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How project management practices Project

management
lead to infrastructure sustainable practice and
goal setting
success: an empirical study based
on goal-setting theory 2797
Bingsheng Liu and Bin Xue Received 10 September 2019
Revised 26 December 2019
School of Public Affairs, Chongqing University, Chongqing, China 23 February 2020
Junna Meng Accepted 24 March 2020

College of Management and Economics, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China, and

Xingbin Chen and Ting Sun
Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering,
College of Science and Engineering, City University of Hong Kong,
Kowloon, Hong Kong

Abstract
Purpose – The sustainable success of infrastructures is becoming a driving force for advancing urbanization
globally. However, to achieve infrastructure sustainable success (ISS), how project management practices
(PMPs) play their role remains unexplored in current literature. To this end, an empirical study on whether
PMPs play significant impacts on the accomplishment of ISS was conducted.
Design/methodology/approach – This research is based on an empirical survey of domestic and overseas
infrastructure projects managed by Chinese companies. 162 data samples were collected and further analyzed
deploying structural equation modeling (SEM) on the basis of goal-setting theory. PMP factors derived from
the plan-do-check-act (PDCA) ideology, i.e. culture, strategy, implementation and reflection were hypothesized
and validated to have direct and indirect relationships with ISS.
Findings – The results of this study indicate that both culture and reflection can directly drive the PMPs
toward ISS. Furthermore, it is revealed that by affecting mediator factors of strategy, implementation and
reflection, culture is found to present an indirect influence on ISS; by affecting mediator factors of
implementation and reflection, Strategy is found to present an indirect influence on ISS and by affecting the
mediator factor of reflection, implementation is found to present an indirect influence on ISS.
Originality/value – These findings contribute to the body of knowledge in measuring sustainability success
of project management performances by clarifying critical relationships of how PMPs lead to ISS.
Prospectively, the outputs of this research will generate informative insights for practitioners to improve their
PMPs in the process of pursuing ISS in future infrastructure management practices.
Keywords Project management practice, Infrastructure sustainability, Structural equation modeling,
Empirical study
Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction
The aging and need for sustainable infrastructures have been identified as a global trend in
the construction industry with the greatest importance to and highest impacts on
urbanization (World Economic Forum, 2016). Infrastructure as a system engineering
affects a wide range of stakeholders and consumes a great number of resources. Therefore,
infrastructure sustainability is one driving force for urban economic growth, social utility
enhancement and environmental harmony improvement from a lifecycle viewpoint Engineering, Construction and
Architectural Management
Vol. 27 No. 10, 2020
pp. 2797-2833
This work is supported by the National Science Fund for Excellent Young Scholars of China (Grant No. © Emerald Publishing Limited
0969-9988
71722004), which is gratefully acknowledged by the authors. DOI 10.1108/ECAM-08-2019-0463
ECAM (Meng et al., 2018, 2015; Xue and Xu, 2018). However, the sustainable delivery of
27,10 infrastructures becomes debatable because there exist many ways to measure and achieve
infrastructure sustainability. Some scholars have pointed out the way to accomplish
sustainable construction projects by integrating the sustainability concepts into project
management practices (PMPs) (Banihashemi et al., 2017a; Martens and Carvalho, 2016a;
2017; Robichaud and Anantatmula, 2011). Project management has been defined as the
disciplined application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to project activities to
2798 meet project requirements (Project Management Institute, 2013). The knowledge of project
management is classified into ten areas as follows: integration management, scope
management, time management, quality management, cost management, human resource
management, communication management, risk management, procurement management
and stakeholder management (Project Management Institute, 2013). Accordingly, many
project management tools and techniques have been widely developed in each of the
knowledge area to support PMPs. For example, integrated design systems are adopted by
multidisciplinary professionals for integration management, work breakdown structures
for scope management, critical path scheduling for time management, earned value
analysis for cost management, fishbone diagrams for quality management, decision
support systems for material, supplier evaluation and selection in procurement
management, etc. Building upon this, PMPs can be recognized as the integration of these
knowledge and tools adapted into project planning, scheduling and controlling toward
achieving specific objectives with particular success criteria. To this end, PMPs have been
widely identified as an important facilitator leading to construction project success (Besner
and Hobbs, 2013; Ling et al., 2009; Mir and Pinnington, 2014). Nevertheless, as the
sustainable success of infrastructure projects has more significant impacts on the society
than those of regular building projects, existing literature only has provided a limited
picture in examining infrastructure sustainable success (ISS) through integrated PMPs.
Research efforts have been made in existing studies to identify critical success factors
measuring PMPs (Besner and Hobbs, 2013; Robichaud and Anantatmula, 2011; Vicente-Oliva
et al., 2015) and construction sustainability performances (Krajangsri and Pongpeng, 2017; Meng
et al., 2018, 2015). In terms of the measurement of PMPs, culture, strategy, implementation and
reflection are identified as the key metrics (Xue et al., 2018). However, the world is facing serious
situations during urbanization, where developing countries are searching for opportunities to
construct infrastructures accommodating city residents and developed countries are
encountering the reality of refurbishing and redeveloping old infrastructures (Amoah et al.,
2018; Cohen, 2006; Rydin et al., 2018). These trends have attracted infrastructure organizations
with professional PMPs to compete for contracts in international markets, where the delivery of
sustainable infrastructures is highly demanded (Bremmer, 2014; Donaubauer et al., 2016). With
regard to the measurement of infrastructure sustainability, economic, social, environmental and
managerial metrics are widely proposed as the critical factors (Banihashemi et al., 2017a;
Martens and Carvalho, 2017; Meng et al., 2018). In terms of the achievement of project
sustainability, previous studies have identified many determinants based on empirical evidence.
For example, structural equation modeling (SEM) was widely adopted to analyze how
stakeholder engagement (Bal et al., 2013), top managers’ leadership (Meng et al., 2015), project
management knowledge and skills (Hwang and Ng, 2013) and greening PMPs for sustainable
construction (Robichaud and Anantatmula, 2011) could directly or indirectly influence project
sustainable performances. However, little research has scrutinized the potential of PMPs in
achieving sustainable performances of construction projects.
Although some studies have proposed concepts and frameworks indicating the
integration of sustainability into project management (Banihashemi et al., 2017b; Sabini
et al., 2019; Silvius et al., 2013), there still exists a research gap impeding the linkage between
PMPs and ISS in the body of literature, especially in international contexts. Moreover, the
study scope of integrating sustainability into project management is concentrated on Project
building or industrial sectors rather than infrastructure projects with more sustainability management
concerns.
To bridge such a knowledge gap, this study aims to discover the interrelationships
practice and
among PMPs and the relationships between PMPs and ISS based on an empirical goal setting
perspective in infrastructure contexts. Under this aim, a research question is formulated as
“how PMPs measured by culture, strategy, implementation, and reflection could lead to
sustainability performances of infrastructure projects, i.e. ISS? ”. Through the lens of goal- 2799
setting theory, research hypotheses integrating variables of PMPs, and dimensions of ISS
have been proposed. To answer the research question by testing hypotheses, the objectives
of this study are as follows: (1) conduct a questionnaire survey collecting empirical data
implying professionals’ understanding of PMPs and ISS and (2) establish and analyze SEM
models explaining the relationship between PMPs and ISS. To guarantee the
generalizability, international infrastructures located across more than 8 countries or
regions have been surveyed. The scope lies in domestic and overseas infrastructures
managed by Chinese AEC companies, such as the Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macao Bridge
project. To the best of our knowledge, this study is novel in demonstrating the linkage
between project management and project sustainability – how to manipulate PMPs and how
to achieve ISS through PMPs. Findings from this empirical study contribute to the body of
knowledge of leading PMPs to lifecycle ISS and have practical significance in enlightening
construction practitioners on making informed decisions regarding infrastructure
sustainability management.

