International Journal of Construction Management

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A systematic review of ‘enablers of collaboration’

among the participants in construction projects

Shumank Deep, Thayaparan Gajendran & Marcus Jefferies

To cite this article: Shumank Deep, Thayaparan Gajendran & Marcus Jefferies (2019): A
systematic review of ‘enablers of collaboration’ among the participants in construction projects,
International Journal of Construction Management, DOI: 10.1080/15623599.2019.1596624

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/15623599.2019.1596624

Published online: 02 Apr 2019.

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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT
https://doi.org/10.1080/15623599.2019.1596624

A systematic review of ‘enablers of collaboration’ among the participants

in construction projects
Shumank Deep, Thayaparan Gajendran and Marcus Jefferies
School of Architecture and Built Environment, University of Newcastle, Calaghan, NSW, Australia

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
The recent advancements in the project execution thinking and the growing levels of large cap- Collaboration; commitment;
ital-intensive investment projects in construction have led to increased attention to the construction projects;
‘collaboration’. Loss or lack of collaboration between project partners is seen as the most signifi- reliability; subcontractors;
trust
cant professional and project execution in the construction industry. This study aims to identify
the enablers, i.e. governing factors of collaboration. This study applies a systematic review meth-
odology to explore the literature and achieve the objectives. In the process of this systematic lit-
erature review, a total of 800 articles were identified in the construction domain, out of which
110 articles were found to be relevant for this study. The ‘citation analysis’ was performed on the
articles identified by ‘content analysis’ as relevant to this study, which focused on the issue of the
construction industry and issues of subcontractors. The findings identified that trust, commitment
and reliability are the enablers of collaboration in construction projects. Providing due attention
to the enablers of collaboration, i.e. ‘trust, commitment and reliability’ in the context of the pro-
ject execution decisions, can facilitate collaboration and thus enhancing project productivity.

Introduction Procurement is a continuum of various methods for

The construction industry has undergone a significant
transformation in the last few decades in terms of the
scale of project reflected by the large investments, the
processes involved in the project execution, the com-
plex procurement scenario and recent advancements
in construction technology. These advancements
have brought to light many novel approaches, i.e.
collaboration, alliance contracting, early contractor
involvement, etc. The construction industry is highly
dependent on human resources; project operations to
a greater extent rely on the decision making of the
project managers and other decisionmakers involved.
Collaboration is an essential professional attribute to
facilitate the successful execution of the project and to
ensure in time delivery of the project (Bresnen and
Marshall 2000; Lloyd-walker et al. 2014; Donato
2016). The relationships that are critical in a con-
struction project are between ‘client and contractor’
and ‘contractor and subcontractor’. These two rela-
tionships are complex in the context of translating the
client’s ideas and needs into a built form. However,
in the context of operationalizing and executing of
the physical construction, the relationship between
contractor and subcontractor is indispensable.
purchase and composed of a selection of the source of
funding, partner selection, pricing agreements and allo-
cation of resources and amount of subcontracting
(Osipova and Eriksson 2011; Hughes et al. 2015; Perez
et al. 2017). The idea of ‘collaborative procurement’
focuses on developing long-term relationships and
enhancing productivity that can assist in reducing the
potential of cost overrun and hence minimizing dis-
putes. However, Ey et al. (2014) suggest that the
construction industry is hesitant to adopt changes
and is affected by the adversarial attitudes, leading to
high levels of dissatisfaction among stakeholders.
The existence of various barriers of collaboration, i.e.
breach of trust, lack of commitment and lack of
communication and commercial pressures are sug-
gested as the reasons for disputes and dissatisfaction
among construction partners. Also, Donato et al.
(2015) observe that consistent unfair risk transfer
between parties impacting the relationship in con-
struction projects.
Among the several constraints faced in the practice
of construction industry professionals, loss or lack of
collaboration is the predominant professional issue
which impacts on the execution of construction proj-
ects. Persistent risk transfer results in subcontractors

