Search results

Reports from the Norwegian police indicate that actors in the architecture, engineering and construction industry face severe competition from criminal actors. Sub-contractors working within the law struggle to be competitive compared to dubious sub-contractors. This study aims to examine (1) what the sub-contractors’ perceptions of current contracting practices are, (2) what problems they face and (3) what countermeasures can be used to improve the situation.

The research was carried out on the basis of a qualitative approach. A literature review and a document study of reports from the sub-contractors, public agencies and other relevant organisations were conducted. In addition, in-depth interviews were conducted with the management of eight sub-contractors in the Norwegian architecture, engineering and construction industry.

There is a significant difference in the perception of the reality between contractors’ management and the blue-collar workers. Management among the contractors maintain that their control systems work; however, the result from this study shows that it is easy for the sub-contractors to take advantage of loopholes or avoid the countermeasures.

This paper is limited to Norway and use only the paint industry as a case study.

This study shows that sub-contractors constitute an important source of information in the effort to prevent dubious sub-contractors as they are the actors who experience the greatest pressure and competition from them. Therefore, contractors should include the sub-contractors in the process of developing measures to prevent this misconduct.

A very little research has been carried out within this field of study in Norway.

Despite good project front-end planning, projects typically need continuous coordination among the participants concerning scope of work, pace, and timing during the execution phase to be accomplished without delays. Coordination can be formal or informal. Research shows that informal coordination of residual and unforeseen interdependencies enhances time saving and facilitates better understandings. Still though, many sub-contractors choose not to coordinate informally. The purpose of this paper is to identify drivers that enhance or inhibit informal coordination among sub-contractors during project execution.

A qualitative, explorative case study approach was applied, involving 15 SME sub-contractors within the offshore wind power energy sector.

Six drivers which enhance informal coordination and three drivers which inhibit informal coordination among sub-contractors in projects were identified.

The findings imply that management in project-oriented organizations can enhance informal coordination across project sub-contractors in the project execution phase by facilitating trust building; by emphasizing previous collaboration successes with the sub-contractors and the possibility of future common projects; by being explicit about expectations on informal coordination; and by developing sub-contractor contracts that are not very tight in economic terms, but instead give some leeway in relation to coordination.

The paper contributes to a gap on coordination within projects and in the specificity of the context of offshore wind energy in which the concept of informal coordination across sub-contractors is explored.

This research is based on a mail survey in the Swedish vehicle industry. It is concluded that the sub‐contractor and customer sourcing in the firms’ inbound and outbound logistics flows differ from each other. Furthermore, that there is no association between the sub‐contractor and customer sourcing in the firms’ inbound and outbound logistics flows. Finally, there is in part an association between the sub‐contractor and customer sourcing, and the occurrence of quantitative and qualitative disturbances in firms’ inbound and outbound logistics flows.

The performance of service supply chains in terms of service levels and cost efficiency depends not only on the effort of service providers but also on the inputs of sub-contractors and the customer. In this sense, performance-based contracting (PBC) entails increased financial risk for providers. Allocating and managing risk through contractual relationships along the service supply chain is a critical issue, and yet there is scant empirical evidence regarding what factors influence, and how, provider willingness to bear PBC-induced risk. This paper aims to address this gap.

The paper draws on agency theory and two cases of logistics service supply chains, in the food retail and automotive industries respectively, to identify key influencing factors. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 30 managers of providers and sub-contractors and review of 35 documents, notably contracts and target letters.

Four influencing factors were found: performance attributability within the service supply chain; relational governance in service supply chain relationships; provider risk and reward balancing; and provider ability to transfer risk to sub-contractors. The propositions developed address how these factors influence provider willingness to bear PBC-induced risk.

The factors identified are external to the provider mindset and refer to the management of contractual relationships and service delivery interactions along the service supply chain. The paper contributes to agency theory by stressing the risk allocation implications of bi-directional principal-agent relations in service supply chains.