2. Points of departure
From a goal-oriented viewpoint, the delivery of a sustainable infrastructure fulfills project
success with economic, social, environmental and organizational benefits (Carvalho and
Rabechini, 2017; Meng et al., 2015). Achieving such sustainable infrastructures through
PMPs can thus be considered as a goal-setting and accomplishing process within
infrastructure sustainability management contexts. To this end, goal-setting theory (Locke
and Latham, 2002) is adopted as the theoretical point of departure to explain how
organizational PMPs lead to lifecycle ISS at the project level and to form the basis for
hypothesized model development in this study. Goal-setting theory was proposed to interpret
the positive linear relationship between goal difficulty and task performance, which has been
validated from individual goal setting and achievement to group or organizational levels
(Locke and Latham, 2006). This provides infrastructure professionals an analytical
instrument to predict infrastructure sustainability performances building upon the
impacts of goal setting in PMPs. In terms of PMPs, the key to achieving organizational
goals or business success is to develop PMPs and adapt PMPs based on the plan-do-check-act
(PDCA) ideology (Srivannaboon, 2009).
Xue et al. (2018) proposed a critical factor system for measuring PMPs and infrastructure
sustainability. Based on their evidence, 157 empirical samples from infrastructure
management professionals were analyzed through principal components analysis and
confirmatory factor analysis. They concluded that PMPs are measured by project
management culture, project management strategy, project management implementation
and project management reflection, while infrastructure sustainability is assessed by project
economy, environmental implication, social utility and organizational integration. Therefore,
this study adopted and furthered the critical factor system in Xue et al. (2018), whereby a
conceptual framework is proposed integrating PMPs and ISS grounded by the goal- setting
theory as illustrated in Figure 1.
ECAM 2.1 Project management practices (PMPs)
27,10 2.1.1 Culture of project management. Culture has been identified as the critical characteristic
determining subject behaviors in both organizational and project contexts. Schein (2004)
proposed that the intensity of culture will affect the effectiveness of organizational
performances. Organizational culture is interpreted as normalized routines that are led by
leadership and function as a value system. The culture of project management specifies the
goals organizations are pursuing, which would affect decision-making processes (Naoum
2800 et al., 2013) and operation efficiency (Trice and Beyer, 1993) regarding goal achievements.
In organizational contexts, relationships between organizational culture and project
outcomes have been scrutinized by scholars. Ozorovskaja et al. (2007) compared the
differences in how firm cultures lead to manager leadership in managing construction
projects between West and East European countries. Naoum et al. (2013) further examined
whether national culture has an impact on PMPs of construction projects in the United Arab
Emirates. In terms of achieving project sustainability, Meng et al. (2018) explored how
national culture characteristics lead to sustainable performances in developing
infrastructures by comparing 12 international projects. Furthermore, Konanahalli and
Oyedele (2016) found that cross-culture experience can construct emotional intelligence for
top managers who lead the PMPs in international construction projects. Other researchers
also empirically identified the effects of organizational culture on project performances,
including schedule delay (Arditi et al., 2017) and quality management (Willar et al., 2016).
Besides, (Cheung et al., 2011) proposed an organizational culture framework with seven
critical factors guiding effective project management in construction, including “Goal
settings and accomplishment”, “Team orientation”, “Coordination and integration”,
“Performance emphasis”, “Innovation orientation”, “Members’ participation” and “Reward
orientation”.
For project management culture, it is inter-organizational oriented because various
project stakeholders represent different organizational cultures. Fong and Lung (2007)
investigated the relationships between inter-organizational teamwork and project
success in the construction industry. They identified a positive relationship between
interorganizational teamwork measured by intercontextualized cultural factors and project
task performances. Furthermore, Cheng et al. (2004) proposed strategic alliances for
reinforcing interorganizational relations in construction. It is argued that interculture
development can facilitate long-term interorganizational commitment and therefore establish
necessary cooperative behaviors for the changing processes.
2.1.2 Strategy of project management. PMPs can be represented as a set of management
domains, processes and consequences of strategies (Anderson and Merna, 2003). However,
(Anderson and Merna, 2003) found that there exist neglects of strategy formulation during
decision-making processes of carrying out PMPs, which results in poor project management
outcomes. To benchmark strategy formulation in PMPs, Artto et al. (2008) categorized
strategies into four measuring dimensions, including obedient servant, independent
innovator, flexible mediator and strong leader. Hauc and Kova
c (2000) further proposed

