Psychological conflict management climate in general contractor's project organization and its influence on project performance : exploring multiple psychosocial and behavioral pathways

Abstract

Inter-organizational interfaces and their management have been the focus of researchers to improve project performance, especially in the context of construction projects. However, improving project performance does not only require the effective management of inter-organizational interfaces as there are other interface types whose effective management can also play its part in improving project performance. General contractor’s project organization that takes a challenge of transforming drawings into reality grapples with interfaces at the intra-organizational level; that is, those interfaces that exist between functional teams of its project organization (e.g., execution-safety interface, planning-execution interface, planning-safety interface, quality-execution interface, and commercial-planning interface). Effective management of these interfaces could cut waste, delays, and rework from construction processes which in turn could influence project performance substantially. With the potential of influencing project performance, management of these interfaces holds significance in improving the outlook of the construction industry as well. However, functional heterogeneity breeding inter-team conflicts could seriously jeopardize the successful achievement of projects. Both confrontation and avoidance in the face of conflicts will either yield low optimum solutions or could have serious consequences for teamwork which in turn will affect project performance negatively. Therefore, this research has argued for the proactive and collaborative management of conflicts, not only for the sake of managing conflicts constructively but also to achieve synergistic and high-quality solutions which in turn could help contractor organizations to deliver projects successfully. Apart from investigating the role of collaborative management of conflicts on interface management, this research has also investigated the relationships between collaborative management of conflicts and the important aspects of organizational life such as citizenships behaviors, team creativity, job burnout, social capital, and productivity. Employing these variables in the research model has allowed the researcher to assess how much variance these variables, constituting multiple psychosocial and behavioral pathways of the research model, explain in the endogenous construct of project performance. In order to achieve the objectives of the study, two new concepts of psychological conflict management climate (CMC) and interface management (IM) have been conceptualized and empirically validated by employing a multi-method approach. For quantitative study, 227 responses have been considered valid for data analysis. PLS-SEM has been employed to test the relationships conceptualized in the research model. The study has found strong support for the hypothesized relationship between CMC and IM which provides empirical credence to the basic premise of this research that environment conducive to manage conflicts collaboratively plays an important role in the effective management of process interfaces. Furthermore, CMC is also found to have a significant influence on citizenship behaviors, Psychological capital (PsyCap), and team creativity. Results of the study further indicate that interface management, team creativity, and individual’s productivity come together to explain 52.9% of the variance in the endogenous construct of project performance. Thus, the results of this study do suggest that project performance can be influenced by not only managing intra-organizational interfaces effectively, but also by promoting citizenship behaviors, individuals’ productivity, PsyCap, and team creativity at the intra-organizational level.