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Developing a Framework for Dynamic Organizational Resilience Analysis in Prefabricated Construction Projects: A Project Life Cycle Perspective

August 2022
Journal of Construction Engineering and Management 148(10)

August 2022
148(10)

DOI:10.1061/(ASCE)CO.1943-7862.0002381

Authors:

Linna Geng

Western Sydney University

Lihai Zhang

University of Melbourne

Prefabricated construction has recently played an increasingly significant role in social, environmental, and economic developments in the construction sector. Because prefabricated construction projects (PCPs) are interorganizational in nature, their successful delivery , especially under uncertain circumstances, relies on organizational resilience performance throughout the life cycle. The purpose of this study is to develop an ethnography-based methodological framework for the PCPs to evaluate, analyze, and improve the dynamic organizational resilience regarding efficiency, flexibility, and robustness from a life cycle perspective. A two-part framework is developed. The qualitative first part identifies the roles and relationships of participating stakeholders during each project phase, and the second quantitative part measures and analyzes the PCP's organizational resilience. A typical engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contract PCP in China is used as a case analysis to assess the validity of this developed framework. The results show that the robustness and flexibility of the PCP should be improved. Such improvement can be achieved by managing and enhancing the workflow control and how stakeholders communicate. This scenario was examined via a comparative analysis of employing building information model (BIM) and decentralized collaboration platform (DCP) within the case project. Finally, this developed framework could be used as a practical decision-making tool for managers to improve the organizational resilience in the aspects of efficiency, flexibility, and robustness of PCPs in case unforeseen events are encountered. It contributes to the current knowledge body of PCPs by incorporating organizational resilience theory into its performance evaluation and improvements.

Project relationships among stakeholders during five project stages.

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PCP relationships among stakeholders with a league among GC, DS, and P.

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Performance criteria values for characterizing the robustness

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Performance criteria values for characterizing the flexibility

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Performance criteria values for characterizing the efficiency

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Developing a Framework for Dynamic Organizational

Resilience Analysis in Prefabricated Construction

Projects: A Project Life Cycle Perspective

Bing Wang1; Linna Geng2; Pei Dang3; and Lihai Zhang4

Abstract: Prefabricated construction has recently played an increasingly significant role in social, environmental, and economic develop-

ments in the construction sector. Because prefabricated construction projects (PCPs) are interorganizational in nature, their successful deliv-

ery, especially under uncertain circumstances, relies on organizational resilience performance throughout the life cycle. The purpose of this

study is to develop an ethnography-based methodological framework for the PCPs to evaluate, analyze, and improve the dynamic organi-

zational resilience regarding efficiency, flexibility, and robustness from a life cycle perspective. A two-part framework is developed. The

qualitative first part identifies the roles and relationships of participating stakeholders during each project phase, and the second quantitative

part measures and analyzes the PCP’s organizational resilience. A typical engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contract PCP in

China is used as a case analysis to assess the validity of this developed framework. The results show that the robustness and flexibility of the

PCP should be improved. Such improvement can be achieved by managing and enhancing the workflow control and how stakeholders

communicate. This scenario was examined via a comparative analysis of employing building information model (BIM) and decentralized

collaboration platform (DCP) within the case project. Finally, this developed framework could be used as a practical decision-making tool for

managers to improve the organizational resilience in the aspects of efficiency, flexibility, and robustness of PCPs in case unforeseen events are

encountered. It contributes to the current knowledge body of PCPs by incorporating organizational resilience theory into its performance

Author keywords: Organizational resilience; Prefabricated construction projects (PCPs); Stakeholders and relationships; Ethnography;

Uncertainty and disruption.

Introduction

Prefabricated construction projects (PCPs) are considered as the

popular, innovative, and modern construction projects whereby

the components of a structure are assembled in factories or manu-

facturing sites, after which the completed assemblies or subassem-

blies are transported to construction sites (Hao et al. 2020;Tam

et al. 2007;Wu et al. 2021). Widely acknowledged benefits of PCPs

include, but are not limited to, waste reduction, energy savings,

high-quality control, accelerated turnaround times, and improve-

ments in productivity and safety (Afzal et al. 2017;Hong et al.

2016). In light of these promising benefits, PCPs have gradually

been recognized as an important area within the global develop-

ment of the construction industry (Lu et al. 2018). Based on the

latest report released by FiorMarkets, a leading international market

intelligence company, the global modular and prefabrication con-

struction market is expected to grow from USD 101.7 billion in

2020 to USD 173.44 billion by 2027 and enjoy a growth rate of

6.9% during the period 2021–2028 (FiorMarkets 2021). In China,

for example, the central government has been actively promoting

the application of prefabrication to 50% of domestic newly con-

structed buildings by 2025 (MOHURD 2016).

However, the rising use of PCPs is currently seriously chal-

lenged by a reduction in disposable finance, broken supply chains,

transportation issues, and obstruction to construction activities due

to the COVID-19 lockdown (Arizton Advisory and Intelligence

2020). The underlying reasons for the vulnerability of PCPs include

interrelated stakeholder-associated risks, highly fragmented proc-

esses, lengthened supply chain, inflexibility for late design, short-

age of labor and skill training, and insufficient communication

(Li et al. 2016;Shen et al. 2021b;Zhang et al. 2018a). Such chal-

lenges, particularly under the current COVID-19 circumstances, re-

quire critical thinking from researchers about how to evaluate and

improve resilience in PCPs to deal with unexpected events such as

pandemics, economic crises, and natural disasters.

The concept of resilience in organization theory, that is, the abil-

ity of a system to quickly return to a stable condition after experi-

encing a disruption (Bhamra et al. 2011), has been gradually

gaining attention in the realm of project management (Blay 2017;

Naderpajouh et al. 2020). Chen et al. (2017) highlighted the im-

provements of resilience in construction workforce could reduce

the conflict-related safety incidents. Similarly, Trinh et al. (2018)

illustrated that a resilient safety culture could be created in a con-

struction organization by combining theories such as safety culture

theory and resilience engineering theory. Organizational resilience,

1Lecturer, Dept. of Construction Management, Zhejiang Univ. of

Technology, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 310014, China.

2Ph.D. Candidate, Dept. of Infrastructure Engineering, Univ. of

Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC 3003, Australia (corresponding author).

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0943-912X. Email: lgge@student

.unimelb.edu.au

3Lecturer, School of Economics and Management, Tianjin Chengjian

Univ., Tianjin 300192, China.

4Associate Professor, Dept. of Infrastructure Engineering, Univ. of

Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC 3003, Australia. ORCID: https://orcid.org

/0000-0002-1282-992X

Note. This manuscript was submitted on October 30, 2021; approved on

May 31, 2022; published online on August 1, 2022. Discussion period open

until January 1, 2023; separate discussions must be submitted for individual

papers. This paper is part of the Journal of Construction Engineering and

Management, © ASCE, ISSN 0733-9364.

J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 2022, 148(10): 04022110

up to date, has been seen as a core characteristic in the ability of

various organizations or firms to defend themselves against the im-

pacts of unexpected events (Sahebjamnia et al. 2018;Williams

et al. 2017). Given the addressed necessity and significance of

PCPs being able to adapt to, withstand, and recover from the un-

foreseen events in uncertain circumstances, improving their organi-

zational resilience is crucial not only for the project success but also

for all participating stakeholders to achieve their own objectives.

PCPs, as temporary organizations, typically involve various

stakeholders from different departments or institutions. Sydow and

Braun (2018) emphasized the conceptualization of a project as a

temporary organization to manage its interorganizational relations.

This interorganizational perspective highlights that multiple stake-

holders and relationships among them play a key role in enhancing

resilience (Gilly et al. 2014;Yang et al. 2021a). For instance, Liu

and Yin (2020) proposed that good stakeholder relationships laid a

solid foundation to foster an organization’s reliability and flexibil-

ity, which ultimately build organizational resilience. In other words,

the stakeholders act as the main body providing resources for the

readiness of organizations or projects to response to and recovery

from unexpected events. Stakeholders refers to the groups and indi-

viduals who affect or are affected by strategic outcomes of an

organization (Polonsky 1995). In PCPs, stakeholder theory allows

massive efforts on the risk management or supply chain manage-

ment (Li et al. 2016;Luo et al. 2019;Yuan et al. 2021). However,

little attention has been given to how stakeholder relationships in

PCPs can improve organizational resilience.

