Ronggui Ding

Unexpected disruptions make it essential to develop construction project resilience. Stakeholder relationships can shape disruption handling and thus influence project resilience, yet their roles remain debated. Drawing on organizational information processing theory, this study revisits the controversy over stakeholder relationships by examining ambidextrous learning as an underlying mechanism and digitalization as a complement. Survey data were collected from 238 construction projects. The results show that stakeholder relationships are positively related to project resilience. Exploratory learning serves as a crucial underlying mechanism, while exploitative learning exerts no significant mediating effect. Digitalization complements stakeholder relationships in facilitating exploratory learning, thereby supporting project resilience. Theoretically, this study clarifies the role of stakeholder relationships as a critical network-level enabler of project resilience, reveals the distinct roles of exploratory and exploitative learning in temporary, disruption-prone collaborations, and uncovers the complementary role of emerging digitalization in project management. Practically, this study provides managerial insights into enhancing construction project resilience against potential disruptions.

Traditional off-the-job training is becoming ineffective in high-end equipment research and development (R&D) projects due to the contradiction between rapid technological progress and the slow growth of newcomers, calling for “on-the-job mentoring” to enable synchronized advancement of project execution and newcomer cultivation. For this, we propose the multi-skilled project scheduling problem with newcomer cultivation under uncertain durations (MSPSP-NCU) and abstract it as a stochastic programming model. The model aims to minimize expected makespan and maximize newcomers’ skill efficiency by optimizing workforce assignment that enables experienced workers to mentor newcomers while simultaneously optimizing task scheduling. Solving the model is blocked by the inherently NP-hard nature of the project scheduling problem and the stochasticity of the durations. Therefore, we put forward an adaptive simulation–optimization approach featuring two-fold: a simulation module capable of dynamically adjusting sample sizes based on convergence feedback and evaluating solutions with improved efficiency and stable accuracy; a tailored non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA-II) with adaptive evolutionary operators that enhance search effectiveness and ensure the identification of a well-distributed Pareto front. By using data from an aerospace component R&D project, the proposed approach is validated for its performance in identifying Pareto-optimal solutions. Several personalized rules are designed by integrating workforce development strategies into the selection process, providing actionable guidelines for cultivating newcomers in technology-intensive projects.

Scholars and practitioners have attached great importance to the integration of sustainability into project management. However, less relevant research has been conducted in the context of international engineering projects. The highly volatile and competitive international market environment brings great challenges to the sustainable delivery of international engineering projects and therefore always threatens the survival of international contractors. This study aimed to investigate the critical dynamic capabilities that facilitate the sustainable delivery of international engineering projects. Based on content analysis of 45 international engineering project cases, 5 dynamic capabilities were first identified, including project threat sensing, cross-cultural project team integration, stakeholder integration, exploitation-centered reconfiguration, and exploration-centered reconfiguration. Then, a crisp-set qualitative comparative analysis was adopted to explore the configurational effects of the above dynamic capabilities on three dimensions of sustainable delivery, i.e., economic, environmental, and social sustainability. The main findings reveal several configurations of dynamic capabilities for international engineering projects in achieving sustainable delivery of economic, environmental, and social dimensions. This study enriches the research on sustainable project delivery from the perspective of dynamic capability theory and provides insights for global contractors into how to deploy dynamic capabilities in the international contracting market to achieve sustainable delivery of international engineering projects.

Collaborative innovation projects (CIPs) are a typical type of inter-organizational collaboration project to deliver innovative results, in which diverse and dynamic collaborative relationships exist among stakeholders. The project’s success depends on appropriate governance mechanisms to coordinate the relationship between stakeholders. Contractual governance and relational governance both play an important role in successful project delivery. Existing research on the static evaluation method of project governance has obvious contradictions with the dynamic characteristics of stakeholder collaboration relationships during the innovation process. In response, this study proposes a dynamic evaluation method of CIP governance that uses stakeholder networks as the evaluation object, thus filling in gaps in the literature on CIP governance and contributing to the development of governance theory. A project of the Industry Technology Research Institute (ITRI) was chosen as a case study to evaluate the effectiveness of the procedure. The results show that contractual governance and relational governance both have a strong impact on stakeholder collaboration in the whole stage of CIPs. The governance effect is determined by the changeable contractual and relational governance structure, not just the stakeholder’s power of the general understanding. The findings have implications for the governance of CIPs and mainstream project governance research.

The construction industry has fared poorly in the process of digital transformation, while the main challenge is the digitalization of construction projects. Changes in project management approaches are urgently required in construction organizations to better align digital technology and organizational conditions. However, little literature has explored the pivotal role of the project management approach from an organizational perspective. To fill this gap, this research investigates ways of using a project governance model for integration to promote the digitalization of construction projects through a case study. The three integration dimensions, namely stakeholder integration, lifecycle integration, and project management knowledge integration, are identified, and governance elements under each dimension are displayed—and further stratified—based on the three levels of the governance model, including institutional level, organizational level, and behavioral level. The logical relationship between elements and their roles in project digitization is finally summarized. The developed conceptual model will provide an approach for construction enterprises to promote project digitalization.

With the global concern of environmental protection and sustainability, construction firms are required to develop and implement environmental practices (EP) to mitigate the negative impacts of project activities on the environment. This paper attempts to explore two potential drivers (i.e., government regulations and project team’s knowledge and skills) and performance outcomes (i.e., environmental performance and organizational performance) when the firm implementing EP in construction projects. A survey-based research design was developed to measure the drivers, EP implementation, and performance and to collect data in the Chinese construction industry. Structural equation modelling was used to test the hypothesized relationships. The results indicate that a project team’s knowledge and skills, rather than government regulations, are the key driving factors for the implementation of EP in construction projects. EP implementation is proved to have a positive impact on both environmental and organizational performance. This study provides empirical evidence for project environmental management research and offers managerial insights on how to promote EP in the construction industry.

Purpose: Leadership behaviour of R&D project managers (RDPMs) is a matter of ongoing interest, as they require a number of traits in order to potentially influence the delivery of projects. However, little empirical evidence exists on factors explaining the traits of RDPMs, making it difficult for industry managers to develop tailored strategies and criteria for selecting people with right skills and behaviours. The purpose of this paper is to fill this gap in knowledge. Design/methodology/approach: The authors test 45 traits with data from a survey of 208 RDPMs, using exploratory factor analysis to establish factors of RDPMs’ traits and the associated measurement items. Findings: The study finds that selected 45 traits can be consolidated in a set of higher order variables/factors that RDPMs need to have including creativity, reasoning and learning; risks and failure acceptance; analytical and originality attributes; realistic and objective approach among others. Research limitations/implications: The study shows that traits have strong inter-relationship represented by empirically robust underlying factors. Practical implications: Practically, the results will help industry mangers in implementing tailored strategies in consolidated areas (as identified through factors) and be more effective in skills and competencies development of research and development staff and potentially save costs on human inventory management. Originality/value: The study empirically established new managerial and leadership behavioural factors.