Figure 1.
Conceptual framework
integrating PMPs
and ISS
that strategy in project management should be goal-oriented to fulfill stakeholder demands Project
and project requirements. In implementing strategies for PMPs, they have to be hierarchically management
demonstrated based on the project utility of maximizing benefits and minimizing losses
(Morris and Jamieson, 2005). Another concern in strategy formulation for PMPs is the
practice and
dynamic process of managing strategies because of the changing character of the project goal setting
management environment. For instance, the implementation of project management
strategies is determined by the tolerance flexibility of how an organization can quickly
react to changes or unexpected events (Morris and Jamieson, 2005). 2801
2.1.3 Implementation of project management. Implementation of PMPs translated from
strategy formulation helps stakeholders finally realize sustainable project goals, such as
economic savings, social utilities, and environmental benefits (Morris and Jamieson, 2005;
Zhang et al., 2014). Widely reported in the current literature, innovative techniques and tools
have been developed to underpin the implementation of PMPs. For example, efficiency
methods of implementations improving current PMPs are highly recommended and plausible
(Hauc and Kova
c, 2000). One important domain for such efficiency improvement is
developing implementation tools to allocate and utilize project management resources,
including human resources, equipment, materials, technologies, etc. (Chou and Leatemia,
2016). With respect to the contextualization of international project management, Besner and
Hobbs (2013) argued that implementation techniques adopted should be contextualized
according to the specific situation of a construction project. To mitigate risks in PMPs, risk
challenges have been identified and integrated into developing implementation approaches
to realize project margin and schedule success (de Carvalho et al., 2015; de Carvalho and
Junior, 2015).
2.1.4 Reflection of project management. Reflection in PMPs is explained as a process of
continuous improvement and knowledge transfer on the basis of learned experiences across
multiple projects (Kozak-Holland and Procter, 2014). Existing studies on reflective project
management have highlighted research domains within profitability reflection in project
level, competency reflection in business level and knowledge reflection at the organizational
level. In terms of project profitability, Rouhani et al. (2016) developed a social welfare
framework to reflect the benefits and costs of urban transportation projects based on value
for money analysis. Regarding business competency, reflective evaluation of PMPs also have
been highlighted, such as facilitating career development and training (de Carvalho et al.,
2015), business maturity and market share (Robert et al., 2017), integration of environmental
standards (Porter and van der Linde, 1995) and education for sustainability awareness
(Sanchez, 2015; Zhang et al., 2014). As for the organizational knowledge base, Kozak-Holland
and Procter (2014) advocated that project management knowledge learned from previous
projects should be transferable and reflectable to the following PMPs. To this end, PMP
experience gained can be stored and retrieved as a knowledge basis, which is utilized to later
projects fulfilling sustainable construction performances (Pietrosemoli and Monroy, 2013).

2.2 Infrastructure sustainability

Sustainability has been recognized as an indispensable benchmark measuring lifecycle
infrastructure success (Banihashemi et al., 2017a; Martens and Carvalho, 2017; Meng et al.,
2018). Meng et al. (2015) defined infrastructure sustainability as providing an effective system
for economic, social and ecological development during the whole lifecycle the infrastructure
can sustain. To achieve project success regarding sustainability, Sabini et al. (2019) referred
project management sustainability as project delivery processes supported by planning,
monitoring and controlling that take economical, social and environmental considerations into
lifecycle deliverables of the project. Building upon this, this study conceptualizes infrastructure
sustainable success (ISS) from a product process integration perspective: i.e. maintaining
buildable, operable and resilient function values within the infrastructure lifecycle.
ECAM The triple bottom line concept proposed by Elkington (1997) comprises three pillars
27,10 operationalizing sustainability from economic, social and environmental dimensions. Guided
by this concept, many indicator systems have been developed for ISS assessment (Fernandez-
Sanchez and Rodrıguez-Lopez, 2010a, 2011; Jalaei and Jrade, 2014; Meng et al., 2015;
Morrissey et al., 2012; Newman et al., 2015; Shen et al., 2011; Ugwu et al., 2006a, b; Ugwu and
Haupt, 2007). For measuring the economic sustainability of construction projects, direct and
indirect costs, as well as the lifecycle costs expended on designing, constructing and
2802 maintaining infrastructures, are identified (Fernandez-Sanchez and Rodrıguez-Lopez, 2010b;
Ugwu et al., 2006a, b). Other economic indicators measure ISS from how infrastructures affect
the local economic conditions, such as business attractiveness, labor growths, etc. (Zhou and
Liu, 2015). For social sustainability, Sierra et al. (2016) assessed the ISS from stakeholder
participation, internal human resources, external local participation and macrosocial actions
of socioenvironmental and socioeconomic activities in public infrastructures. For
environmental sustainability, resources consumption behaviors of infrastructures have
been highlighted for ISS evaluation, including water, material, energy, etc. (Fernandez-
Sanchez and Rodrıguez-Lopez, 2010a; Sahely et al., 2005).
Apart from the triple bottom line (economic, social and environmental dimensions), many
scholars also consider engineering criteria (Sahely et al., 2005), laws and regulations
(Dasgupta and Tam, 2005) and project production (Matar et al., 2017) for ISS measurement.
Based on the lifecycle management theory, Meng et al. (2015) proposed an idea of measuring
ISS from both internal and external sustainability efficiencies. In terms of internal
sustainability efficiency, it concentrates on efficient planning, construction and facility
management within the infrastructure internal system. This highlights the sustainable
competitiveness and advantages of an infrastructure project compared with other
competitors. As for external sustainability efficiency, it indicates keeping resilience and
upgrading abilities against infrastructure external disturbances in the long term. This
measures ISS of maximizing positive functions in harmoniously coexisting with
surroundings and minimizing negative impacts on social utilities and environmental
implications. More notably, management capacities of infrastructure project teams and
organizations during planning, design, construction, operation and decommission also have
been highlighted. Diaz-Sarachaga et al. (2016) concluded that the management dimension has
become the fourth pillar to support the triple bottom line to achieve ISS. Building upon the
managerial dimension, a comprehensive evaluation of the product, process and
organizational performances can be integrated for ISS.