CONTACT Shumank Deep shumank2012@gmail.com

ß 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 S. DEEP ET AL.
being concerned towards their profit and thus influenc-
ing its reliability and leads to adverse project outcomes.
Thus, it is indeed essential to identify the enablers of
collaboration. Therefore, this article aims to identify the
enablers of collaboration in construction projects.
A systematic process is used to explore the dis-
course on collaboration in the literature to answer the
research questions. This study is divided into three
sections; the first section presents a brief outline of
the research method, the second section focusses on
the research trends on collaboration and the third
section will discuss the findings.
Research method
The systematic process offers a critical view of the
current knowledge of the topic under consideration.
The review builds on the method used by de Ara
ujo
et al. (2017) and has three stages, i.e. material collec-
tion, descriptive analysis and material evaluation. The
first stage, e.g. the material collection consists of a
keyword-based search across various online databases
and title analysis. The descriptive analysis consists of
abstract analysis and content analysis. Endnote was
used as a reference management software, and NVivo
12 was used for abstract analysis and content analysis.
Material collection
Initially, a keyword-based search was performed
across Google scholar, Scopus, ASCE library and sci-
ence direct and 800 relevant articles in the construc-
tion domain were identified. By following this, a title
analysis was performed, resulting in 631 relevant
articles as shown in Figure 1. The initial filtration
process of articles is the ‘title analysis’ in which the
title of the study was evaluated based on the proposed
research question and the study domain.
Descriptive analysis
Abstract analysis
The ‘abstract analysis’ subsequently reduced the num-
ber of articles to 410. ‘Abstract analysis’ is a further in-
depth analysis to filter the articles where the criteria
are to identify the articles by industry, aim and
research methodology and keywords play a decisive
role in the selection of suitable articles. Also, abstract
analysis played a crucial role in the prediction of
research trend as it provided insights into the aim of
research. The trend in the academic publications in the
area ‘collaboration’ in the construction industry is as
shown in Figure 2 as a result of the abstract analysis.
This suggests that a significant increase is found in the
articles referring to ‘collaboration’ in the last 5 years.
Furthermore, methods adopted in articles being
referred to in this study were categorized based on the
study of Hesping and Schiele (2015) as Conceptual or
theoretical articles, Case Studies, Review Articles and
Surveys. A major limitation for this study was the focus
of researchers in construction and it was limited to the
identification of collaboration constraints. Interestingly
31.5% (129) articles evaluated for text analysis were
published in 2017, and the number of conceptual
papers and review article was deficient. A large number
of articles that used surveys were almost 2.06 times the
total conceptual and review articles combined.
Content analysis
Finally, the content analysis identified one hundred
and ten (110) relevant articles mostly in the period of
2000–2017. Content analysis is a crucial step in the
systematic review process. The content analysis identi-
fies the final set of articles to be included for the
study based on the relevance of the selected papers
research aim and question to the proposed study.
The selected articles were qualitatively analyzed
using the NVivo software. In addition, a co-occur-
rence-based keyword map was prepared using the Vos-
viewer software to show the relationship among the
co-occurring keywords in the selected articles. The key-
words which occur not less than three times in the
selected set of articles were used criteria to generate
the co-occurrence-based keyword. Through network
visualization (Figure 3), it was observed that
‘collaboration’ is strongly liked to procurement, man-
agement, opportunism, trust, organization, selection,
partnering, performance, project management and inte-
gration. This suggests that collaboration can be
achieved by integration among project participants and
is influenced by partnering and procurement decision
(Donato et al. 2015; Walker et al. 2017). Also, it is
observed in the content analysis that opportunism
influences the trust of project participants and procure-
ment decisions govern the partner’s selection mechan-
ism (Matthews et al. 2017; Lin et al. 2018). Research
articles, from a peer-reviewed journal, and in English
was selected in the first instance. The descriptive ana-
lysis was performed to classify the articles under the
following criteria: the total number of research articles;
relevance and distribution in various journals. This
data was useful to determine the general perspective of
the review methodology to identify the most relevant
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT 3

Figure 1. Filtration process

4 S. DEEP ET AL.
Figure 2. Research trends on collaboration in construction.
Figure 3. Keyword co-occurrence network visualization for content analysis.
journals and to indicate how the significance of the
issue and research methodologies has expanded and
developed over time. As a result, the temporal distribu-
tion of article to predict research tendencies in this
area over time was prepared.
Material evaluation
Chronology of research thinking on collaboration
in construction
Collaboration is defined as the process in which two
project participants (in the context of this article a
contractor and subcontractor) working together to
achieve a common goal (Pal et al. 2017). The collab-
oration attracted the attention of the practitioners and
researcher alike in the construction industry especially
with increasing scale of projects. Researchers used
several lenses to explore ‘collaboration’ including con-
struction procurement selection (Akintoye et al. 2000;
Alhazmi and McCaffer 2000; Bresnen and Marshall
2000; Ernzen and Schexnayder 2000), supply chain in
construction (Vrijhoef and Koskela 2000;
Palaneeswaran et al. 2001; Thunberg and Persson
2014), institutional reforms in construction (Winch
2000; Zsidisin et al. 2000), utilization of ICT