By interpreting the organizational resilience of stakeholder re-

lationships in PCPs from the perspective of life cycle, this study

develops an ethnography-based methodological framework to

evaluate, analyze, and improve the dynamic organizational resil-

ience of PCPs regarding the capabilities of efficiency, flexibility,

and robustness, which mean the ability of an organization to rapid

response to disruptions, the ability of an organization to adjust to

unexpected changes and make further self-improvement, and the

ability of an organization to withstand or overcome the adverse

conditions, respectively. It provides an in-depth exploration of

how organizational resilience could be improved by managing

stakeholder relationships. In addition, because the involving

stakeholders and relationships change across different project

phases, the dynamicity of the organizational resilience in PCPs

is considered.

To better achieve the research objective, an in-depth overview of

current challenges and research literature on PCP resilience is pro-

vided and discussed. Thereafter, the developed ethnography-based

resilience analysis framework, which integrates a qualitative part to

identify the roles and relationships of stakeholders and a quantita-

tive part derived from graph theory to evaluate the organizational

resilience of PCPs, is presented. Then, an engineering, procure-

ment, and construction (EPC) contract PCP case in China was used

to illustrate the implementation of the developed framework.

Finally, conclusions and recommendations on future research

work enhances the practical and theoretical use of this developed

framework.

Literature Review

Because this study involves understanding, evaluating, and analyz-

ing the resilience in PCPs under the umbrella of organizational resil-

ience, the concept of organizational resilience, current research on

the resilience in PCPs, and relevant risk are reviewed. In addition,

the research on the stakeholder relationships in PCPs is also reviewed

for facilitating the organizational resilience evaluation.

Overview of Organizational Resilience

The concept of resilience in organizations has been evolving for

many years, which has caused variations in definitions across a

wide range of disciplines (Parsons 2010;Pęciłło 2016;Radovic-

Markovic et al. 2017;van der Merwe et al. 2020). For example,

Coutu (2002) first defined organizational resilience as the capacity

to resist and recover from traumatic events, shocks, or disasters that

could affect an organization or a system internally or externally.

This definition was inferred from the resilience in an engineering

perspective, which emphasized the ability to resist disruptions

(Alexander 2013;Buchanan et al. 2020). McManus et al. (2008)

followed the engineering resilience perspective and considered

organizational resilience as a function of an organization’s situation

awareness, keystone vulnerability, and adaptive capacity in a com-

plex, dynamic, and interdependent environment.

Specifically, Kamalahmadi and Parast (2016) highlighted that

such capacity relies on the ability of individuals, groups, and sub-

systems in an organization to adapt to, withstand, and respond to

unexpected events with proactive and efficient solutions. Feng and

Trinh (2019) identified the drivers of resilient safety culture and

proved that the resilience can be created in construction organiza-

tion. They further confirmed three dimensions, i.e., psychological

resilience, behavioural resilience, and contextual resilience, to as-

sess the safety culture regarding resilience, which plays a moder-

ating role in adverse impacts of project complexity on the safety

performance (Trinh and Feng 2020;Trinh et al. 2019).

As for utilization, Davoudi et al. (2012) deeply reviewed resil-

ience theory and highlighted that it could be used to conceptually

reframe the planning in the pasture management system, urban de-

velopment, and climate change adaptation. Despite these various

definitions, organizational resilience essentially aims to reduce the

vulnerability of organizations by integrating organizational proc-

esses, engaging stakeholders, utilizing resources, and increasing

the awareness to prepare and respond to the disruptions (Bravo and

Hernández 2021;Burnard and Bhamra 2011;Cameron and Dutton

2003;He et al. 2022).

Various dimensions have been developed to evaluate organiza-

tional resilience. From McManus et al.’s(2008) resilience model,

organizational resilience is measured with situation awareness,

management of keystone vulnerabilities, and adaptive capacity.

Blay (2017) updated this measurement as adaptive capacity, coping

ability and flexibility, the antecedents of which include the roles of

stakeholders, physical and human resources deployment, organiza-

tional cultures, communication, and legal and contractual require-

ments. Han and Bogus (2021) then proposed seven resilience

criteria, like adaptive design and automatic issue identification, to

incorporate resilience assessment into highway project delivery. In

essence, organizational resilience is determined by the ability of an

organization to restore efficacy, process the environmental feed-

back, flexibly rearrange and transfer the knowledge and resources

when encountering a disruptive event (Cameron and Dutton 2003).

Such ability of organizations thereby could be interpreted as robust-

ness (Yassien et al. 2020), efficiency (Ulrich and Barney 1984), and

flexibility (Caniato and Rice 2003), respectively.

Robustness reflects the ability of the organization to withstand

or overcome adverse conditions (Adenso-Diaz et al. 2018;Simchi-

Levi et al. 2018;Singh 2014). Efficiency requires the ability to

rapid response to disruptions. Meanwhile, flexibility provides the

ability with organizations to adjust to changes and promotes re-

newal, reorganization and development (Starr et al. 2003). In light

of interorganizational context for PCPs, this study aims to interpret

and evaluate organizational resilience of PCPs based on the indica-

tors under the dimensions of robustness, flexibility, and efficiency

J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 2022, 148(10): 04022110

of Yahia et al. (2021), Penserini et al. (2009), and Grossi et al.

(2007).

Resilience and Risk in PCPs

Recently, there has been growing interest in exploring uncertainties

and resilience in the field of PCPs. For example, Luo et al. (2019)

examined the supply chain risks that are closely associated with

the stakeholders involved in various project phases and highly

interdependent with each other, and found out that these risks

can significantly affect the performance of PCPs. Understanding

such a supply chain structure is important for achieving resilience

(Choi and Hong 2002). Ekanayake et al. (2021a,b) identified and

modeled how the key supply chain capabilities, i.e., resourceful-

ness, financial strength, efficiency, flexibility, visibility, adapt-

ability, anticipation, and dispersion, are critical to achieve the

resilience in industrialized construction in Hong Kong. Although

these studies highlighted the increasing significance of resilience

for PCPs in facing uncertainties and unexpected events, they in-

vestigated resilience with a project perspective. There still is a

lack of a quantitative method to evaluate the organizational resil-

ience of PCPs. As interorganization projects, it is argued that

more research attention shouldbepaidtoPCPsfromanorgani-

zational perspective, where the participating stakeholders and re-

lationships are playing key roles for dealing with risks and

disruptions (Yang et al. 2021a).

Furthermore, PCPs are more vulnerable to uncertainties or un-

expected events due to their unique characteristics (Hu et al. 2019).

First, as regards technologies, the manufacturing designs and proc-

esses are required to be flexible to accommodate any changes as

well as synchronous with construction technologies to facilitate

processes integration and avoid fragmentation (Hosseini et al. 2018).

Second, as regards stakeholders, the presence of more participants,

including but not limited to the general contractor, designers, and

manufacturer, makes managing the cooperation relationships among

them more difficult and complex (Teng et al. 2017).

From the risk perspective, Li et al. (2016) recognized and inves-

tigated the network of stakeholder-associated risk factors in prefab-

ricated housing construction projects (PHPs). They also quantitatively

evaluated the influence of various risks on the schedule of PHPs

(Li et al. 2017). Shen et al. (2021a) identified the core tasks of the

PCP by assessing its construction process and analyzing the im-

pacts of rework risks. The risk research involves a relatively passive

way to plan and reduce the vulnerabilities, whereas resilience re-

flects a positive way in allowing projects to respond quickly and

effectively to disruptions. Linkov et al. (2014) argued that the risk

assessment is one part of resilience and improving resilience could

reduce the risk of undesirable consequences of activities. Currently,

a call was also made for a shift from risk to resilience (Aven 2019),

particularly under COVID-19 circumstance.

In this context, the definition of resilience in organization theory

(Bhamra et al. 2011) was adopted for PCPs as “the ability of PCPs

to return to a stable condition after a disruption through managing

the stakeholder relationships in a robust, flexible, and efficient

way.”Disruption refers to an unexpected event that has negative

impacts on project delivery, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, eco-

nomic crises, and natural disasters (Naderpajouh et al. 2020).

Stakeholder Relationships in PCPs

Through the lens of project life cycle, stakeholders, such as the

government and developer, start participating into the project im-

plementation during the phase of project planning. Certain rela-

tionships regarding resources, information and collaboration,

among the stakeholders exist during and after project plans

(Nguyen et al. 2021). The significance of managing these relation-

ships has been recognized by some scholars. Sydow and Braun

(2018) focused on interorganizational facets of construction proj-

ects and revealed that interorganizational relationships with multi-

stakeholders provide an organizational context for projects.

