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1 – 10 of 60Yongqiang Lu, Li Ma and Haona Yao
The contractors’ consummate performance behavior is the key to achieving the project’s value added, but existing research has paid little attention to how to stimulate this…
Abstract
Purpose
The contractors’ consummate performance behavior is the key to achieving the project’s value added, but existing research has paid little attention to how to stimulate this behavior. Based on contractual functions and regulatory focus theory, this study examined how the allocation of contractual functions and the contractors’ regulatory focus affect their consummate performance behaviors. At the same time, considering the important position of guanxi between owner and contractor, this study also examined the moderating effect of guanxi on the relationship between the contractors’ regulatory focus and consummate performance behaviors.
Design/methodology/approach
This study first constructs a conceptual model that incorporates contractual functions (control, coordination and adaptation), contractors’ regulatory focus (promotion focus, prevention focus) and the effect of guanxi on contractors’ consummate performance behavior. Next, partial least squares structural equation modeling is used to analyze the survey data of 297 Chinese construction project professionals.
Findings
This study has the following four findings. First, contractual control has a negative effect on contractors’ promotion focus but a positive effect on their prevention focus. Contractual coordination and adaptation have a positive effect on contractors’ promotion focus but a negative effect on their prevention focus. Second, contractors’ promotion focus has a positive effect on their consummate performance behaviors, while their prevention focus has a negative effect on such behaviors. Third, both of contractors’ promotion focus and prevention focus play a mediating role in the relationship between contractual functions and their consummate performance behaviors. Finally, guanxi plays a moderating role in the relationship between contractors’ regulatory focus and their consummate performance behaviors.
Originality/value
Theoretically, this study enriches the research on the antecedents of contractors’ regulatory focus and extends the literature on contractual and guanxi management in construction projects. In practice, this study can provide guidance for improving contractors’ consummate performance behaviors and reasonable allocation of contractual functions.
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Li Ma and Yongqiang Lu
The purpose of this study is to examine how construction project managers’ conflict management styles (CMSs) affect project team resilience from the perspective of social identity…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to examine how construction project managers’ conflict management styles (CMSs) affect project team resilience from the perspective of social identity theory.
Design/methodology/approach
This study adopted a cross-sectional survey design and collected paired data from 110 construction project managers and 474 employees in China. Based on the data collected, the authors tested the proposed hypotheses using hierarchical regression analysis.
Findings
The results show that a project manager’s cooperative CMS positively affects team resilience, and a project manager’s competitive and avoidant CMS negatively affects team resilience. Team followership plays a mediating role in this relationship. The team power distance moderates the effects of a project manager’s cooperative and avoidant CMSs on team followership.
Originality/value
This paper enriches the existing literature on conflict management in construction projects and have potential guiding significance and application value for team resilience management practices.
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Dedong Wang, Hui Li and Yongqiang Lu
The purpose of this study is to examine the factors influencing the transaction costs (TCs) in megaprojects to provide a basis for controlling project costs.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to examine the factors influencing the transaction costs (TCs) in megaprojects to provide a basis for controlling project costs.
Design/methodology/approach
This study selects six factors influencing the TCs in megaprojects from the perspective of TC theory and relational contract theory (RCT) through literature review. On the basis of crisp-set qualitative comparative analysis (QCA), this study tests combined factors influencing the TCs and the interaction between them.
Findings
Results show that in megaprojects, TCs are affected by combination factors. The combination of asset specificity, uncertainty, transaction frequency and trust and the combination of asset specificity, reputation and trust will control TCs in certain situations. In the configuration leading to high project TCs, the combination of environmental and behavioral uncertainties is a necessary condition.
Originality/value
This paper fills up the research gap in the field of megaproject TCs, and researchers can focus on this field in the future.
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Yongqiang Lu and Li Ma
Construction project team members’ job burnout damages the physical health of members and also have a negative effect on project performance. This study primarily aims to…
Abstract
Purpose
Construction project team members’ job burnout damages the physical health of members and also have a negative effect on project performance. This study primarily aims to empirically examine the relationship between coaching project managers (CPMs) and team members’ job burnout. Moreover, this research examines the cross-level mediating effect of team caring ethical climate and team members’ team-based self-esteem (TBSE) on the relationship between the two aspects.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses conservation of resources theory as basis to construct a cross-level research model of the effect of CPMs on team members’ job burnout. Thereafter, regression analysis was performed on a sample of 431 team members from 83 teams.
Findings
According to the empirical results, the authors found that, in construction project teams, first, CPMs were negatively correlated with team members’ job burnout and positively correlated with caring ethical climate and team members’ TBSE. Second, caring ethical climate and team members’ TBSE played a cross-level mediating role between CPMs and team members’ job burnout. In addition, caring ethical climate played a cross-level moderating role in the negative relationship between team members’ TBSE and job burnout.
Originality/value
This study introduces coaching leadership, an important leadership type, into the research background of construction project teams, thereby theoretically enriching the research on construction project team leadership. Moreover, by further expanding the research on the consequences of coaching leadership to the field of job burnout, this study also enriches the theoretical results of the research on the consequences of coaching leadership.