Figure 4. Research trends in collaboration in construction projects.
(Gajendran and Brewer 2012) and public–private
partnership (Ahadzi and Bowles 2004). However, as
the scale of projects changed, the focus of researchers
shifted from exploring ‘why to collaborate’ to ‘what is
affecting collaboration’. From 2012 to 2017, most
types of research aimed at the following theme and
identified that the phenomenon of collaboration is
based on relational attributes of client–contractor
relationship (Jelodar et al. 2017) as shown in
Figure 4.
The discourse into the procurement process has
emerged as an amalgam of traditional practices and
recent advancements with alternative engagement
practices, i.e. collaboration with project partners for
innovation, early contractor involvement and strategic
purchasing (Ateş et al. 2017; de Boer 2017; Lonsdale
et al. 2017; Paesbrugghe et al. 2017). Collaboration
with main contractors and subcontractors is seen
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT 5
indispensable in improving productivity as this collab-
oration can lead to improvement in quality, reduce
potential for extensions of time and cost overruns
(Rehme et al. 2016; Reimann et al. 2016; Apa and
Sedita 2017; Danesh et al. 2017; Hochrein et al. 2017;
Tchokogue et al. 2017; Wiengarten and Ambrose 2017).
Various researchers have endorsed that ‘collaboration
in procurement practice’ is a nascent concept, and vary-
ing levels of commitment have been observed in collab-
oration amidst collaborating parties, foremost being the
arm’s length relationship (Jefferies et al. 2014; Walker
and Rahamani 2016; Børve et al. 2017; Davis et al.
2017; El-Adaway et al. 2017; Hietaj€arvi and Aaltonen
2017; Kerkhove and Vanhoucke 2017; Sanderson et al.
2018; Sarhan et al. 2017; Tanko et al. 2017).
Researchers also identified the aspects that have
the potential to impact collaboration including ‘risk
allocation and resource dependency’ (Donato et al.
6 S. DEEP ET AL.
2015; Donato 2016), ‘managing relationships’ (Pal
et al. 2017), ‘quality of relationship’ (Jelodar et al.
2016, 2017) and broadly the barriers of collaboration
(Ey et al. 2014). All researchers equivocally argued
that in most instances the unfair risk transfers in a
procurement process negatively affect collaboration,
especially in a project environment driven by the
highly transactional approach. Furthermore, the con-
struction industry players are hesitant to adopt new
approaches and its dependency on traditional meth-
ods (Ey et al. 2014) does negatively impact on the col-
laboration. Also, Rahmani et al. (2017) argued that
some of the hyped claims of collaboration in relation-
ship-based procurement methods (e.g. alliance model)
did not deliver value for money which has resulted in
their rejection. In essence, the ‘allocation of risks’ in
project procurement has a significant impact on the
‘extent of collaboration’.
The relationship between ‘procurement risks’ and
‘collaboration’
The construction industry, irrespective of its contribu-
tion to the country’s economy, lags behind other
industries in the context of productivity and profitabil-
ity improvements. This is partly due to an excessive
internal focus of the firms in construction projects and
focusing on ‘project management’ rather than extend-
ing the firms relationships to broader supply chain
management. The lack of supply chain considerations
adds to the existing fragmentation, regionalism and
low profitability issues furthering adversarial relation-
ships and opportunism at all the stages of the project,
particularly between the main contractor and the sub-
contractors (Doloi 2015; Donato et al. 2015; Donato
2016; Jagtap et al. 2017; Pal et al. 2017a).
Thus, the main contractor should select a limited
number of suppliers and subcontractors based on ser-
vice requirement and capabilities, and cooperatively
work to combine them well in the supply chain to
minimize cost overruns, time extension and other
risks (Briscoe and Dainty 2005; Cannon et al. 2010;
Donato et al. 2015; Eriksson 2015; Muir 2015; Donato
2016; Forsythe 2016; Mills et al. 2016; Ju et al. 2017;
Ryciuk 2017; Zhang and Qian 2017). The main con-
tractors rely on subcontractors and suppliers for exe-
cuting the works and consider them as significant
resources. However, on the other hand, main contrac-
tors also consider subcontractors and suppliers most
easily exploitable for potential risk loading and cost
saving, resulting in unfair practices and leading to
breach of trust (Lam et al. 2004; Lloyd-walker et al.
2014; Love et al. 2017b). This behaviour of the main
contractor risk transfer can create barriers for
collaboration.
Partnering is an extensively used term which exem-
plifies collaboration and states that better outcomes
and efficient project delivery can be achieved in the
case when all the participants share a common goal
and work together to achieve a common goal, and all
partners are autonomous (Morledge and Smith 2013).
Alderman and Ivory (2007) advocated the idea appli-
cation of collaborative, more open and less hierarch-
ical relationships between project stakeholders for
better execution and supply chain management.
Recent studies on collaboration in construction rec-
ommend partnering as an effective strategy to ensure
stability, profitability and improved project perform-
ance. Foremost explanation for this is compelling
partnering strategies reinforce the supply chain net-
works to display long term and active collaboration
(Pal et al. 2017).
According to Gajendran and Brewer (2012), collab-
oration possesses the vast potential to impact project
performance by improving efficiency and construct-
ability positively. Furthermore, utilization of collabor-
ation results in the removal of significant
construction constraints promotes effective problem
solving and increased coordination (Jefferies et al.
2014; Davis et al. 2017). However, as it is evident
from the literature, various risks in the procurement
process can create ambiguities and constraints on col-
laboration (Tanko et al. 2017; Kapogiannis and
Sherratt 2018; Koolwijk et al. 2018; Yazdani et al.
2019; Zhang et al. 2019).
The relationship among ‘procurement risk’,
‘collaboration constraints’ and
‘collaboration enablers’
An extensive review of the literature leads us to the
identification of seven potential procurement risks
and 11 collaboration constraints. This section was
focused on determining the relationship between the
collaboration constraints and the supply which will
result in identification factors that govern collabor-
ation. Thus, a text frequency query was performed in
NVivo software, and the results are summarized in
Table 1. Table 1 also identifies the potential enablers
who play an essential role to overcome those risks or
possess significant influence on various procure-
ment risks.
The constraints of collaboration can manifest in
procurement risks and vice versa. Arm’s length
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT 7