Moreover, it was proved that stakeholder relationships throughout

the whole life cycle in interorganizational projects affect the devel-

opment of resilience (Yang et al. 2021a).

Stakeholder management research surged with Li et al. (2014),

who conducted a stakeholder-based analysis to determine the key

drivers and constraints in off-site construction. Similarly, Gan et al.

(2018) explored the stakeholder influencing power on overcoming

the barriers to off-site construction. Stakeholder perceptions were

further focused on to investigate the transaction costs and training

requirements (Wu et al. 2021) in prefabrications. The roles and

attributes of stakeholders were also identified by Li et al. (2016),

Luo et al. (2019), and Yuan et al. (2021) to investigate relevant

risks and critical success factors in prefabricated projects. In sum,

Nguyen et al. (2021) systematically reviewed stakeholder relation-

ships in off-site construction projects and categorized the relation-

ship patterns as collaboration, building information modeling,

social network, and supply chain. Yet, the focus on the stakeholder

relationships to enable a resilience prefabricated construction

project has been neglected.

In addition, the stakeholders and relationships dynamically

change throughout the project life cycle. For example, the government

and developer play crucial roles in the planning stage, whereas in

the manufacturing stage, the manufacturer and general contractor

take center stage. Thus, the time dimension has been considered to

understand and analyze the dynamics of PCPs’organizational resil-

ience in terms of stakeholders and relationships.

In brief, it is becoming increasingly clear that a resilience analy-

sis from the organizational perspective is needed to improve PCPs

in addressing the possible disruptions. However, there is still

lacking an evaluation framework that can quantitatively evaluate

organizational resilience of PCPs. To fill this research gap, this

study develops an ethnography-based methodological framework

to evaluate, analyze, and improve the organizational resilience in

PCPs regarding the efficiency, flexibility, and robustness. Specifi-

cally, this developed framework consists of a qualitative part to

identify the roles of each stakeholder and their relationships at each

project phase, and a quantitative part to measure and analyze the

PCP’s organizational resilience. Finally, a typical EPC-contracted

PCP case in China is utilized to illustrate the implementation of the

evaluation framework.

Research Methodology

This study combines the use of a qualitative method with a quan-

titative method to build a framework to evaluate, analyze, and im-

prove organizational resilience in PCPs. In detail, the ethnographic

method is used for the qualitative part to identify the relationship

among stakeholders in PCP implementation, from which a directed

organizational relationship graph can be formed. Then, the graph

theory method is applied for the quantitative part to evaluate the

resilience performance of the identified organizational relationship

graph. The relation between the qualitative part and the quantitative

part is shown in Fig. 1.

Based on Fig. 1, a brief introduction about the ethnographic

method and the graph theory method is given. Then, the process

of the development of the organizational resilience analysis frame-

work is illustrated.

J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 2022, 148(10): 04022110

Ethnographic Method

The ethnographic method is the research approach where the re-

searcher looks at people in their cultural setting or situation to pro-

duce a narrative description of the processes and features, as well as

further explore the detail of how complex interventions operate

over time (Morgan-Trimmer and Wood 2016). It largely, although

not exclusively, comprises qualitative methods, such as long-term

participant observation, interviews, focus groups, ordinary informal

conversations, or document analysis (Jerolmack and Khan 2018).

The ethnographic method provides a deep focus on both the peo-

ple’s interactions and the characteristics of groups, thus allowing

researchers to understand the practice and nature of those being

studied (Nurani 2008). To date, the ethnography-based approaches

have been frequently employed in the field of organization and

management studies (Bai 2021;Shipton et al. 2014;Streule 2020;

Yahia et al. 2021). Although ethnography has not been utilized in

the construction management research, it provides an innovative,

highly immersive potential approach to exploring the structures

of PCPs.

Graph Theory

The relationships between stakeholders in the organizations could

form a directed or undirected graph, which has inspired research-

ers to study them in various ways (Agarwal et al. 2021;Grossi

et al. 2007;Hamzeh et al. 2018;Penserinietal.2009;Ya hia

et al. 2021). As an example, social network analysis (SNA) em-

phasizes the significance of the relationships among the stake-

holders, such as betweenness and closeness, and focuses on

exploring the impact of these relationships on the overall organi-

zation network (Rim et al. 2020). However, SNA cannot distin-

guish relationships in terms of their individual characteristics and

is thus unable to analyze how the characteristics of organizational

resilience evolve with the PCP life cycle. Therefore, a graph

theory approach is proposed in this study to quantitatively evalu-

ate organizational resilience of PCPs by distinguishing relation-

ships into different types.

Organizational Resilience Analysis Framework

for PCPs

For the proposed framework in Fig. 1, the qualitative part is used to

identify stakeholders and their relationships across a project life

cycle because the roles of stakeholders and their relationships

are the two important inputs of PCP organizational resilience

(Chmutina and Rose 2018). With regard to relationships, this study

refers to the research of Grossi et al. (2006) and Yahia et al. (2021),

and distinguishes the relationship between stakeholders as three

types: coordination ðCoÞ,power(P), and control (C). A coordination

relationship refers to the knowledge flow between two stakehold-

ers. For example, a coordination relationship between stakeholders

xand yexists when xprovides information, such as drawings,

project plans, or project records, to the stakeholder y. A power re-

lationship means task delegation and responsibility; that is, task

delegation from stakeholder xto yends up in the creation of an

obligation directed to y. A control relationship points to task super-

vision, which means that stakeholder xcan legally replace yif the

latter cannot complete the task as per the agreed requirements.

These relationships were also employed by Yahia et al. (2021)

to address the organizational resilience of sustainable collaborative

networks.

Then, an ethnographic method, e.g., an in-depth interview, was

applied to extract the relationship information of stakeholders in

the PCP. Specifically, the in-depth interview method was utilized

to identify the relationships of stakeholders in the following

Fig. 1. Details of the ethnography-based resilience analysis framework.

J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 2022, 148(10): 04022110

“Case Analysis”section. The interview data were coded as the

binary variables, i.e., 1 represents there is a direct relationship

ðCo;P;CÞbetween the observed two stakeholders, and 0 repre-

sents no relationship ðCo;P;CÞ. Based on the observed interac-

tions among stakeholders, the relationship structure in the PCP

project can be obtained.

In the quantitative part, flexibility ðFÞ, robustness ðRÞ, and ef-

ficiency ðEÞwere selected based on related research (Durach et al.

2015;Schoemaker 2003;Yahia et al. 2021) to evaluate the organi-

zational resilience of PCPs under graph theory. Considering the

changing environment, flexibility is the organization’s ability to

cope with changing tasks by reassigning the stakeholders’roles

and resources (Schoemaker 2003). In other words, the organization

is more flexible when the roles and resources of stakeholders can

be used to deal with any type of task change (Yahia et al. 2021).

Efficiency means the number of resources managed and used by the

stakeholders to complete tasks (Ulrich and Barney 1984). It is

noted that a trade-off exists between flexibility and efficiency. In

other words, more stakeholders means redundancy resources they

use to result in lower efficiency, whereas more stakeholders lead to

a higher flexibility due to adequate recourses to respond to any

changes (Yahia et al. 2021). Robustness means the ability of PCPs

that will not to be affected by the changes, which requires to focus

on the intraproject core activities and interactions (Durach et al.

2015). Furthermore, this study refers the research of Yahia et al.

(2021), Penserini et al. (2009), and Grossi et al. (2007) to measure

these indictors with the identified roles of stakeholders and their

relationships as presented in Table 1.

The metrics used in the Table 1are further explained in Table 2,

and these metrics are dedicated to describing different aspects of

linkage strength between stakeholders in the organization structure.

A detailed step-by-step process is proposed by combining the

qualitative part and the quantitative part to form organizational

resilience analysis framework for PCPs, as described in the follow-

ing subsections.

Step 1: Identify Stakeholders and Relationships Using the

Ethnographic Method within a PCP Project

Participant observation and interviews with long-term participants

in a PCP project were employed in this study to identify the roles

and relationships of stakeholders. As discussed, the organizational

resilience has been proved to change over time (Shareef et al. 2020)

because the number, roles, and relationships of stakeholders change

throughout the project life cycle. Thus, the time dimension is con-

sidered in this study. Five stages, namely planning (P1), designing

(P2), manufacturing, storage, and transportation (P3), assembling

onsite (P4), and operation (P5), are used as the snapshots of the

PCP’s evolving organizational resilience over time.

