Reproduction of exchange relationships: Changing focus from organisations to individuals

• That organisations collaborate on a firm to firm basis is an assumption which underpins much of theliterature on inter-organisational relationships and supply chain integration, both in the genericliterature as well as in the construction oriented. The exchange relationships on an organisationallevel, however, are constituted of one or several interactions on interpersonal level. With theinterpersonal level as unit of analysis, this paper aims to answer how dyadic exchange relationshipsare produced and reproduced.Investigation of dyadic exchange relationships between contractors and subcontractors has beenconducted through 15 interviews with site managers from the contractors and foremen from thesubcontractors. Findings show that the individuals within both dyads of the exchange relationshipplay important roles in the outcome of the project and the specific relationship. Despite this, theorganisational focus of procurement of subcontractors tends to be highly price-driven. Site managersand subcontractors’ foremen, however, tend to bypass the price-driven procurement approaches byoffering their preferred counterparts possibilities to recalculate their quotations and adapting pricesaccording to individuals.By narrowing the range of procured subcontractors and focusing on the use of core teams based onmatching of individuals within the teams, a potential improvement in the construction supply chaincan be seen. By changing the focus of the concurrent research within construction management fromorganisational level towards interpersonal level, new perspectives may also be elucidated andexchange relationships between contractors and subcontractors might be better understood andexplained.

Ämnesord

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Samhällsbyggnadsteknik -- Byggproduktion (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Civil Engineering -- Construction Management (hsv//eng)

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Samhällsbyggnadsteknik -- Annan samhällsbyggnadsteknik (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Civil Engineering -- Other Civil Engineering (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Contractor-supplier relations

Inter-organisational relationships

Supply chain integration

Subcontractors

interpersonal relationships

Publikations- och innehållstyp

kon (ämneskategori)

ref (ämneskategori)