Table 1. Procurement risks, collaboration constraints and enablers.

Researchers supporting Total
Procurement risk Collaboration constraints the idea citations Potential collaboration enablers
Unfair risk allocation Opportunism 145 419 Trust, commitment, Reliability, market
Regionalism 113 conditions and nature of relationship
Arm’s length relationship 127
Profit margins 34
The commitment of Arm’s length relationship 125 383 Trust, reliability, market conditions,
parties to a contract Communication failures 56 nature of relationship, and behaviour
Breach of trust 78
Profit margins 28
Opportunism 96
Reliability of Arm’s length relationship 145 362 Trust, commitment, market conditions
subcontractor/supplier Communication failures 80 and nature of relationship
Breach of trust 100
Regionalism 37
Offshore procurement Communication failure 79 345 Trust, reliability and Market Conditions
risks Opportunism 112
Force majeure 17
Socio-political scenario 10
Breach of trust 127
Financial risk Communication failures 52 230 Commitment and reliability
Profit margins 24
Opportunism 80
Competence 74
Logistical risks Opportunism 32 214 Trust, commitment and reliability Market
Breach of trust 18 conditions, nature of relationship
Regionalism 52 and behaviour
Force majeure 100
Socio-political scenario 12
Inventory risks Arm’s length relationship 85 156 Trust, commitment, reliability, market
Communication failure 16 conditions and nature of relationship
Competence 12
Project complexity 43