2.3 Relationships between PMPs and ISS

Previous studies on project management and construction sustainability domains have
witnessed substantial achievements. On the one hand, critical success factors measuring
PMP and ISS are widely studied from empirical and theoretical perspectives (as reviewed in
Section 2.1 and 2.2). On the other hand, studies identifying what factors could influence
construction sustainable success are diversified, including stakeholder engagement (Bal
et al., 2013), top managers’ leadership (Meng et al., 2015), project management knowledge and
skills (Hwang and Ng, 2013) and greening PMPs for sustainable construction (Robichaud and
Anantatmula, 2011). However, there exists a knowledge gap that the relationship between
PMPs and ISS remains unidentified. Table 1 summarizes previous research efforts in this
field, which leads to the gap that will be bridged by this study.
Organizational culture is the most significant feature that distinguishes the excellent
companies from the rest (Cameron and Quinn, 1999). It affects the operation of a whole
company by creating a commonly recognized atmosphere to solve problems of external
adaptation and internal integration. Furthermore, cultural development should take priority
over other corporate regimes (Arditi et al., 2017). It is commonly acknowledged that
Reference Contribution Method Comments
Project
management
(Banihashemi Identification of critical success Partial least squares structural Measurements practice and
et al., 2017a) factors measuring sustainability equation modeling development
in PMPs goal setting
(Kiani Mavi and Identification of critical success Fuzzy DEMATEL-ANP Measurements
Standing, 2018) factors measuring PMPs development
(Xue et al., 2018) Identification of factors Exploratory factor analysis Measurements 2803
measuring PMPs and ISS and principal component development
analysis
(Martens and Identification of variables of Content analysis, descriptive Relationship
Carvalho, 2016) sustainability in PMPs and the statistics, and analytic identification
impact of them on project hierarchy process
success
(Robichaud and Identification of positive impacts Literature review Relationship
Anantatmula, of greening PMPs on sustainable identification
2011) construction within acceptable
cost constraints
(Bal et al., 2013) Identification of relationships Interview survey- Content Relationship
between stakeholder analysis and descriptive identification
engagement and construction statistics
sustainability
(Hwang and Ng, Identification of variables of Questionnaire and interview Relationship
2013) project management knowledge surveys- Content analysis and identification
and skills and the impact of them descriptive statistics
on green construction
(Carvalho and Identification of positive impacts Structural equation modeling Relationship
Rabechini, 2017) of project sustainability identification
management on social and
environmental performances
(Marcelino- Proposal of project management Literature review and Relationship
Sadaba et al., 2015) as a path to sustainability conceptual framework identification
(Krajangsri and Identification of variables of Structural Equation Modeling Relationship
Pongpeng, 2017) sustainable infrastructure identification
assessments and the impact of
them on construction project
success
(Meng et al., 2015) Identification of positive impacts Structural Equation Modeling Relationship
of top managers’ leadership identification
competencies on infrastructure
sustainability Table 1.
(Wang et al., 2014) Identification of variables of Case study Relationship Recent research
whole life project management identification advancements in the
and the impact of them on domain of PMPs
building sustainability and ISS

organizational culture has a considerable influence on the overall performance of the