The stakeholders and their relationships within PCPs vary case

by case. For example, in a traditional-contract PCP, general con-

tractor is responsible for construction, and the owner/developer

takes charge of early design work. Under an EPC-contract PCP, on

the other hand, the general contractor is responsible for both design

and construction. Thus, the objective of this step is to identify the

stakeholders and their relationships in the case in question by ap-

plying an ethnographic approach.

Step 2: Calculate the Metrics that Describe the Linkage

Strength between Stakeholders in the PCP Project

When the directed graph of the stakeholder relationships is derived

from Step 1, the metrics that describe the linkage strength between

stakeholders can be calculated based on the descriptions and equa-

tions displayed in Table 2.

Step 3: Evaluate the Organizational Resilience of this

Specific PCP Project

In this step, graph theory is adopted to evaluate organizational resil-

ience of PCP in terms of efficiency, flexibility, and robustness.

First, performance criteria can be determined by the equations

given in Table 1. Then, the value of F,R, and Ecan be determined

by Eq. (1)(Grossi et al. 2007;Penserini et al. 2009;Yahia et al.

2021) as follows:

Xi¼jPij

jPi

1j2þjPi

0j2jPi

jPij×X

p∈Pi

FðXiÞþjPi

jPij×X

p∈Pi

ð1−TðXiÞÞ

ð1Þ

where X= organizational resilience indicator, that is, X∈½F;R;E;

i= time, that is, i∈½P1;P2;P3;P4P5;Pi= set of performance

criteria of X;Pi

1= performance criteria whose values equal 1,

and Pi

0= performance criteria whose values equal 0, satisfying

jPij¼jPi

1jþjPi

0j; and FðXiÞand TðXiÞ= property value of Pi

that belongs to the sets of Pi

0and Pi

1, respectively. Then, the value

of organizational resilience can be evaluated by Eq. (2)

Y¼α×XFþβ×XRþγ×XEð2Þ

where α,β, and γ= weighting coefficients of F,R, and E, thus

satisfying αþβþγ¼1. Because different types of PCPs may

have different requirements for robustness, flexibility, and effi-

ciency, the assignment of weight coefficients will be different.

For example, for nuclear power projects, the impact of a risk ac-

cident will be significant. In this case, robustness and flexibility

must play important roles, and the corresponding weight coeffi-

cients will be larger.

Table 1. Performance criteria and optimum values of F,R, and E

FOptimal value ROptimal value EOptimal value

Connectedness ðCoÞ1 Overlap ðCo;PÞ1 Connectedness ðPÞ1

OutCover ðP;CÞ1 Chain ðCo;PÞ1 Economy ðPÞ1

Chain ðC;PÞ1 Chain ðC;CoÞ1 Economy ðCoÞ1

Completeness ðCoÞ1 InCover ðC;CoÞ1 Overlap ðCo;P)1

Completeness ðPÞ0 OutCover ðP;CÞ1 Overlap ðP;CoÞ)1

Connectedness ðPÞ0 OutCover ðP;CoÞ1 Unilaterality ðPÞ1

——Completeness ðCoÞ1 Univocity ðPÞ1

——Connectedness ðCoÞ1 Economy ðCÞ1

——Univocity ðPÞ0 Overlap ðC;PÞ1

——Unilaterality ðCoÞ0 Overlap ðP;CÞ1

——Univocity ðCÞ0——

——Flatness ðCÞ0——

J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 2022, 148(10): 04022110

Step 4: Result Analysis and Sensitive Analysis

Notably, when all performance criteria reach the optimal values

provided in Table 2, the PCP achieves its best organizational resil-

ience, that is, reference point, and the value of organizational resil-

ience as determined by Eq. (2) will, as a last step, be compared with

this reference point. The closer the value of organizational resil-

ience to the reference point, the higher the PCP’s organizational

resilience. In addition, the larger the value of Yand the bigger

the gap between the measured and optimal organizational resilience

of the PCP, the worse its organizational resilience.

Furthermore, because the level of organizational resilience of

the PCP is highly affected by adverse disruptions, e.g., the

COVID-19 pandemic, it is necessary to conduct a sensitive analysis

to explore the impacts of the adverse disruptions on the organiza-

tional resilience. Specifically, a disfunction analysis is applied for

sensitivity analysis to explore impacts of key stakeholders on

organizational resilience. Based on the result analysis and sensitive

analysis, several managerial implications can be provided to help

improve the level of the organizational resilience for PCP.

To better understand the organizational resilience analysis

framework for PCPs, a real prefabricated building project case

is used to illustrate the implementation of the proposed framework

in the next section.

Case Analysis

A 2-year PCP, launched by a well-known Chinese real estate com-

pany (Poly Real Estate Group in Changsha, Hunan Province,

People’s Republic of China), was used as a case implementation

for the proposed framework.

Identification of Stakeholders and Relationships

The participating stakeholders and relationships were identified in

stages of planning (P1), designing (P2), manufacturing, storage,

and transportation (P3), assembling onsite (P4), and operation (P5),

respectively, through the ethnographic interviews. In the ethno-

graphic interviews, eight experienced participants, whose average

working time was around 14.5 months in this 2-year prefabricated

building project, were interviewed to uncover the roles they played

and their interactions within specific project context. For example,

a developer and two consultants, i.e., Participants a, b, and c, were

interviewed to gain the relationships of participants involved in

planning stage, which were informed by project context and the

participant’s positions within that context. It is noted that the inter-

viewees in ethnographic interviews act as reliable collaborators in

conducting the research through the long-term participant involve-

ment for data collection (LeCompte and Schensul 2010), and their

perspectives have been crossed validated stage by stage to improve

the reliability of the relationships among stakeholders. The inter-

viewee information is presented in Table 3and can be summarized

as follows:

•Interviewees a, b, and c: Based on the requirements of local

government (G) in China, at least 50% of new buildings must

be prefabricated. For planning (P1) stage, a prefabrication con-

sultant (PC) was hired by the developer (DV), that is, Poly Real

Table 2. Details of the performance criteria

Performance criteria Equation Description

Completeness ðkÞjRkj

jRolekj×ðjRolekj−1ÞDetermine how stakeholders are linked to each other in the relationship type k.Rkdepicts

the stakeholders set related to relationship type k; Rolekdepicts the stakeholders set of

pairs related to relationship type k.

Connectedness (k)1−jDISCONkj

jRolekj×ðjRolekj−1ÞDetermine the linkage degree of the PCP structure. The more disperse it is, the lower

linkage degree. DISCONkdepicts the stakeholder set of pairs related to relationship type k

that cannot be connected.

Economy (k)1−jRkj−ðjRolekj−1Þ

ðjRolekj−1Þ2Determine the compromise or the balance between completeness and connectedness.

Unilaterality (k)1−jSIMkj

jRkjDetermine the level of subordination by looking at the orientation of link, and conflicts or

redundancy. SIMkdepicts the stakeholder set of pairs that enable both ingoing and

outgoing links; that is, if stakeholder x;y∈Rolek, and both relationship ðx;yÞand

ðy;xÞ∈Rk, then both ∈SIMk.

Univocity (k)jINkj

jRolekjDetermine the concision of a structure. For example, tree structure represents the most

concise structure. INkdepicts the stakeholders set in which the number of ingoing links is

<1in ktype.

Flatness (k)1−jCUTkj

jRolekjDetermines the number of points, the removal of which would not determine a cut in any

k-path. CUTkdepicts the stakeholders set in which the number of both ingoing and

outgoing links ≤1in ktype.

InCover ðj;kÞjINþ

j∩INþ

jINþ

kjDetermine the number of ingoing links for each stakeholder in relation type jcompared

with the same stakeholder in k.

OutCover ðj;kÞjOUTþ

j∩OUTþ

jOUTþ

kjDetermine the number of outgoing links for each stakeholder in relation type jcompared

with the same stakeholder in k. OUTþ

kdepicts the stakeholders set in which the number of

outgoing links ≥1in ktype.

Chain ðj;kÞjINþ

j∩OUTþ

jOUTþ

kjDetermine the number of stakeholders that are ingoing links in relation type jand

outgoing links k.

Overlap ðj;kÞjLINKj;kj

jRkjDetermines the degree of overlap between relation type jand k· LINKj;kis the

intersection set that constitutes of the stakeholder set of pairs related to type kand j.

Note: kis the the counting operator, e.g., jRolekjrepresents the number of stakeholders set related to relationship type k.