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Li Ma and Yongqiang Lu
Existing research on innovation has mainly focused on how to promote technological innovation in megaprojects and management innovation (MI) in megaprojects is still an unknown…
Abstract
Purpose
Existing research on innovation has mainly focused on how to promote technological innovation in megaprojects and management innovation (MI) in megaprojects is still an unknown research field. The purposes of this study are to examine the effect of MI on megaproject performance and how the top management team (TMT) regulatory focus affects the use of MI in projects. At the same time, the moderating effects of project uncertainties are also tested.
Design/methodology/approach
On the basis of an explorative/exploitative ambidextrous analysis framework, this study divides MI into two dimensions: explorative and exploitative MI, and integrates the theoretical perspectives of the TMT regulatory focus and project uncertainties into a research model. Taking 314 responses from megaprojects’ TMTs in China as research data, this study empirically tests the above model.
Findings
Results show that exploratory MI has a U-shaped relationship with megaproject performance; whereas exploitative MI has an inverted U-shaped relationship with megaproject performance. The TMT promotion focus has a positive effect on exploratory and exploitative MI; and the TMT prevention focus has a negative effect on exploratory MI but has a positive effect on exploitative MI. Project uncertainties have a positive moderating effect on the positive relationship between TMT promotion focus and exploratory MI, whereas it has a negative moderating effect on the negative relationship between the TMT prevention focus and exploratory MI.
Originality/value
By empirically measuring the relationship between two types of MIs and megaproject performance, this study clarifies the differential mechanism of the effect of different MIs on megaproject performance. This study also examines the MI of megaprojects from the perspective of the TMT regulatory focus and expounds how changes in uncertainties affect the relationship between the TMT regulatory focus and MI.
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Dedong Wang, Ziyao Zhou and Yongqiang Lu
This study aims to explore the combined strategies leading to successful repair of two types of trust in Chinese construction projects and provide an effective guidance and…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore the combined strategies leading to successful repair of two types of trust in Chinese construction projects and provide an effective guidance and control trust repair in construction projects. During the research period, the author interviewed 150 managers from 50 Chinese construction projects and collected details of 125 violations. The research examines the effect of combined strategy of trust repair in Chinese management scenario.
Design/methodology/approach
This study adopted a mixed, quantitative, qualitative and exploratory approach. The author first extracted six strategies, namely, apology, denial, penance, communication, promise and compensation, from the literature review and generalization. Then, the author conducted an interview with 150 managers from 50 China construction projects. And the author analyzed the data through qualitative comparative analysis (QCA).
Findings
When competence-based trust is broken, violators should adopt communication and promise, demonstrate their competence and qualification, and change the attributions of competence from the trustor. When integrity-based trust is broken, violators should apologize, actively admit the mistake, show a positive attitude and seek the forgiveness from the trustor. After reconstructing trustors' perceptions of competence or integrity, violators should also make a promise to trustors for the future. The result of this research not only illustrates the sufficiency and necessity of a single strategy for trust repair but also explores the combination of trust repair strategies that rebuild the trust.
Research limitations/implications
This study is limited to 50 construction projects in the Chinese construction context, so conclusions are limited in application. Data used in this research did not provide an in-depth analysis of trust repair failures. Thus, additional research is needed to explore why trust was not repaired. The study is also limited to examining the Chinese construction project organizations only, and future studies should incorporate organizations in other nations and regions.
Practical implications
Compared with using a single strategy, a combined strategy provides a contribution to the future practice of repair broken relationship between construction project organizations. This research helps to organize decisions and benefits managers, from Chinese owners and contractors, in choosing which of these strategies repair trust. The author also provides a specific combination of strategies to repair relationships for international companies that have conflicts with Chinese construction companies.
Originality/value
This research is among the early studies in China that preliminary examines the combined strategy of trust repair between Chinese owners and contractors by using causal attribution theory and QCA. This study makes a valuable contribution toward combined strategy in construction project and the knowledge system of trust repair. Future studies could build on the findings from the current study to develop a cross-cultural research on trust repair.
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Jiawei Liu, Zi Xiong, Yi Jiang, Yongqiang Ma, Wei Lu, Yong Huang and Qikai Cheng
Fine-tuning pre-trained language models (PLMs), e.g. SciBERT, generally require large numbers of annotated data to achieve state-of-the-art performance on a range of NLP tasks in…
Abstract
Purpose
Fine-tuning pre-trained language models (PLMs), e.g. SciBERT, generally require large numbers of annotated data to achieve state-of-the-art performance on a range of NLP tasks in the scientific domain. However, obtaining fine-tuning data for scientific NLP tasks is still challenging and expensive. In this paper, the authors propose the mix prompt tuning (MPT), which is a semi-supervised method aiming to alleviate the dependence on annotated data and improve the performance of multi-granularity academic function recognition tasks.