relationship, Communication Failures, Breach of trust,
Regionalism, Profit Margins, Opportunism, Force
Majeure, Socio-Political Scenario, Communication
Failure, Competence and Project Complexity are the
various constraints of collaboration. The nature of
relationships is characterized by the presence of
adversarial relationships and arm’s length relationship.
Behaviour is characterized by the presence of favorit-
ism, opportunism and regionalism. Market conditions
are characterized by the market knowledge of the pro-
ject participants, switching costs and product
availability.
Moreover, as evident from the findings of several
researchers squeezed profit margin, regionalism,
opportunism directly influence trust, arm’s length
relationship and competency define the nature of the
relationship, opportunism and regionalism influences
behaviour, and finally, project complexities, socio-pol-
itical scenario and profit margins are an indicator of
market conditions. Hence, it can be remarked that the
influence of barriers of collaboration on procurement
risks thus impacts collaboration.
Table 1 identifies that arm’s length relationships,
opportunism and regionalism as significant factors affect-
ing collaboration (Palaneeswaran and Kumaraswamy
2000; Palmer 2007; Orangi et al. 2011; Ey et al. 2014;
Kotula et al. 2015; Gopalakrishnan and Zhang 2017;
Pal et al. 2017). Construction industry relies highly
on transactional relationships and is resistant to
adapt to new changes; it is one of the reasons why
the construction industry lags behind others (Ey
et al. 2014). The above discussed issues contribute to
‘procurement risks’; lack of commitment, unreliabil-
ity and unfair risk allocation among participants,
threatening project performance (Osipova and
Eriksson 2011; Sigmund and Radujkovic 2014;
Donato et al. 2015; Wang et al. 2016; Gilbert et al.
2017; Melese et al. 2017; Perez et al. 2017; Perrenoud
et al. 2017; Shan et al. 2017). These aspects tend to
impact the collaboration and deteriorate relationship
among that partner involved in a project.
Among the articles reviewed, 20% identified unfair
risk allocation as a significant procurement risk.
Donato et al. (2015) suggest that unfair risk allocation
negatively impacts on the cooperation among contrac-
tors and subcontractors. The level of commitment
(18%), reliability (17%) and the offshore procurement
(16%) are other significant project risks identified in
the review. The following sections discuss in detail
the various procurement risks and focus on identify-
ing the various enablers of collaboration mitigating
the risks.
8 S. DEEP ET AL.
Unfair risk allocation
Client’s criterion for the selection of a procurement is
influenced by many variables including the allocation
of responsibilities and liabilities among the parties
triggering different levels of collaboration in the proj-
ects having a substantial impact on risk–reward pro-
file each party (Love et al. 2015, 2017a, 2017b; Perez
et al. 2017; Rahmani et al. 2017). Recent studies indi-
cate that suppliers or subcontractors may be exposed
to high levels of uncertainty and risk in the procum-
bent arrangements, resulting in cost and time over-
runs, in some cases leading to insolvency of
subcontractors (Donato et al. 2015; Donato 2016; Du
et al. 2016; Ou-Yang and Chen 2017; Pal et al. 2017;
Mathivathanan et al. 2018). Unequitable risk alloca-
tion happens as a result of ‘market conditions’ (espe-
cially in a very competitive market where
subcontractors are price takers) and in generally
arm’s length/transactional nature of relationships
between the ‘main contractor and subcontractor’.
Unfair allocation of risk hinders collaboration
through negatively influencing the trust, commitment
and reliability of the project participants.
The commitment of the organization to a contract
The commitment of a party to a contract is critical
for building strong relationships in the construction
industry. The commitment needs to start from the
senior management of each construction organization
(CII, 1991) in a project. Jelodar et al. (2016, 2017)
suggested that ‘relationships include at least a dyad of
parties who may have different views and perspec-
tives’. Jelodar et al. (2016, p. 2) making it essential
that parties show commitment. To avoid conflicts and
breaching of trust, a combination of higher and lower
organizational commitment is vital (Zhang et al.
2019). Strategies for developing quality relationship
and enhancing commitment include (a) developing
mutual goals facilitating the alignment of the business
interest of parties (Jelodar et al. 2016, 2017); (b) the
main contractor maintaining a selected supplier/sub-
contractor base considering the service requirements
and capabilities and (c) should integrate the subcon-
tractors and suppliers well into the supply chain.
These strategies can reduce risks, improve perform-
ance and profit margin (Forsythe 2016; Pal et al.
2017). Therefore, the commitment of organizations
can be regarded as an essential enabler of collabor-
ation mitigating procurement risks.
Reliability of supplier
In the construction procurement process, the main
contractor has to rely on numerous suppliers and
subcontractors for successful project completion.
However, the emergence of the low level of reliability
can be attributed to many factors including arm’s
length relationship, communication failures, breach of
trust and regionalism (Ercan 2019; Meng 2019). Main
contractors and subcontractors often end up having
conflicting goals due to the one party questioning
even gainful modifications proposed by the other
party (Hartmann and Caerteling 2010). In addition,
the absence of trust in the construction sector ema-
nates from the excessive push from main contractors
for favorable quotes, and supplier/subcontractors not
sharing cost and other information fearing such open-
ness may provide main contractors a platform for
squeezing their profit margin considerably (Hartmann
and Caerteling 2010; Ling et al. 2014). All these lead
to lack of trust and low reliability in the main con-
tractor and subcontractor relationship. In essence, the
prevailing market conditions, the nature of relation-
ship and behaviours developed by both main contrac-
tors and subcontractors affect reliability.
Offshore procurement risks
Some parts of the construction supply chains are glo-
bally serviced in the construction industry, and this
generates significant procurement risks stemming
from destruction to such part of supply chains due to
force majeure, social–political unrests, etc. Offshore
procurement risks manifest in the form of supply
delay and/or increase in the price of products or
equipment necessary for a construction project
(Sundquist et al. 2018; Olawumi and Chan 2019;
Ortiz et al. 2019). Offshore collaborations are basically
trust-based relationships, and any kind of failure
results in loss of collaboration (Pal et al. 2017).
Furthermore, seamless communication is crucial
among the project participants involving offshore pro-
curement (Love et al. 2017b). These risks can be miti-
gated by collaboration underpinned by trust and
reliability of the project participants.
Financial risks
According to Love et al. (2017a), financial risks are a
significant component affecting project performance
in the construction sector and has become something
of a global phenomenon. The nature of cost overruns
varies by geographical locations, the quality relation-
ship between parties and the political scene.