J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 2022, 148(10): 04022110

Estate Group, to plan the documents to demonstrate to G that

this project meets the basic prefabricated rate at the planning

stage. Financial institutions (FI) were also involved in this stage

to explore the feasibility of this project.

•Interviewees b, c, d, e, and f: After the DVacquired the develop-

ment rights, the project moved to the designing (P2) stage. The

DV signed an EPC contract with a general contractor (GC), who

was in charge of the design and construction of the project. To

align the design work with the required rate of prefabrication, a

PC was further hired by the GC to coordinate the design details

among participating stakeholders throughout the project devel-

opment. The designer (DS) and the manufacturer (M) were also

involved during this stage to generate a feasible and compatible

construction scheme.

•Interviewees b, c, d, e, g, and h: Once the construction scheme

had finished, the project moved to construction, which con-

tained two sequential substages. The former was manufacturing,

storage, and transportation (P3), and the latter was assembling

onsite (P4). In the manufacturing, storage, and transportation

stage, the GC signed a service contract with the M, who was

responsible for the production and transportation of the prefab-

ricated module. Besides, to ensure the prefabricated module

could be delivered to the site on time, the M had to find a reliable

material supplier (S) and an efficient logistics enterprise (LE).

In the assembling onsite stage, the GC subcontracted certain

assembly works to subcontractors (SCs), as well as to some par-

ticipating stakeholders, such as the D, M, and PC, who also col-

laborated with each other to facilitate the onsite modular

assembly work.

•Interviewees a, b, c, d, and e: When the construction work

passed the completion-based check and acceptance, the project

was delivered to the DV for sale and operation. A facility man-

ager (FM) was hired by the DV to coordinate the operation with

the building buyer, that is, the end user (EU).

In addition, the interview data are regarded as binary variables,

that is, 1 indicates there is a direct relationship ðCo;P;CÞbetween

the observed two stakeholders, whereas 0 represents no relationship

ðCo;P;CÞ. Based on the observed interactions between the partici-

pating stakeholders, a total of 12 stakeholders and their relation-

ships in this EPC contract PCP are identified and shown in Fig. 2.

PCP Organizational Resilience Evaluation

As illustrated in Fig. 2, different stakeholder roles and relationships

were involved in stages of planning (P1), designing (P2), manufac-

turing, storage, and transportation (P3), assembling onsite (P4), and

operation (P5), leading to the dynamic of PCP organizational resil-

ience over time. Based on the quantitative methodology shown in

Fig. 1, the values of performance criteria under R,F, and Efor this

PCP at different stages could be computed by the equations in

Table 1. Then, the values of R,F, and Ecould be calculated by

Eq. (1) (Tables 4–6). Lastly, the values of organizational resilience

of the five stages can be computed based on Eq. (2) under the

assumption of equal weight for each organizational resilience in-

dicator, as shown in Fig. 3.

It can be seen from Fig. 3that the organizational resilience of a

PCP shows a bowl shape over the five stages, achieving its highest

point in P3, that is, the manufacturing, storage, and transportation

stage. The organizational resilience of design, assembly onsite, op-

eration, and planning stages follows. This result shows that this

PCP is fragile at planning stage, which makes sense because con-

siderable volumes of project information and contract issues remain

unclear and veiled at this stage. When crucial project information is

revealed and key contract documents are formalized, the project

tends to be stable. This result also supports the dynamics of organi-

zational resilience in this PCP as the project stakeholders and their

interactions vary across the life cycle. In addition, for organiza-

tional resilience, the dimension of efficiency performs best, leaving

lots of room for considerable improvement in robustness and flex-

ibility. As mentioned previously, this result shows that this project

should manage redundant personnel and resources to improve its

resilience in responding to future changes.

Perform a Disfunction Analysis

Disfunction means the stakeholder in question cannot communicate

with others; hence, information cannot be successfully transferred

between the disfunctional stakeholder and the other stakeholders.

Analogy to previous studies that investigate the key interaction

among stakeholders with the SNA method by breaking the link be-

tween two nodes and analyzing its effect on the stabilization of the

network (Liang et al. 2017;Luo et al. 2019), the disfunction analysis

in this study means to explore the impact of key stakeholders’dis-

function on organizational resilience by breaking its coordination

link with other stakeholders. Specifically, PC, GC, and M, who were

found to be associated with the most implementation challenges

existing in PCP projects (Luo et al. 2019), were selected to conduct

the disfunction analysis separately, in which the coordination link

between these stakeholders with other stakeholders will be removed

from Fig. 2. Then, the organizational resilience will be re-evaluated

by repeating Steps 1, 2, and 3, respectively.

As shown in Fig. 4, the disfunction of the GC, PC, and M under-

mine the organizational resilience of this PCP in P2,P3, and P4.

It can be concluded that the disfunction of the GC decreases this

PCP’s organizational resilience to a great extent, which reflects the

central position of the GC in this project. As can be seen in Fig. 2,

the GC has more relationships with others in P2,P3, and P4.

Besides, the results imply that the PC plays an important role in

the design stage (P2) and assembly onsite stage (P4), regarding

organizational resilience, whereas the manufacturer is more impor-

tant in the manufacturing, storage, and transportation stage (P3)for

the organizational resilience of this project.

Table 3. Interviewee information

Identifier Gender Age (years) Role Position Participating time (months)

a Male 50 Developer Vice-general manager 24

b Female 43 Consultant Chairman 14

c Male 45 Consultant General manager 12

d Male 56 General contractor General manager 14

e Male 46 General contractor Vice-general manager 14

f Male 48 Designer General manager 18

g Male 46 Producer Vice-general manager 10

h Male 44 Producer Factory manager 10

J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 2022, 148(10): 04022110

Comparative Analysis of Alternatives

This analysis aims to discuss the impacts of the employment of new

technologies, that is, building information model (BIM), decentral-

ized collaboration platform (DCP), and the formation of a league

among GC, DS, and M on PCP organizational resilience. Under a

league among GC, DS, and M in a PCP, the GC trains their own DS

and P (Zhang et al. 2018b). In this way, the GC, DS, and M

Fig. 2. Project relationships among stakeholders during five project stages.

Table 4. Performance criteria values for characterizing the robustness

Performance criteria P1P2P3P4P5

Overlap ðCo;PÞ0.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 0.50

Chain ðCo;PÞ0.00 0.50 0.67 0.50 0.00

Chain ðC;CoÞ0.33 0.60 0.67 0.57 0.50

InCover ðC;CoÞ0.33 0.60 0.67 0.80 0.00

OutCover ðP;CÞ0.50 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00

OutCover ðP;CoÞ0.33 0.29 0.50 0.29 0.50

Completeness ðCoÞ0.33 0.50 0.40 0.31 0.50

Connectedness ðCoÞ1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00

Univocity ðPÞ1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00

Unilaterality ðCoÞ1.00 0.20 0.17 0.38 1.00

Univocity ðCÞ0.67 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00

Flatness ðCÞ1.00 0.75 0.60 0.80 1.00

Ri0.70 0.40 0.35 0.41 0.60

Table 5. Performance criteria values for characterizing the flexibility

Performance criteria P1P2P3P4P5

Connectedness ðCoÞ1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00

OutCover ðP;CÞ0.50 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00

Chain ðC;PÞ0.00 0.50 0.67 0.50 0.00

Completeness ðCoÞ0.33 0.50 0.40 0.31 0.50

Completeness ðPÞ0.50 0.25 0.17 0.20 0.33

Connectedness ðPÞ1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00

Fi0.58 0.33 0.30 0.36 0.43

Table 6. Performance criteria values for characterizing the efficiency

Performance criteria P1P2P3P4P5

Connectedness ðPÞ1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00

Economy ðPÞ1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00

Economy ðCoÞ0.89 0.63 0.72 0.81 0.75

Overlap ðCo;PÞ0.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 0.50

Overlap ðP;CoÞ0.00 0.30 0.42 0.31 0.33

Unilaterality ðPÞ1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00

Univocity ðPÞ1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00

Economy ðCÞ1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00

Overlap ðC;PÞ1.00 1.00 0.80 1.00 0.00

Overlap ðP;CÞ0.50 1.00 1.00 1.00 0.00

Ei0.31 0.11 0.11 0.09 0.34

J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 2022, 148(10): 04022110

stakeholders could constitute a league, which reduces the delega-

tion and supervision relationships of the PCP and facilitates the

information flow among the GC, DS, and M in project implemen-

tation. The BIM technique could greatly improve the communication

efficiency between the stakeholders overall, but the stakeholders’

delegation and supervision remain unchanged. DCP relies on

the innovative blockchain technique, which securely records trans-

actions and helps streamline the supply chain and design documen-

tation needed for prefabricated building (Li et al. 2021). DCP not

only improves information communication, but also upgrades del-

egation and supervision relationship of stakeholders. Figs. 5–7

show the identified stakeholders and relationships in the five stages

under a league among GC, DS, and M, as well as under BIM and

DCP, respectively.