Design/methodology/approach
Specifically, the proposed method provides multi-perspective representations by combining manually designed prompt templates with automatically learned continuous prompt templates to help the given academic function recognition task take full advantage of knowledge in PLMs. Based on these prompt templates and the fine-tuned PLM, a large number of pseudo labels are assigned to the unlabelled examples. Finally, the authors further fine-tune the PLM using the pseudo training set. The authors evaluate the method on three academic function recognition tasks of different granularity including the citation function, the abstract sentence function and the keyword function, with data sets from the computer science domain and the biomedical domain.
Findings
Extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the method and statistically significant improvements against strong baselines. In particular, it achieves an average increase of 5% in Macro-F1 score compared with fine-tuning, and 6% in Macro-F1 score compared with other semi-supervised methods under low-resource settings.
Originality/value
In addition, MPT is a general method that can be easily applied to other low-resource scientific classification tasks.
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Xiaohong Lu, FuRui Wang, Zhenyuan Jia, Likun Si and Yongqiang Weng
This paper aims to predict tool wear and reveal the relationship between feed per tooth and tool wear in micro-milling Inconel 718 process.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to predict tool wear and reveal the relationship between feed per tooth and tool wear in micro-milling Inconel 718 process.
Design/methodology/approach
To study and solve the tool wear problem in micro-milling of Inconel 718 micro components, in this paper, the investigation of micro-milling Inconel 718 process was implemented based on DEFORM finite element simulation, and tool wear depth of micro-milling cutter acted as output.
Findings
Different from the traditional macro milling process, diameter reduction percentage and average flank wear length decreased with the increase of feed per tooth; tool wear depth decreased when the feed per tooth was less than the minimum chip thickness.
Originality/value
At present, research on the prediction of tool wear in micro-milling of Inconel 718 has never been publicly reported. This study is significant to reveal the relationship between cutting parameters (feed per tooth) and tool wear in micro-milling Inconel 718.
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Hongjiang Yao, Yongqiang Chen, Yangbing Zhang and Bo Du
The purpose of this paper is to establish an integrated framework of the antecedents of enforcement after contract violations in construction projects and to examine whether…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to establish an integrated framework of the antecedents of enforcement after contract violations in construction projects and to examine whether contract provisions (control and coordination provisions) and trust (goodwill and competence trust) affect enforcement mechanisms (contractual enforcement and relational enforcement).
Design/methodology/approach
A survey method was employed to test the hypotheses. The authors collected data from the Chinese construction industry, and general contractor respondents were asked to answer a questionnaire about a contract violation by one of their subcontractors.
Findings
Control provisions and competence trust are positively related to contractual enforcement, but goodwill trust is negatively related to contractual enforcement. Relational enforcement is influenced by goodwill trust and competence trust.
Research limitations/implications
This study treats contract violations as a given variable, and it focuses on contract violations by subcontractors. The cross-sectional design makes it difficult to confirm the causality of the relationships.
Practical implications
Overly strict contractual enforcement can generate disputes and a vicious cycle of retaliation, and overly severe relational enforcement can damage a potentially profitable long-term relationship. In construction projects, the violating party will benefit from this study to avoid excessively contractual enforcement and relational enforcement, thus developing a more collaborative atmosphere on the current project and even establishing a solid long-term relationship.
Originality/value
This study extends the project management literature by investigating the antecedents of enforcement after contract violations, an area not yet fully researched.
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Israr Ahmad, Yongqiang Gao, Fangguo Su and Muhammad Kamran Khan
This study examines the link between ethical leadership and innovative work behavior. Also, drawing on the substitute for leadership theory, this study investigates the role of a…
Abstract
Purpose
This study examines the link between ethical leadership and innovative work behavior. Also, drawing on the substitute for leadership theory, this study investigates the role of a follower's proactive personality in the relationship between ethical leadership and innovative work behavior (IWB). Similarly, this study further explores the role of psychological safety in this relationship.
Design/methodology/approach
The data for this study were collected from software development companies based in Islamabad, Pakistan. A total of 240 employees and their immediate supervisors were asked to participate in this study. Processes Macro and Amos were used to assess study hypotheses.
Findings
Using data from software companies in Pakistan, this study found that ethical leadership can be effective to enhance IWB in followers whose proactive personality is low, while this effect is limited in high proactive individuals. Furthermore, psychological safety mediates the main effect of ethical leadership on IWB as well as the interactive effect between ethical leadership and follower's proactive personality on IWB.
Originality/value
This study is among the first to investigate the moderating role of employees' proactive personality in the relationship between ethical leadership and followers' IWB. Secondly, draws on the substitute for leadership perspective, this study explains that how the role of ethical leadership can be less effective for high proactive individuals or how individual characteristics can substitute leadership behavior. Thirdly, this study deepens our understanding of the mechanisms linking ethical leadership to IWB by exploring the role of psychological safety as a mediator. Finally, our research is based on data collected from Pakistan might also add some new insights to the existing west-dominated literature.
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