Sometimes, frequent changes in the project documen-
tation lead to these. Terrill and Danks (2016) suggest
that financial risks in transportation-related construc-
tion projects in Australia stem from premature polit-
ical announcements, unreliable estimates and
underestimation of the impact of cost overrun. The
occurrence of financial risks results in claims and
counterclaims, leading to delays in payment contribu-
ting to breach of trust and bad relationships among
the contracting parties and hence impacting the abil-
ity to collaborate. Financial risks can be minimized by
developing ‘collaboration’ underpinned by trust, com-
mitment and reliability forming part of both main
contractor and subcontractor.
Logistical risks
Sundquist et al. (2018) suggest that supply chain
logistics costs attract a significant chunk of the total
project cost. Efficiency and effectiveness in construc-
tion projects are heavily dependent on the integration
between on-site and off-site logistics influenced by the
reliability and commitment of the suppliers. Bankvall
et al. (2010) argued that complexities in the construc-
tion sector are more threatening as compared to other
sectors, mainly because of the interdependencies
among the various activities involved and the stake-
holders themselves. The fragmented nature of the
construction industry prevents the development of an
efficient supply chain network and thus makes coord-
ination an uphill task. Due to all abovementioned rea-
sons, the construction industry is the way behind
other industries (Segerstedt and Olofsson 2010). Over
time, the project participants have become heavily
dependent on logistics providers, and building trust
in the logistic network partners is essential for effect-
ive operations. Thus, logistics risks stem from the loss
of trust, commitment and reliability under the influ-
ence of market conditions, nature of relationship and
behaviour and results in loss of collaboration.
Inventory risks
The inventory in a construction project consists of the
raw materials and finished products that are meant to
be stored on or offsite (Thunberg et al. 2017). The
‘inventory risk’ is characterized by loss or inaccurate
assessment of stock required to be maintained for the
execution of a construction project. The inventory risks
occur as a result of lack of competencies, arm’s length
relationship, communication failures and project com-
plexity (Lin et al. 2018; Ortiz et al. 2019; Prasad et al.
2019). Another reason for the occurrence of inventory
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT 9
risk is the prevailing market conditions and the nature
of the relationship between the project participants
(Walker et al. 2017; Meng 2019; Noorizadeh et al.
2019; Tee et al. 2019). Thus, the inventory risk can be
mitigated by developing collaboration underpinned by
trust, reliability and commitment.
Discussion
The systematic literature review identified that collab-
oration is demonstrated by six factors namely, trust,
commitment, reliability, nature of relationship, behav-
iour and market conditions. Hence, mathematically
collaboration (fc) can be expressed as a function of
trust (t), commitment (c), reliability (r), market con-
ditions (mc), nature of the relationship (nr) and
behaviour (b), i.e. fc ¼ ðt; c; r; mc; nr; bÞ; therefore the
conceptual equation defining collaboration can be
given as below:
Equation (1) is the concept of collaboration
ð ð
ofc ofc ofc
dðcollaborationÞ ¼ dt þ dc þ dr
ot oc or
 (1)
ofc ofc ofc
þ dmc þ dnr þ db
omc onr ob
Equation (1) states that continuous collaboration in
the project is a derivative of enablers of collaboration,
i.e. continuous presence of trust, commitment and reli-
ability, which in turn is influenced by, i.e. market con-
ditions, nature of relationship and behaviour of
involved actors (Gilbert et al. 2017; Sullivan et al.
2017; Tezel and Aziz 2017; Thunberg et al. 2017).
Furthermore, the validity of above statement can
be ensured by prioritization of products and services,
vendor availability in the market, experience, reputa-
tion and competition in markets which depend on
principal’s market knowledge, the presence of cartels