Fig. 8shows the corresponding results of applying the proposed

framework to a league among GC, DS, and M, as well as to BIM

and DCP. Firstly, it is seen that a league among GC, DS, and M has

little impact on the project’s organizational resilience. In contrast,

BIM and DCP can significantly improve organizational resilience.

This result implies that comprehensive, systematic strategies for

improving PCP organizational resilience are most useful. Only op-

timizing part of the structure may not improve organizational resil-

ience even though it improves communication between several

nominated stakeholders.

In addition, the use of BIM to this EPC contract PCP leads to an

overall improvement in performance resilience, which indicates the

importance of improving the communication efficiency in optimiz-

ing PCP’s organizational resilience. It can also be seen from Fig. 8

that the organizational resilience is most improved in the design

(P1) and operation (P5) stages. This result further shows that

the organizational resilience of PCPs can be efficiently improved

by focusing on facilitating means of communication in these two

stages. Lastly, the application of DCP causes more improvement

than that of BIM. This result manifests that a systematic improve-

ment of both the workflow control, that is, data and information

control, and means of communication could further enhance the

PCP’s organizational resilience.

Discussions and Managerial Implications

This study analyzed the organizational resilience of PCPs from a

life cycle perspective, i.e., from P1–P5. An ethnography-based

resilience analysis framework that combines both qualitative and

quantitative parts was developed to evaluate, analyze, and improve

the organizational resilience of PCPs in different stages. Compared

with previous relevant methodologies, like SNA (Ekanayake et al.

2021b), this developed framework quantifies the stakeholder rela-

tionships concerning their individual characteristics (coordination,

power, and control) when evaluating project organizational resil-

ience, but also identifies the centrality and importance of stakehold-

ers by conducting a disfunction analysis.

This developed framework was then applied to a PCP case with

a traditional EPC contract in China. The result of organizational

resilience evaluation analysis showed the dynamic of organiza-

tional resilience in PCPs, which is the most fragile during the plan-

ning stage. The underlying reason is that the role of stakeholders

and the collaboration relationships changes over time (Qiang et al.

2021). The result of the current study also shows that improvement

is required for robustness and flexibility of PCP projects, underlin-

ing the importance of the communication among stakeholders and

the workflow control of PCPs to organizational resilience. Further-

more, the disfunction analysis showed that the GC played the most

centralized and important role in this PCP, which is in line with

Teng et al. (2017) and Yu et al. (2019).

The comparative analysis of BIM and DCP in PCPs indicated

that improving means of communication and workflow control

could enhance a PCP’s organizational resilience. However, due

to the complex relationships in PCPs, partially upgrading stake-

holders’communication, e.g., building a league among the GC,

DS, and P, had little impact on a PCP’s organizational resilience.

In contrast, BIM technique can significantly improve the organiza-

tional resilience by systematically improving the communication

among PCP stakeholders. Compared with previous studies that ad-

vocated the application of BIM technique in PCPs (Li et al. 2018;

Xu et al. 2018), the result of the comparative analysis contribute to

quantitatively evaluating the extent to which the BIM could im-

prove a PCP’s organizational resilience across its life cycle.

The other way to systematically enhance communication be-

tween stakeholders is DCP, that is, using a blockchain-enabled plat-

form, which has been applied to improve means of communication

among stakeholders and optimize the workflow control of the

project (Lu et al. 2021;Yang et al. 2021b). Moreover, the results

showed that DCP could better improve a project’s organizational

resilience than BIM, which demonstrates the high potential of

DCP in the prefabricated construction industry. The underlying

reason for this result is that a blockchain-based platform and

BIM-based platform have different ways of influencing the organi-

zational resilience of PCPs. Specifically, a BIM-based platform can

largely improve the communication efficiency among all stakehold-

ers, but the stakeholders’delegation and supervision relationships

P1 P2 P3 P4 P5

R0.70 0.40 0.35 0.42 0.60

F0.48 0.30 0.30 0.35 0.39

E0.35 0.14 0.11 0.10 0.41

Score 0.51 0.28 0.25 0.29 0.47

0.00

0.10

0.20

0.30

0.40

0.50

0.60

0.70

0.80

Resilience Score

Fig. 3. Organization resilience evaluation during five project stages.

P2 P3 P4

All good 0.28 0.25 0.29

PC disfunction 0.3 0.26 0.30

GC disfunction 0.35 0.29 0.37

P disfunction 0.28 0.29 0.29

0.22

0.24

0.26

0.28

0.3

0.32

0.34

0.36

0.38

Resilience Score

Fig. 4. Disfunction analysis of project key stakeholders.

J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 2022, 148(10): 04022110

remain unchanged; that is, a BIM-based platform can provide better

communication among stakeholders but has little influence on

workflow control of PCPs. However, a blockchain-based platform

could improve both the information communication among stake-

holders and workflow control of PCPs.

Based on the preceding discussion, three managerial implica-

tions are summarized. Firstly, the robustness and flexibility of

the PCP need to be improved to enhance resilience of PCP organi-

zation. This can be achieved by arranging sufficient personnel and

resources and improving means of communication and workflow

control. Secondly, the application of BIM and blockchain technol-

ogy should be promoted in PCP implementation because they can

enhance PCPs’organizational resilience. Third, this study shows

that decision makers should focus on the general contractor and

its relevant relationships because the CG plays the most important

role in governing the resilience of the PCP organization.

Conclusion

This study developed an ethnography-based framework to evaluate

dynamic organizational resilience of PCPs. The developed frame-

work mainly included a qualitative analysis to identify stakeholders

and relationships at each stage via ethnographic methods, and a

quantitative analysis derived from graph theory to evaluate organi-

zational resilience regarding flexibility, efficiency, and robustness.

A typical EPC contract PCP case in China was utilized to illustrate

the implementation of the developed framework. The results

showed that (1) flexibility and robustness must be enhanced to de-

fend against future uncertainties in EPC contract PCPs, (2) the PCP

is most fragile in the planning stage, and decision makers should

emphasize the general contractor and its relevant relationships,

(3) systematic information management measures, such as the em-

ployment of BIM and DCP, can effectively improve the organiza-

tional resilience of PCPs, whereas the league cannot, and (4) DCP

can better improve a project’s organizational resilience than BIM.

The case analysis provides practitioners with quantitative evalu-

ation for the organizational resilience in ECP-contract PCPs, thus

affording potential opportunities, such as improved means of com-

munication through BIM and DCP, to enhance the resilience within

organization theory.

The contribution of this study is twofold. From a theoretical

view, it has introduced the concept and theory of organizational

resilience by developing an innovative framework to add to the

current knowledge body of PCP performance evaluation and im-

provements. This is not only an extensive application of existing

organizational resilience theory, but a theoretical enrichment in

the field of project management. From a practical point of view,

Fig. 5. PCP relationships among stakeholders with a league among GC, DS, and P.

J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 2022, 148(10): 04022110

this study provides an in-depth framework that could be used as a

decision-making tool to determine how PCP resilience could be

improved by managing stakeholder relationships. This frame-

work is generic and thus applies to all types of PCPs and the

methodology could be adapted to various contexts by identifying

the corresponding stakeholders and relationships. This study fo-

cused on an EPC-contract PCP in China and suggested mana-

gerial improvements.

Fig. 6. PCP relationships among stakeholders with BIM.

DS F

Coordination

Contral

Power

DCP M

Fig. 7. PCP relationships among stakeholders under the DCP (blockchain).

J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 2022, 148(10): 04022110

On a final note, the practical value of the developed framework

in this study depends on the availability of accurate information and

data. In the case study, the data were gathered by holding ethno-

graphic interviews with eight participants, who participated for an

average of 14.5 months in this 2-year PCP case. Although these

participants were highly experienced, it is admitted that the results

would have become more persuasive if more participants in this

prefabricated project could have been interviewed. Furthermore,

due to the measurability of indicators, this framework targets a

few specific capabilities, i.e., flexibility, efficiency, and robustness;

other indicators, like sustainability and persistence, can further be

included in future studies. Additionally, this developed framework

only considers a binary classification, that is, 0 or 1, to quantify

relationships, and therefore, how their strength, for example,

graded on Likert scales from 1 to 5, influences PCP organizational

resilience can be further investigated.

