Yun Le

The transition from projects to operations requires a spanning from more temporary, goal‐oriented, and evolving organizational forms to more permanent, routine, and ongoing organizational forms. A question of practical and theoretical significance is how to organize the transition to operations in large inter‐organizational projects. To answer this question, we conducted a longitudinal case study of Beijing Daxing International Airport, which is the largest transportation hub in China to date, and provides rich evidence for successfully managing the transition to operations. By analyzing the organizational design strategy, structures, processes, and management of people in the transition, we provide a synthetic framework for designing the transition to operations in large inter‐organizational projects. The framework provides a set of considerations to design organizational boundaries that build connections, emphasize coordination, and achieve continuity between projects and operations. This study contributes to the nexus of operations management and project management and the organizational design of large inter‐organizational projects.

In emerging economies, infrastructure projects are in full swing. There is a wealth of replicable experience for exploitation. Simultaneously, more technologies and methodologies require further exploration. This makes fostering ambidextrous innovation strategies (i.e., the tradeoff between exploitative and exploratory innovation strategies) a common and vital practical issue. Large infrastructure projects are unique one-off endeavors but have somewhat repetitive and persistent characteristics. It is a particular “intermediate” form between temporary projects and permanent organizations. Previous research on fostering ambidextrous innovation strategies cannot simply be replicated in large infrastructure projects. To address this issue, this article investigates the relationship between team heterogeneity and ambidextrous innovation strategies and also the role of team learning and identification in large infrastructure projects. Data were collected from 269 responses from 31 large infrastructure project delivery teams in China. The findings show that team heterogeneity has a positive linear effect on exploratory and ambidextrous innovation strategies and an inverted U-shaped effect on exploitative innovation strategies; team heterogeneity can better foster ambidextrous innovation strategies through improving team learning; the moderating role of team identification in the overall mechanism differs from the usual assumptions in permanent organizations. Overall, this article extends the existing ambidexterity research in the “intermediate” form between temporary projects and permanent organizations. It provides insights and guidance on fostering ambidextrous innovation strategies in large infrastructure projects.

Organizational learning is an important approach for organizations to improve knowledge levels and enhance adaptability to a complex environment. In this paper, based on the exact recreation of March’s classical model on organizational learning, we conduct research systematically on the impacts of different rate combinations of two typical organizational practices, socialization and codification, on the level of organizational knowledge. Environmental dynamism and system openness are taken into account, as contextual variables. The result shows that (1) accelerating codification and slowing down socialization can achieve better outcomes in a stable environment and closed system. (2) Moderate system openness is beneficial for organizational knowledge when in a stable environment. (3) Environmental turbulence has obvious negative effects on organizational knowledge, and the adjustment of rates of socialization and codification only works temporarily, when in the closed system. (4) System openness can relieve the negative correlation between environmental turbulence and organizational knowledge. Furthermore, we discuss some challenges in how to apply research findings in this paper to organizational actual operations and also provide a few suggestions for further studies. Our paper enriches relative literature on March’s agent‐based model, and some results and conclusions obtained in the paper can provide a helpful reference for follow‐up researches in this domain.

With the rapid growth of the construction industry in China in recent years, its impact on society and the environment is increasing, as well as the importance of corporate social responsibility (CSR). In order to understand the CSR awareness and CSR practices of Chinese domestic construction enterprises, this study conducted a comprehensive content analysis of the CSR reports of China’s leading 100 domestic construction enterprises. The results show that the Chinese construction industry’s CSR awareness is generally poor and CRS practices mainly involve corporate governance, environmental management, occupational health and development, economic responsibility, community development, and overseas responsibility. State‐owned enterprises are more concerned with community responsibility, while private enterprises pay more attention to economic and employee development. These findings not only reveal the CSR awareness and CSR practices of Chinese domestic construction enterprises but also provide practical implications for construction enterprises in other countries to integrate CSR into their corporate governance system and strengthen their CSR practices.