and switching costs. Competition in the market char-
acterizes market conditions relies on factors, i.e.
switching costs, product availability, etc. (Ju et al.
2017). Thus ‘market conditions’ influence the trust
and commitment of project participants; whereas, the
nature of the relationship is demonstrated by the
presence of adversarial or arm’s length relationships
between the project participants and hence tends to
influence the reliability and commitment of the pro-
ject participants (Mahamid 2017; Manley and Chen
2017). Also, it influences the mutual trust of collabo-
rating parties – furthermore, the behaviour of project
participants is characterized by the presence of oppor-
tunism, favoritism, oppression, regionalism and risk
transfer in a collaborative relationship (Briscoe and
10 S. DEEP ET AL.
Dainty 2005; Gilbert et al. 2017; Hjelmbrekke et al.
2017; Pal et al. 2017; Sarhan et al. 2017; Rahmani
et al. 2017b). These factors tend to affect the reliabil-
ity of project participants which in turn influence
their commitment and lead to deterioration of trust.
Therefore, it can be evidently mentioned that collabor-
ation can be divided under two sets of a factor, i.e.
relational and transactional. The relational factors, e.g.
trust, commitment and reliability focus on achieving
integration among project participants, but their effect
is nullified under the influence of transactional attrib-
utes, e.g. market conditions, nature of relationship and
behaviour. This observation proves that collaboration
among the project participants is enabled by trust,
commitment and reliability. Thus, the conceptual equa-
tion can be further optimized to Equation (2).
Equation (2) is the optimized equation of collabor-
ation
ð ð  Disclosure statement
ofc ofc ofc
dðcollaborationÞ ¼ dt þ dc þ dr
ot oc or
(2)
Finally, from the optimized equation (Equation
(2)), it can be stated that long-term collaboration
between main contractor and subcontractor can be rep-
resented by (a) the presence of trust between project
participants; (b) their commitment towards achieving a
common goal, i.e. successful completion of the project
and (c) reliability of the project participants.
Therefore, trust, commitment and reliability are the
enablers of collaboration.
Conclusion
The results of a systematic literature review observed
that the main contractors usually transfer their risks
onto the subcontractors, an action that makes subcon-
tractors skeptical about their ability to maintain their
profit margins.In addition, this situation leads to
opportunism, regionalism and favoritism which con-
tributes to the breach of trust. The collaboration is
governed by trust, commitment and reliability, nature
of relationship, behaviour and market condition.
However, the latter three factors, i.e. nature of rela-
tionship, behaviour and market condition influence
constructs of trust, commitment and reliability.
Henceforth, trust, commitment and reliability are the
enablers of collaboration.
The construction industry is marred with adversar-
ial relationships; identification of the enablers of col-
laboration contributes to the body of knowledge by
underlining the importance of these in relationships
to the collaboration. Therefore, it can be recom-
mended that the main contractor’s procurement deci-
sions must be based on the level of the strategic
importance of the activity being performed by the
subcontractor. Considering the enablers of collabor-
ation, i.e. ‘trust, commitment and reliability’ in the
context of the project execution decisions will prevent
the breach collaboration and thus enhancing project
productivity. The limitation of this study is that the
systematic literature review presents the observations
derived from recently published studies. The findings
of the study can be further extended into a qualitative
study to develop context-specific knowledge about the
influence of enablers on collaboration and a funda-
mental validation through a quantitative study to
quantify the extent of collaboration.
No potential conflict of interest was reported by
the authors.
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