organization (Arditi et al., 2017; Cameron and Quinn, 1999; Schein, 2010; Trice and Beyer,
1993), such as corporate strategy, task implementation and afterward reflection. Therefore,
the first hypothesis is proposed as follows:
H1. There is a positive relationship between culture and the other three factors of PMPs
(i.e. strategy, implementation and reflection) in infrastructure developments.
Equivalently, the corporation’s culture has a significant influence on the
formulation of strategy, implementation and reflection.
ECAM As defined by the Oxford dictionary, the strategy is “a plan of action designed to achieve a
27,10 long-term and overall aim.” Strategy functions as a plan for the operation of a company or a
project. It figures out what tasks there are and how to perform these tasks to achieve the
objectives. To carry out a task means to utilize a company’s resources. However, according to
Porter and van der Linde (1995), it is the utilization of most advanced technology and best
resources management methods rather than the employment of low-cost resources that
determine a competitive company. Moreover, Sanchez (2015) put forward a framework to help
2804 with the resource allocation of a company to obtain its strategies. To this end, corporate
strategies should be carefully worked out to ensure the practicality of tasks and the feasibility
of implementation. Thus, the second hypothesis is proposed as follows:
H2. There is a positive relationship between strategy and implementation in
infrastructure developments. Equivalently, if the Strategy is established
reasonably, the implementation process will be smooth.
Task implementation is the approach to learning and development. To consolidate the
knowledge learned, however, effective reflection is indispensable. The implementation
process should be relatively transparent such that the team members could identify the
problems and help smooth the execution from their perspectives. Therefore, reflection is
bound to be practical. In addition, lessons should constantly be summarized and applied to
new tasks in order for a company to survive in a fiercely competitive market. As a result, the
third hypothesis is proposed as follows:
H3. There is a positive relationship between implementation and feflection in
infrastructure developments. Equivalently, if the implementation is smooth and
efficient, the reflection will be efficient and effective.
As abovementioned, culture plays a vital role in the performance of the organization (Cheung
et al., 2011), which is measured by the goal realization of projects executed. So culture could
determine the achievement of objectives. Liu (1999) states that a strong and positive culture
could enhance job satisfaction. Arditi et al. (2017) investigate that the different types of the
organizational culture of a construction company are associated with the delay in their
projects. The strategy is about the plan of actions. During the strategy formulation process,
many companies have incorporated environmental management into the core of their
business strategy (Brien, 1999). Besides, sustainability is revealed through strategy (Martens
and Carvalho, 2016). In particular, by surveying international construction experts, Olawumi
and Chan (2018) recommended that strategies of BIM adoption and implementation can
benefit the integration of sustainable practices and project success. From the operational
level, nothing can be done or achieved without implementation. As long as the tasks are
implemented effectively and efficiently in accordance with the sustainable strategy,
sustainability can be achieved. Reflection is an indispensable process of preparing for the
future. What learned from the project will be applied to the future project in order to attain a
more perfect outcome. On top of that, Robichaud and Anantatmula (2011) evidenced that
greening PMPs can add significant value to a sustainable construction project while
delivering it within acceptable cost constraints. Tan et al. (2015) identified a U-shape
relationship between sustainability performances and international revenue growth of
international construction contractors. Consequently, the fourth hypothesis is proposed as
follows:
H4. There is a positive relationship between PMPs – which are determined by culture,
strategy, implementation and reflection – and ISS in infrastructure developments.
Equivalently, ISS can be achieved as the corporation’s culture, strategy,
implementation and reflection function properly.
3. Research methodology Project
To fulfill the research objective of identifying relationships of how PMPs lead to ISS in management
infrastructure contexts, this research design integrates the comprehensive literature review
with an empirical survey study. A systematic literature review of theoretical findings helps to
practice and
propose hypotheses linking PMPs and ISS. Variables and corresponding indicators goal setting
measuring constructs PMPs and ISS have been developed based on a preliminary study
conducted by Xue et al. (2018), as shown in Table A1. These variables and indicators are
adopted because the constructs in the conceptual framework (shown in Figure 1) are 2805
developed based on the conclusions drawn from Xue et al. (2018).
Building upon these, an empirical survey was designed to collect data regarding the
accomplished level of PMPs and ISS. A questionnaire survey was adopted in this study
because it has been evidenced as an effective method regarding research data collection from
numerous respondents, no matter in open or closed formats (Brace, 2018). To enhance the
generalizability of this survey, professionals who have experienced or are experiencing
project management works in international infrastructures were selected as potential
respondents. Thereafter, paths analysis adopting SEM was conducted to identify
interrelationships among different PMPs and relationships between PMPs and ISS. SEM
was adopted in this study because it is characterized to develop and test hypothetical theories
based on survey data, which has been widely used to predict multiple and interdependent
relationships among constructs (Hair et al., 2014). Figure 2 illustrates the research design
followed by this study in detail.

3.1 Research instrument design

A research questionnaire survey was adopted because sustainability studies in the project
management domain are widely used but still in the exploratory stage (Banihashemi et al.,
2017a; Martens and Carvalho, 2017). The questionnaire designed in this study consists of four
parts (detailed in Appendix 2):
(1) General information. By introducing the research objective and giving the definitions
of PMPs and ISS, this section covers the demographic information of the respondents,
such as the designated role and nature of the respondent and his/her company,
infrastructure type and its delivery method, etc.

Figure 2.
Research design
ECAM (2) Variables affecting PMPs. This section includes 4 variables and 22 indicators
27,10 measuring construct PMPs (concluded in the Appendix). Infrastructure professionals
were asked to indicate the degree to which their companies have achieved the listed
PMPs. A 7-point Likert scale was adopted to elicit their level of agreement, with 1
indicating strongly low, 4 indicating neutral and 7 indicating strongly high.
(3) Variables affecting ISS. Similar to Section 2, this section asked respondents’
2806 agreements of the degree to which their participated infrastructures have achieved
the listed sustainability performances. The construct ISS was measured by 4
variables and 21 indicators with the same 7-point Likert scale. Table 2 exemplifies the
question items describing each of the indicators designed in the questionnaire survey.
(4) Other suggestions. Apart from the listed variables and indicators, respondents were
recommended to provide other practices for project management and metrics
evaluating infrastructure sustainability considered in their working experience.
To validate the instrument content of the questionnaire survey, a pilot study was conducted
before the massive distribution of questionnaires among infrastructure professionals.
Academic (3 university professors) and industry (3 experienced professionals) experts with
an expertise in project management and sustainability were invited to evaluate the
questionnaire design regarding clarity and comprehensibility of the question items. After
validating the instrument design, comments from experts were adopted to revise the question
items in the questionnaire (Netemeyer et al., 2003), especially in fully explaining each of the
indicators for better understanding. Building upon this, the questionnaire was massively
distributed for the purpose of further data collection and analysis.