The study suggests ways in which providers can increase their capacity to bear and manage financial risk related to PBC design.

The paper identifies factors that influence provider willingness to bear financial risk induced by PBC in service supply chains.

Waste generation by the construction industry is a significant issue for the industry and for society generally. The paper examines previous studies about attitudes towards waste management within the industry and by means of a small questionnaire study sets out to examine: the extent of labour only sub‐contractors' awareness and understanding of waste as an issue, their perceptions of the causes of waste and their attitudes towards the allocation of financial responsibility for waste minimisation. The survey shows that the results of previous studies can be extended to labour only sub‐contractors and it identifies a willingness, beyond what might have been anticipated for this group, to accept some of the costs of waste reduction.

Although quality assurance (QA) was introduced more than a decade ago in the UK, the implementation of QA systems in the Singapore construction industry is still a relatively new phenomenon. While QA is now slowly making its presence felt in the Singapore construction industry over the past two years, there has been a lack of study of the problems faced by practitioners in implementing QA for building projects at its infancy stage in the industry. Examines the problems faced during this infancy stage and draws lessons therefrom.

This paper seeks to examine the link between the academic debates on obligation contracting and its successful implementation as a mode of governance. The literature reports that firms are increasingly entering into long‐term, high dependency exchanges as a result of: increased demand for quality goods, demand for variability of goods, demand for constant innovation, severe price competition and increasing technology costs. These changes are forcing firms to enter into complex relationships with other firms in order to remain competitive. Examples of such relationships are: relational contracting, network organisations, strategic alliances and horizontal co‐operation. The increase in number and complexity of these exchanges in an environment characterised by uncertainty has led to the increased interest in the use of obligation contracting. Furthermore, this interest has been reinforced by the changing nature of products being exchanged. More knowledge‐based products and information‐based modes of production necessitate the sharing of strategically sensitive data. Hence the rise of importance of obligation contracting is not only due to the increased number of complex exchanges in uncertain environments, but also the very nature of the goods being exchanged.

The purpose of this study is to identify the antecedents of “power” and “dependence” attributes in the context of a construction project and to explore the impact of the antecedents on risk transfer and collaboration to develop a conceptual framework for decision-making.

A systematic review was performed using various databases to identify the antecedents and their measures. This review followed the established preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses protocols and 246 articles were identified. The articles were qualitatively analysed based on keyword co-occurrence approach using VOSviewer software.

The findings of this systematic review established latent constructs, that is, “clarity of procurement decisions”, “market structure” and “market competition” as antecedents of power and two antecedents of dependence, namely, “reputation” and “commercial importance”. And a framework was conceptualized to determine the contractual approach and the procurement design should be planned to take in account the scenarios and the course of action to enhance collaboration and control risk transfer.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first of its kind to identify the “antecedents” of the attributes of “power” and dependence and framework was conceptualized to determine the contractual approach.

MOST engineering sub‐contractors cannot afford the investment required to stock high levels of tooling. However, orders placed with sub‐contractors require short delivery periods and therefore quick sourcing and consistent quality of tooling are of particular importance, especially in the case of carbide tooling.

A conceptual framework for the analysis of vulnerability in supply chains is developed. The conceptual framework is limited to the inbound logistic flow of manufacturers. The study has been performed as a two‐step process. Step one explores the concept of vulnerability from the point of view of an inductive approach. The conceptual framework is generated and based on the empirical findings from a case study of a Swedish car manufacturer in the automotive industry. Step two is deductive in terms of testing in other industries the generated conceptual framework that originates from step one. The conceptual framework consists of two dimensions, namely categories of disturbance and sources of disturbance. Principally, categories of disturbance are divided into quantitative and qualitative disturbances. Sources of disturbance are divided into atomistic (direct) and holistic (indirect) disturbances. In addition, the specific criteria of an inbound logistic flow indicate how vulnerability in supply chains is proposed to be analysed according to the developed conceptual framework of vulnerability.