Title
Revisiting the Relationship Between Contract Governance and Contractors’ Opportunistic Behavior in Construction Projects
Abstract
Contracts are crucial for curbing opportunism, a common phenomenon in construction projects. This article differentiates among the contractual mechanisms of obligatoriness, monitoring, and coordination, and studies the relationships between the complexity of the above functions and different types of opportunistic behavior. Using data from 262 clients (i.e., the parties issuing contracts) in the Chinese construction industry, this article reveals that contractual obligatoriness has a negative effect on strong-form opportunistic behavior. At the same time, contractual monitoring and coordination have positive and negative effects, respectively, on weak-form opportunistic behavior. Furthermore, we find that goodwill trust mediates contractual coordination's effect on weak-form opportunistic behavior. This article contributes to both the contract management literature and the interorganizational relationship governance literature by providing more nuanced findings that speak to the debate surrounding the relationship between contractual governance and opportunistic behavior, elaborate the mediation mechanism, and provide insights into the contractual function view.
Year
DOI
Venue
2022
10.1109/TEM.2019.2945551
IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management
Keywords
DocType
Volume
Construction projects,contract governance,contractual complexity,goodwill trust,opportunistic behavior
Journal
69
Issue
ISSN
Citations 
6
0018-9391
0
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.34
10
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Yu Wang100.34
Yongqiang Chen200.34
Wenqian Wang300.34
Yuting Chen400.34
Mengxia Jin500.34