3.2 Data collection and preprocessing

The designed questionnaires were sent out by emails, letters filled with hardcopy and web
collection application from April 2017 to July 2017 to potential respondents working in
domestic and overseas infrastructure projects. The sampling frame was set as the registered
executive master students in the engineering management program hosted by Tianjin
University, China. Students are required to have at least three years of project management
working experience in the AEC industry. The sample population comprises all the potential
respondents studying and graduated from the mater program from the year 2013–2017. Most
of the respondents were working in large-scale AEC companies majored in infrastructure
development and investment, such as China Communications Construction, China State
Construction, China Railway Construction, China Gezhouba Group, etc. This study
conducted sampling based on a random selection of 100 students from each academic
year, which consists of 500 potential respondents from all five surveyed years.

Degree of
Items Variables affecting PMPs and ISS achievement

1 Project management practices are standardized in terms of working techniques 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

and management mechanisms
Table 2. 2 The livability of the public community is positively influenced by developing 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Example question the infrastructure (including enhancement of convenience, happiness, etc.)
items extracted from ... ... ...
the survey Note(s): Based on your selected infrastructures, please indicate the degree to which your projects have
questionnaire achieved the following practices or performances: scales vary from “1: totally low” to “7: totally high”
As a result, the number of questionnaires returned was 198, of which 162 was identified as Project
valid with a response rate of 32.4%. Among all the 162 respondents, most of them are from management
state-owned companies and private organizations, accounting for 69% and 23% respectively.
To be specific, 62% of the surveyed companies are serving as contractors, 16% as
practice and
consultants, 15% as owner representatives and 7% as designers. Notably, the state-owned goal setting
contractors account for a large ratio in the surveyed respondents because most Chinese
contractors work for state-owned enterprises (Fang et al., 2004). Based on the collected
evidence of respondent profiles, most of the surveyed respondents are working on 2807
management positions of infrastructures located in Mainland China, Hong Kong SAR,
Indonesia, Angola, Guinea, Kyrgyzstan, United Arab Emirates, Mongolia, etc.
Furthermore, managerial personnel and project managers account for a larger number of
the surveyed infrastructure professionals, with a percentage of 47 and 38 respectively. In
terms of working experience, 70% of the respondents have been working within the
infrastructure industry for 6–20 years. Besides, there are other salient data drawing
significant attention. For example, most of these international infrastructures are energy,
transportation and public services development projects, accounting for 32%, 21% and 20%
respectively. With respect to project delivery methods, 42% and 27% of the investigated
infrastructures are contacted as design–bid–build (DBB) or design–build (DB) and public–
private partnership (PPP) projects. The general demographic information of this
questionnaire survey is illustrated in Figure 3.
Before carrying out the in-depth critical factors analysis, reliability analysis should be
conducted to determine whether the Likert scale is reliable (Bland and Altman, 1997). The
collected data were imported into IBM SPSS Statistics 22 to run a Cronbach’s α test, which
would show the internal consistency of the collected data. As a result, the value of Cronbach’s
α and standard Cronbach’s α for question items of PMPs and ISS are 0.950 and 0.977
respectively, which indicates a relatively high level of internal reliability (Bland and Altman,
1997; Ott and Longnecker, 2016; Streiner, 2003). Therefore, the collected empirical data are
suitable for further SEM path analysis identifying relationships between PMPs and ISS in
international infrastructure contexts.

4. Results and analysis of the SEM process

To test the four research hypotheses proposed by theoretical literature review, multivariate
regression analysis should be conducted based on the empirical data collected from the
questionnaire survey. Under this condition, SEM investigating associations among
constructs and variables measured by indicators is an effective research method in
explorative and confirmative research contexts (Hair et al., 2014; Ho, 2013). Therefore, SEM
was developed and conducted building upon the empirical survey in this study to identify the
interrelationships among PMPs and the relationships between PMPs and ISS.

4.1 SEM development

The proposed four hypotheses based on the conceptual framework in Figure 1, together with
the variables measuring PMPs and ISS, are depicted in the model shown in Figure 4. There
are eight indicators of culture, five indicators of strategy, four indicators of implementation,
four indicators of reflection and four factors of ISS (refer to the Appendix). ISS is measured
from an infrastructure project viewpoint, meaning that sustainability performances of the
managed infrastructure project share the same values across stakeholder groups.
Specifically, the measurement model is proposed by explicitly describing relationships
between the 5 latent variables and the 25 measuring indicators. In addition, the structural
model is developed indicating relationships among those 5 latent variables on the basis of the
ECAM Company Type Company Role
27,10 70%
69%
70% 62%
60% 60%
50% 50%
RATIO

RATIO
40% 40%
23%
30% 30%
20% 15% 16%
7% 20% 7%
10% 1%
10%
2808 0% 0%

Profile of companies
(a)

Respondent Role Industry Experience

47%
50% 38% 30% 26% 27%
40%
21%
RATIO

30%
14% 20% 17%
20%
10% 1% RATIO
9%
0% 10%

0%
≤5 6-10 11-15 16-20 ≥21
YEAR

Profile of respondents
(b)