Data Availability Statement

Some or all data, models, or code that support the findings of this

study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable

request.

Acknowledgments

This research was financially supported by the grant from the Na-

tional Social Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 20FJLB025).

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P1 P2 P3 P4 P5

With a League 0.52 0.28 0.32 0.3 0.46

With BIM 0.43 0.21 0.20 0.25 0.26

With DCP 0.20 0.20 0.20 0.20 0.20

Original One 0.51 0.28 0.25 0.29 0.47

0.18

0.23

0.28

0.33

0.38

0.43

0.48

0.53

0.58

Resilience Score

With a League With BIM With DCP Original One

Fig. 8. Comparing PCP organization resilience with a league, BIM,

and DCP.

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Article

May 2024

Purpose As an effective measure for reducing energy consumption and achieving carbon neutrality, prefabricated building projects (PBPs) have attracted considerable attention in China. Although the Chinese Government has vigorously promoted PBPs, neither developers nor consumers have high recognition of PBPs. This study aimed to explore the decision-making behaviour of governments, developers and consumers in promoting the development of prefabricated buildings in China and to better optimise the incentive strategies for prefabricated buildings in China. Design/methodology/approach Based on prospect and evolutionary game theories, an evolutionary game model of three stakeholders in the development of PBPs – government, developers and consumers – was constructed. Combined with the system dynamics theory, the incentive policy behaviour and influencing factors of the three parties in the evolutionary game model were analysed. Findings The results showed that the initial probability of the three parties affects the decision-making behaviour of each party and that of other stakeholders. Government subsidies to developers are more sensitive than developers themselves. There is a certain threshold for the scope of government subsidies to consumers, and exceeding this threshold does not promote the development of PBPs. Based on the results, policy recommendations to the government, developers and consumers were proposed to enhance PBP development. Originality/value This study provides suggestions for governments to formulate reasonable incentive policies for prefabricated buildings and a specific theoretical basis for the sound development of prefabricated buildings.

Study on construction safety management in megaprojects from the perspective of resilient governance

Article

May 2024
SAFETY SCI

Intelligent construction technology based information sharing network for prefabricated building supply chain: a social network analysis approach

Article

Apr 2024
KYBERNETES

Purpose In the context of Industry 4.0, intelligent construction technologies (ICT) represented by information technology and networking will undoubtedly provide new impetus to the development of the prefabricated building supply chain (PBSC), but they will also bring various potential risks. So far, there is a large lack of research on the comprehensive consideration of the risks associated with the intelligent transformation of PBSC based on the information sharing perspective, and the critical risks and interactions are still unclear, making it difficult to identify efficient risk mitigation strategies. Therefore, this paper aims to reveal the interactions between stakeholders and clarify the critical risk nodes and interactions in information sharing of PBSC (IS-PBSC), and propose targeted risk mitigation strategies. Design/methodology/approach Firstly, this paper creatively delineates the risks and critical stakeholders of IS-PBSC. Secondly, Data is collected through questionnaires to understand the degree of risks impact. Thirdly, with the help of NetMiner 4 software, social network analysis is conducted and IS-PBSC risk network is established to reveal critical risk nodes and interactions. Finally, further targeted discussion of critical risk nodes, the effectiveness and reasonableness of the risk mitigation strategies are proposed and verified through NetMiner 4 software simulation. Findings The results show that the critical risks cover the entire process of information sharing, with the lack of information management norms and other information assurance-related risks accounting for the largest proportion. In addition, the government dominates in risk control, followed by other stakeholders. The implementation of risk mitigation strategies is effective, with the overall network density reduced by 41.15% and network cohesion reduced by 24%. Research limitations/implications In the context of Industry 4.0, ICT represented by information technology and networking will undoubtedly provide new impetus to the development of the PBSC, but they will also bring various potential risks. So far, there is a large lack of research on the comprehensive consideration of the risks associated with the intelligent transformation of PBSC based on the information sharing perspective, and the critical risks and interactions are still unclear, making it difficult to identify efficient risk mitigation strategies. Originality/value Based on the results of risk network visualization analysis, this paper proposes an ICT-based IS-PBSC mechanism that promotes the development of the integration of ICT and PBSC while safeguarding the benefits of various stakeholders.

Deconstructing the organizational resilience of construction firms in major emergencies: A text mining analysis of listed construction companies in China

Article

Apr 2024

Project Robustness: Conceptualization, Measurement, and Implications for Decision-Making

Article

Mar 2024
IEEE T ENG MANAGE

Ashkan Zarghami

Recognizing the need for defining and measuring project robustness, the purpose of this paper is threefold. First, it attempts to rigorously define the term “project robustness” based on the key characteristics of a robust project. Second, this paper aims to propose a measure of project robustness that aligns with the new definition. Third, using empirical evidence, this paper illustrates how the new measure of robustness can make a difference to decision-making in the project appraisal and execution phases. The results of this research highlight that robustness is more than a key property of resilience; rather, it is a multidimensional construct that includes a set of four necessary characteristics (i.e., resistance, stability, recoverability, and goal attainment) deemed vital to tackle disruptions. The results also demonstrate how a combination of these characteristics can be integrated into decision-making in the project management context. This paper contributes to the research on decision-making by mitigating optimism bias in projects, transitioning from heuristic to analytic decision-making. It achieves this by leveraging the relevant quantitative evidence regarding the disruption and recovery profile of a highly comparable project, thereby avoiding flawed judgments.

Building Organizational Resilience with Digital Transformation

Article

Full-text available

Dec 2021
J SERV MANAGE

Purpose – Uncertain times (e.g., COVID-19) require service businesses to respond in creative, flexible, and resilient ways. This paper aims to develop and test the theoretical relationship between digital transformation and organizational resilience, and the consequences of organizational resilience (OR) on organizations and employees during turbulent times. Study design/methodology/approach – A scale development was first conducted with an expert panel. Later, 474 participants who work as employees in small and medium-sized service enterprises were recruited for structural equation modeling (SEM). Exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and path analysis were conducted to test the relationship between dimensions of digital maturity, dimensions of OR, and two consequential variables: organizational performance and employees’ state optimism. Findings – Strategic technology investment helps organizations to develop systematic control sustain operations in crises but may not directly contribute to employees’ capabilities of accurately understanding external turmoil, actively seeking available resources, and rapidly developing adaptive solutions. Transformation management intensity equips an organization with transformative vision, governance, and culture, and such transformative built-in leadership enables the organization to embrace employees with talents and innovativeness and help employees grow their capabilities when facing crises. The dimensions of OR have different influences on the organization and employees. Originality – This research develops and tests the dimensions and measurement items of OR for the services domain and empirically tested how the dimensions of digital maturity influence the dimensions of OR, and how OR influences the organization’s performance and employees’ state optimism.

Evaluation of supply chain resilience index: a graph theory based approach

Article

Full-text available

Jun 2021
Benchmark Int J

Purpose The present study aims at developing a model to quantify supply chain resilience as a single numerical value. The numerical value is called resilience index that measures the resilience capability of the case company's supply chain. The model calculates the index value based on the interactions between the enablers of supply chain resilience and its dimensions. Design/methodology/approach Graph theoretic approach (GTA) is used to evaluate the resilience index for the case company's supply chain. In GTA, the dimensions of resilience enablers and their interdependencies are modelled through a digraph. The digraph depicting the influence of each dimension is converted into an adjacency matrix. The permanent function value of the adjacency matrix is called the resilience index (RI). Findings The proposed approach has been illustrated in context of an Indian automobile organization, and value of the RI is evaluated. The best case and the worst-case values are also obtained with the help of GTA. It is noted from the model that strategic level dimension of enablers is most important in contributing towards supply chain resilience. They are followed by tactical and operational level enablers. The GTA framework proposed will help supply chain practitioners to evaluate and benchmark the supply chain resilience of their respective organizations with the best in the industry. Originality/value A firm can compare the RI of its own supply chain with other's supply chain or with the best in the industry for benchmarking purpose. Benchmarking of resilience will help organizations in developing strategies to compete in dynamic market scenario.

