aims to investigate the communication of uncertainty information and knowledge between the project manager, owner and steering group. The purpose of the project is to identify the effects of project owner and steering group involvement in the process of uncertainty management.

The empirical data are based on a qualitative case study with in‐depth interviews following a semi‐structured approach. The building of new frigates, a project in the Royal Norwegian Navy, is studied. This is a large public technology project, with a great deal of media and public attention from Norwegian society.

The project owner and steering group involvement in the project's uncertainty management process were identified. The interviews revealed that uncertainty information and knowledge have frequently been communicated and shared. The results indicate that this has reduced the asymmetric information problem between the parties. This involvement has also contributed to building a collaborative, respectful, professional and trusting relationship between the parties. Another effect that was found is that the project owner has learned about uncertainty management and developed uncertainty consciousness. Moreover, the data indicate that the uncertainty information has helped the project owner develop a holistic view for improved decisions.

Future research should investigate other scenarios, types of projects, cultures and countries, so that these findings may be generalized.

The paper concludes that project owner involvement and communicating uncertainty information are important for the effective management of uncertainties and achieving project success.

The involvement of the project owner and the communication of uncertainty information between the project manager and the owner are studied in this research paper.

In the past decades, artificial intelligence (AI)-based hybrid methods have been increasingly applied in construction risk management practices. The purpose of this paper is to review and compile the current AI methods used for cost-risk assessment in the construction management domain in order to capture complexity and risk interdependencies under high uncertainty.

This paper makes a content analysis, based on a comprehensive literature review of articles published in high-quality journals from the years 2008 to 2018. Fuzzy hybrid methods, such as fuzzy-analytical network processing, fuzzy-artificial neural network and fuzzy-simulation, have been widely used and dominated in the literature due to their ability to measure the complexity and uncertainty of the system.

The findings of this review article suggest that due to the limitation of subjective risk data and complex computation, the applications of these AI methods are limited in order to address cost overrun issues under high uncertainty. It is suggested that a hybrid approach of fuzzy logic and extended form of Bayesian belief network (BBN) can be applied in cost-risk assessment to better capture complexity-risk interdependencies under uncertainty.

This study only focuses on the subjective risk assessment methods applied in construction management to overcome cost overrun problem. Therefore, future research can be extended to interpret the input data required to deal with uncertainties, rather than relying solely on subjective judgments in risk assessment analysis.

These results may assist in the management of cost overrun while addressing complexity and uncertainty to avoid chaos in a project. In addition, project managers, experts and practitioners should address the interrelationship between key complexity and risk factors in order to plan risk impact on project cost. The proposed hybrid method of fuzzy logic and BBN can better support the management implications in recent construction risk management practice.

This study addresses the applications of AI-based methods in complex construction projects. A proposed hybrid approach could better address the complexity-risk interdependencies which increase cost uncertainty in project.