Infrastructure Type Delivery Method

40% 32% 50% 42%

30% 21% 20% 40%
RATIO

27%
RATIO

20% 11% 9% 30%

10% 5% 20% 13%
2%
10% 5% 3%
0%
0%

Figure 3.
Demographic profiles
of the questionnaire
survey Profile of infrastructures
(c)

proposed four research hypotheses. The arrows in the proposed model demonstrate the
influence directions between exogenous and endogenous variables.
Before SEM analysis using the collected data, a one-way ANOVA test was conducted to
investigate whether there exist different perspectives on PMPs (i.e. 22 indicators measuring 3
PMPs) of multidisciplinary surveyed stakeholders. To this end, the data samples were
differentiated into four subgroups, including owner group (24 samples), contractor group
(100 samples), consultant group (26 samples) and designer group (12 samples), as shown in
Figure 3. The descriptives of the mean and SD information and the ANOVA test results are
listed in Table A3.
 s1 s2 s3 s4 s5 Project
c1 management
c2
Strategy
practice and
c3 goal setting
PE
c4
Culture OI
c5 Infrastructure

c6
Sustainable Success SU
2809
EI
c7
c8

Implementation Reflection

i1 i2 i3 i4 r1 r2 r3 r4

Key: C1: Dominate characteristics; C2: Organizational leadership; C3: Management of

employees; C4: Organization glue; C5: Strategic emphases; C6: Criteria of success;
C7: Management tools & Philosophy; C8: Communication; S1: Tactics; S2: Acceptance;
Figure 4.
S3: Reaction; S4: Goal-orientation; S5: Performance maturity; I1: Goal-realization; I2: Hypothesized
Efficiency; I3: Skill utilization; I4: Resource utilization & allocation; R1: Absorptive framework of SEM
capacity; R2: Impact on business; R3: Financial returns; R4: Team performances; PE: highlighting
relationships between
Project economy; OI: Organizational integration; SU: Social utility; EI: Environmental PMPs and ISS
implication

The result indicates that the significance values are all larger than 0.05, meaning that there
was no statistically significant difference in 22 PMP measuring indicators between the four
multidisciplinary subgroups. Alternatively, the surveyed respondents of this study share
consistent opinions regarding the importance of the studied PMP variables. Therefore,
further SEM analysis was conducted by deploying the whole data set.

4.2 SEM analysis and refinement

To test the proposed hypothesis, the collected raw data and the initial model were analyzed
by the AMOS SEM software 16.0 version. Table 3 tabulates the processing results in detail. It
shows that compared with the recommended level the results of the initial model do not meet
the requirements of standard indexes well. The value of χ 2/degrees of freedom is 3.908, which
is larger than 2. The goodness-of-fit index (GFI) is 0.66, which is lower than 0.9. The adjusted
goodness-of-fit index (AGFI) is 0.589, which is lower than 0.9. And the value of root mean
square error of approximation (RMSEA) is 0.134, which is larger than 0.08. Apart from these
major measures, normal fit index (NFI 5 0.742 < 0.9), relative fit index (RFI 5 0.711 < 0.9),
incremental fit index (IFI 5 0.794 < 0.9), Tucker–Lewis index (TLI 5 0.767 < 0.9) and
comparative fit index (CFI 5 0.792 < 0.9) do not reach the recommended level as well. The
major reason for this outcome is that the hypothesized model was established based on
previous theory and empirical findings (Doloi et al., 2011). This makes the initial SEM could
not fit the practical data perfectly. Therefore, the initial SEM is needed to be simplified and
refined according to the suggestions of the GOF measures and the modification indices (MI) to
satisfy both the theoretical expectations and the GOF measures.
To simplify the SEM, variables and path coefficients that are ill-fitted in the initially
proposed model should be deleted. In regard to the results of the initial processing, some of the
ECAM Initial Recommended
27,10 Index Definition SEM level Resources

CMIN/DF A measure of fit indicating the 3.908 <2 Bandalos

minimum discrepancy divided by its (2002)
degrees of freedom
Goodness-of-Fitt Index A measure of fit between the 0.660 >0.9 Bandalos
2810 (GFI) hypothesized (i.e. initial) SEM model (2002)
and the observed covariance matrix
Adjusted Goodness-of- A measure of fit that corrects the 0.589 >0.9 Bandalos
Fitt Index (AGFI) GFI which considers the number of (2002)
indicators measuring each latent
variable
Root mean square error A measure of absolute fit that 0.134 <0.05 (very Bandalos
of approximation indicates how close the observed good)-0.08 (2002)
(RMSEA) data points are to the predicted (threshold)
values based on the hypothesized
(i.e. initial) SEM model
Normal fit index (NFI) An incremental measure of GFI that 0.742 >0.9 Little et al.
is irrelevant to the number of (2002)
variables in the hypothesized (i.e.
initial) SEM model
Relative fit index (RFI) A measure that represents 0.711 >0.9 Doloi et al.
deviations between a null model and (2011)
the hypothesized (i.e.,initial) SEM
model
Incremental fit index A measure that compares the chi- 0.794 >0.9 Doloi et al.
(IFI) square value of a baseline model to (2011)
that of the hypothesized (i.e. initial)
SEM model
Tucker–Lewis index A measure that improves the IFI in 0.767 >0.9 Jin et al.
(TLI) comparing a baseline model to a (2007)
hypothesized (i.e. initial) SEM
model, which is not affected by
sample size
Comparative fit index A measure that compares the fit of a 0.792 >0.9 Isik et al.
Table 3. (CFI) hypothesized (i.e. initial) SEM model (2009)
Goodness-of-Fit to the fit of an independent model
Indexes of the where variables are assumed to be
initial SEM uncorrelated