Exploring smart construction objects as blockchain oracles in construction supply chain management

Article

Full-text available

Sep 2021
AUTOMAT CONSTR

Blockchain technology has attracted the interest of the global construction industry for its potential to enhance the transparency, traceability, and immutability of construction data and enables collaboration and trust throughout the supply chain. However, such potential cannot be achieved without blockchain "oracles" needed to bridge the on-chain (i.e., blockchain system) and off-chain (i.e., real-life physical project) worlds. This study presents an innovative solution that exploits smart construction objects (SCOs). It develops a SCOs-enabled blockchain oracles (SCOs-BOs) framework. To instantiate this framework, the system architecture of a blockchain-enabled construction supply chain management (BCSCM) system is developed and validated using a case study, whereby four primary smart contracts are examined in the context of off-site logistics and on-site assembly services. The validation results show that accurate data is retrieved against malicious data in each request, and the corresponding reputation scores are successfully recorded. The innovativeness of the research lies in two aspects. In addition to mobilizing SCOs as blockchain oracles to bridge the on-chain and off-chain worlds, it develops a decentralized SCO network to avoid the single point of failure (SPoF) problem widely existing in blockchain systems. This study contributes to existing research and practice to harness the power of blockchain in construction.

Prior and governed stakeholder relationships: The key to resilience of inter-organizational projects

Article

Jan 2022
Int J Proj Manag

Increasingly, scholars are recognising the importance of resilience in projects. However, there is a lack of research on the resilience of temporary inter-organisational projects while considering the intricate relationship among multiple stakeholder organisations. We conducted an embedded comparative case study to investigate the mechanisms how stakeholder relationships involving prior ties and inter-organisational governance in the project support its resilience. Our results show that few prior ties among stakeholders keep them vigilant, fostering the readiness and preparedness for resilience, while many prior ties keep social solidarity among stakeholders, fostering the response and recovery for resilience. Contractual and relational governance improves resilience by clarifying stakeholders’ roles and responsibilities and forming collective cognition, respectively. We believe a plural governance design based on prior ties among stakeholders will improve resilience of the inter-organisational project, by promoting dynamically distributed and centralised stakeholder engagement in preparing, responding and recovering from the unexpected.

Resilience Criteria for Project Delivery Processes: An Exploratory Analysis for Highway Project Development

Article

Sep 2021

Highway project delivery is a disruption-prone process in which resilience is essential to project success, because different project stages experience disruptions and struggle to reach desired project outcomes. A process to assess resilience in project delivery is necessary to be able to evaluate how a project may respond to disruptive events during the planning, design, and construction phases. Many practices in the literature can aid highway project delivery resilience through resistance, recovery, and adaptation. Through the use of survey data and principal component analysis (PCA), this large group of resilience practices was reduced to seven key resilience criteria for each stage of resilience. These resilience criteria form the basis for future resilience assessment of the project delivery process. The findings of this research add to the body of knowledge by providing a means to incorporate resilience assessment into highway project delivery, which eventually can improve the resiliency of completed infrastructure.

Managing stakeholder-associated risks and their interactions in the life cycle of prefabricated building projects: A social network analysis approach

Article

Sep 2021
J CLEAN PROD

Sustainability has recently become popular in the prefabricated construction industry worldwide, particularly in terms of developing cleaner production methods to improve energy savings, emissions reduction, and environmental protection. Prefabricated building projects (PBPs) introduce not only positive changes to the construction process but also complexity in project implementation. Such complexity results in potential risks that pose new challenges to the success of PBPs. Previous studies on risks in PBPs primarily concentrated on what types of risks exist and how they affect project performance while considering the risks in isolation from each other. In practice, these risks embedded across the life cycle of PBPs are associated with various stakeholders and interact with each other. Therefore, using China as an example, this study employed social network analysis (SNA) to establish a risk network throughout the PBP life cycle to prioritize stakeholder-associated risks and risk interactions. Stakeholder-associated risks in the life cycle of PBPs were investigated based on a systematic literature review and interviews with critical stakeholders. A focus group meeting with experts was conducted to quantify the interrelations between the risks. Key risks and important risk interactions were deciphered by calculating multiple SNA metrics, and they were classified into ten major challenges that must be addressed. A network simulation revealed the significant effects of key risks and interactions on network complexity. Based on the network analysis results, the major challenges in PBPs were discussed, and responding strategies to address these challenges were proposed accordingly. This is the first study that considered dynamic risk interactions and related stakeholders to manage risks within the life cycle of PBPs. The proposed SNA-based risk management approach can provide a structured framework for researchers and practitioners to effectively and efficiently track and control these interactive stakeholder-associated risks through the life cycle of PBPs.

Measuring organizational resilience: Tracing disruptive events facing unconventional oil and gas enterprise performance in the Americas

Article

Oct 2021

Over the last few decades, organizations have to cope with high uncertainties and extreme events like the Covid-19 pandemic, demand collapse, or supply chain disruptions with different capabilities to handle them. This work provides empirical evidence to test organizational resilience to deal with turbulent environments by studying firms' performance in unconventional oil and gas development in North America and Latin America. The 2014–2015 and 2019–2020 hydrocarbon price collapse allow us to measure resilience potential based on the organizational recovery after suffering a disruptive event. Only in the US, oil and gas output increased 10 million barrels of equivalent oil per day, despite high costs, low returns, and growing funding needs. Companies had to innovate, adapt, and manage uncertainty to optimize production, reduce costs and risk exposure, and generate positive cash flows. The fragile disappeared, the robust and resilient survived, and the antifragile thrived. This paper aims to define customary indicators to measure organizations' resilience after an extreme event. It also provides a scale that offers an approach to rank organizations and contrasts the most distinctive managerial attributes for successful and failed companies to deal with uncertain environments.

Modeling Supply Chain Resilience in Industrialized Construction: A Hong Kong Case

Article

Jul 2021

Given the heightened imperatives for Supply Chain Resilience (SCR) in Industrialized Construction (IC) in Hong Kong, this study modelled the dynamic impact of Supply Chain Vulnerabilities (SCV) and Supply Chain Capabilities (SCC) on IC supply chains. The data collected through expert surveys, interviews and case studies were analyzed using Social Network Analysis (SNA) and System Dynamics Modelling (SDM) to develop the research models. On-site assembly was identified as the most vulnerable supply chain phase, and ‘anticipation’ as the most influential capability. Further, the use of an interoperable, smart software package and other suggested strategies were shown to enhance IC's resilient capabilities. As key practical contributions, these findings provide evidence-based pointers to initiate well-focused performance-enhancing measures to achieve SCR in IC. Moreover, this is the first initiative to explore the potential applications of SDM and SNA to assess IC supply chain dynamics targeting a goal of enhanced resilience. This study, therefore, contributes substantially to the IC and SCR knowledge domains. This should also motivate and provide pointers to scholars pursuing similar industry-specific improvements in other jurisdictions too. Keywords: Supply Chain Resilience (SCR); Industrialized Construction (IC); Social Network Analysis (SNA); System Dynamics Modelling (SDM); Supply Chain Vulnerabilities (SCV); Supply Chain Capabilities (SCC)

Managing Interfaces in Large-Scale Projects: The Roles of Formal Governance and Partnering

Article

Jul 2021

Dynamics of Collaborative Networks for Green Building Projects: Case Study of Shanghai

Article

May 2021

Close interorganizational collaboration plays a crucial role in achieving the sustainable goals of green building projects. Therefore, it is imperative to optimize interorganizational collaboration networks through mutual coupling between stakeholders. Few studies on collaborative networks in green building projects have focused on the network micromechanisms of dynamic collaborations among stakeholders. A stochastic actor-oriented model is developed in this study to investigate how collaborative networks evolve over time in green building project implementations. Furthermore, how the micromechanism influences this evolution was assessed using longitudinal data relating to green building projects in Shanghai from 2014 to 2018. The results showed that the size and density of collaborative networks increased with the entry of new organizations over time. The structure-based preferential attachment effect, the triadic closure effect, the ownership similarity effect, the geographic proximity effect, and the cognitive proximity effect positively affect the evolution of dynamic collaborative networks at the microlevel. This study helps to better understand the interactions between organizations during the implementation practices of green building projects. In addition, the dynamics of the interorganizational relationship were investigated from the network microlevel. These results enriched the existing body of knowledge on the dynamic collaborative network of stakeholders in green building projects. These findings are valuable for practitioners, and enable the development of corresponding strategies to promote the interorganizational collaboration and achieve higher performance in green building projects.

Developing a Framework for Dynamic Organizational Resilience Analysis in Prefabricated Construction Projects: A Project Life Cycle Perspective

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