Building partnerships: case studies of client-contractor collaboration in the UK construction industry

Mike Bresnen and Nick Marshall

Construction Management and Economics, 2000, vol. 18, issue 7, 819-832

Abstract: Despite the enormous groundswell of interest in partnering and alliancing in recent years, there has been comparatively little research that has set out to investigate systematically the nature, feasibility, benefits and limitations of forms of client-contractor collaboration. This is despite the growing recognition that conditions conducive to partnering may well vary considerably and that partnering may not be the solution for problems within the industry that many commentators have taken it to be. This paper sets out to add to the growing literature and empirical database on partnering by reporting the findings of a research project designed to explore the economic, organizational and technological factors that encourage or inhibit collaboration in practice. The paper follows on from an earlier review and critique of the literature on partnering (Bresnen, M. and Marshall, N. 2000, Construction Management and Economics, 18 (2) 229-237). It includes as its database nine case studies of medium-to-large-scale projects, selected from across the industry, on which processes of collaboration are examined from the viewpoints of clients, contractors, designers and subcontractors. In contrast to much of the prescriptive work in this area, the analysis of the data and the paper's conclusions stress some of the practical problems, limitations and paradoxes of partnering and alliancing when the effects of important economic, organizational and psychological factors are taken into account.

Keywords: Management Partnering Alliancing Clients (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2000
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/014461900433104 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:conmgt:v:18:y:2000:i:7:p:819-832

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RCME20

DOI: 10.1080/014461900433104

Access Statistics for this article

Construction Management and Economics is currently edited by Will Hughes

More articles in Construction Management and Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().