Emerging construction practices such as building information modelling (BIM), prefabrication construction, green building, and integrated project delivery methods are gaining momentum in China, with great potential due to the size of its construction market. Through this, the sustainability level of China’s construction industry is expected to be enhanced from the economic, social and environmental perspectives. So far, there has been limited understanding of how BIM, as a digital technology, would affect other contemporary sustainable construction practices from the industry professionals’ point of view. Limited studies have been carried out to study the regional differences of these contemporary sustainable practices in China. This study adopted a questionnaire-based approach targeting industry professionals from three different metropolitan cities (Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Wenzhou).The follow-up comprehensive statistical analysis revealed that with regards to these contemporary sustainable construction practices, survey participants held much varied views on the growth of renovation projects, traditional Design–Bid–Build delivery, and conventional on-site construction methods. These three types were also generally perceived to have weak correlation with BIM application. Regional comparison further conveyed information on differences in perceptions among survey respondents from these three cities. For example, respondents from Wenzhou perceived more positive effects of BIM use in conventional construction projects. This research addressed the inter-correlation among these emerging sustainable construction practices, as well as the regional differences in China’s construction market. The findings provide insights and the big picture for both governmental authorities and industry practitioners on the latest sustainable practices of China’s construction industry. Recommendations are also offered towards improved economic, social and environmental sustainability performance for construction projects in the country.

This study focuses on the evolvement process of organizational model in Chinese megaprojects under the effects of “Government and Market” in different periods. Multi-case analysis method was employed to analyze the multi-level organizational evolution and generation mechanism. In addition, relevant data were collected through public publications, network, field studies, and interviews of typical case projects. Megaproject organizations are complexity-adaptive systems, and institutional changes directly influence its evolution. Since the megaprojects have introduced, digested, and absorbed the market mechanism under the transformation of institutional logic, the organization of megaprojects has evolved adaptively into complex multi-level system. This study attempts to propose a conceptual framework of political and market factors affecting the paths of organizational evolution, hopefully providing guidance to Chinese megaproject practices, and laying foundation for the theoretical development.

Supplier development (SD) has become an emerging supply chain management practice for firms focusing on their core strategic advantages by outsourcing a significant portion of production or construction activities. Various incentive mechanisms are available for suppliers to improve their capabilities to meet owners’ expectations. However, a comparative analysis is needed to understand how successful they are. This paper investigates the incentive mechanisms for SD in a construction supply chain that consists of one owner and one supplier. Considering the owner's dominant position in the negotiation of a supply contract, a principal–agent model with the objective of optimizing the owner's profit and a Stackelberg game model designed to optimize the profits of both the owner and supplier are proposed and analyzed. Two commonly used incentive methods, including purchase price incentive and cost sharing, are analyzed and compared. The analysis and comparison are illustrated by a numerical example. The primary contribution of this paper is the analysis of the impact of incentive methods on quality improvement for the supplier and a sensitivity analysis of the supplier's internal and external factors, such as purchase quantity, market demand, and manufacturing cost structures, which are useful managerial insights for SD practices in mega construction projects.

Current literature on relationship management has focused on formal mechanisms such as contracts but has neglected the inter-organizational behavior that determines the effective adoption of relational mechanisms in the context of megaprojects. This study examines the antecedents and consequences of relational behavior of participating organizations in megaprojects based on the theory of planned behavior (TPB). A sample of 285 senior managers working on China’s megaprojects was surveyed, and the results were analyzed using partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), revealing that: (1) the adoption of relational behavior is equally motivated by an organization’s behavioral intention and perceived behavioral control (PBC), and (2) relational behavior, especially information exchange, contributes the most toward achieving a high project relationship quality. A closer examination of the data found that two moderating effects, namely project culture and prior experience with other participating organizations, were particularly important. These findings contributed to four implications for project participating organizations to cultivate relational behavior and improve relationship quality in megaprojects, including identifying potential behavioral benefits, enhancing relational competence, establishing collaborative culture, and reinforcing information sharing.

Guanxi is the Chinese word for personal relationships or connections. Infrastructure project procurement in China is dominated by the government, and the entire tendering and bidding process is subject to administrative control in which business-to-government (B2G) guanxi is thought to have a significant impact. To date, however, little is known of its impact and perception in infrastructure procurement. This paper aims to bridge this research gap through a questionnaire survey of 149 contractors’ and consultants’ perceptions of B2G guanxi in terms of its importance, mode of establishment, and impact on infrastructure bidding in China’s eastern coastal cities. The results indicate that over half of the respondents surveyed consider B2G guanxi to have important benefits for current practice whereas others hold different perceptions. Four groups of perspectives are identified by K-means cluster analysis, ranging from a low/moderate perception of B2G guanxi (48%) to passive-high/positive-high (52%). A chi-square test suggests the differences between groups is attributable to the types of organizations involved, with contractors and quantity surveying consultant organizations placing significantly more emphasis on the benefits and establishment of B2G guanxi. Finally, the current informal tendering and bidding processes in China are questioned as a contributing factor and suggestions are made for increased government and legislative intervention, leading to a greater emphasis by bidders on improving their technical and management capacity in order to develop their competitive advantage in the market.