path coefficients and weights are not significant enough. In the initial model, the factor
culture is hypothesized to be in correlation with implementation and reflection respectively.
And the factor strategy and implementation are hypothesized to be in correlation with ISS.
However, the initial results show that these four paths have insignificant parameters and
should be deleted from the model. As a result, the initial model is modified.
After modification, all the measurement indexes of the simplified model were found to be
acceptable and reach the recommended levels showing in Table 4. χ 2/degree of freedom is
equal to 1.407, lower than 2, which means that the theoretical model fits the data set. The
values of the absolute indexes for GFI and AGFI are greater than 0.9, indicating that the fit
between the measurement model and raw data are absolutely acceptable. The RMSEA value
is 0.05, less than 0.08, demonstrating that the final refined model is accepted with a high level
of confidence. In addition, the relative indexes of NFI, IFI, TLI and CFI are higher than 0.9.
However, the relative fit index (RFI) is 0.896. Even though the index is below 0.9, it is very
 Modified
Project
Index SEM Recommended level Resources management
practice and
CMIN/DF 1.407 <2 Bandalos (2002)
Goodness-of –fit Index (GFI) 0.977 >0.9 Bandalos (2002) goal setting
Adjusted goodness-of –fit Index (AGFI) 0.916 >0.9 Bandalos (2002)
Root mean square error of approximation 0.05 <0.05 (very good)-0.08 Bandalos (2002)
(RMSEA) (threshold) 2811
Normal fit index (NFI) 0.925 >0.9 Little et al. (2002)
Relative fit index (RFI) 0.896 >0.9 Doloi et al. (2011)
Incremental fit index (IFI) 0.977 >0.9 Doloi et al. (2011)
Tucker–Lewis index (TLI) 0.967 >0.9 Jin et al. (2007) Table 4.
Comparative fit index (CFI) 0.976 >0.9 Isik et al. (2009) Goodness-of-fit
Cronbach’s α 0.95 >0.7 Laglera et al. Indexes of the
(2013) modified SEM

close to the recommended level. Therefore, they provide s evidence for the acceptable fit
between the measurement model and the data (Bandalos, 2002; Isik et al., 2009; Jin et al., 2007;
Little et al., 2002). To conclude, the main measures of SEM properly reach the standard level.
To test the reliability of the refined model, Cronbach’s reliability test was conducted. As a
result, the value of Cronbach’s α is 0.95 (>0.7), manifesting a high level of reliability of the
refined model. In summary, the ultimate SEM model is appropriate, and the raw data fit the
modified hypothesis due to all the satisfactory measures and reliability index.
The final refined SEM with path coefficients and factor loadings after path simplification
and modification are displayed in Figure 5. Moreover, the standardized regression weights
and covariance estimates for the final modified SEM together with the corresponding
standard effort of estimates and p-values are depicted in Table 5. These indexes show that all
the regression weights and the covariance are significantly different from zero at the 0.001
level (two-tailed).

s1 s2 s3 s4 s5

0.967 0.688 0.619 0.637 0.696

c1

c2
Strategy
0.889
c3 0.880
0.907
0.873 PE
c4 0.837
0.847 Culture 0.105
0.681
OI
c5 Infrastructure 0.447
0.842
0.878
Sustainable Success 1.012
SU
c6 0.877 0.955
0.851

EI
c7
0.598
c8

Implementation 0.960 Reflection

Figure 5.
The final refined SEM
0.994 0.769 0.813 0.743 0.798 0.818 0.729 0.413
with path coefficients
and factor loadings
i1 i2 i3 i4 r1 r2 r3 r4
ECAM Critical relationships Estimate Std. Error Construct reliability p
27,10
Strategy ← Culture 0.907 0.102 11.475 ***
Implementation ← Strategy 0.955 0.067 9.297 ***
Reflection ← Implementation 0.960 0.109 10.170 ***
ISS ← Culture 0.105 0.355 0.943 0.346
ISS ← Reflection 0.598 0.424 4.601 ***
2812 OI ← ISS 0.447 0.070 8.059 ***
C1 ← Culture 0.889
C9 ← Culture 0.750 0.073 12.526 ***
R2 ← Reflection 0.818 0.131 9.332 ***
C2 ← Culture 0.880 0.068 14.219 ***
C3 ← Culture 0.873 0.050 16.761 ***
C4 ← Culture 0.837 0.055 15.478 ***
C5 ← Culture 0.847 0.060 15.545 ***
C6 ← Culture 0.842 0.057 15.285 ***
C7 ← Culture 0.878 0.061 15.214 ***
C8 ← Culture 0.877 0.051 16.931 ***
S1 ← Strategy 0.967
S2 ← Strategy 0.688 0.088 9.517 ***
S3 ← Strategy 0.619 0.078 8.245 ***
S4 ← Strategy 0.637 0.079 8.429 ***
S5 ← Strategy 0.696 0.062 9.618 ***
I4 ← Implementation 0.743
I3 ← Implementation 0.813 0.110 10.679 ***
I2 ← Implementation 0.769 0.093 11.852 ***
I1 ← Implementation 0.994 0.104 11.192 ***
R1 ← Reflection 0.798
R3 ← Reflection 0.729 0.096 10.756 ***
R4 ← Reflection 0.413 0.116 5.394 ***
Table 5.
The standardized PE ← ISS 0.681
regression weights and SU ← ISS 1.012 0.274 11.381 ***
covariance estimates of EI ← ISS 0.851 0.115 10.939 ***
the final refined SEM Note(s): ***: significant at the 0.001 level (two-tailed)

5. Discussion
The interrelationships among PMPs and the relationships between PMPs and ISS have been
identified and verified based on the SEM paths analysis. For H1, the relationship indicated by
this hypothesis is partly verified. Alternatively, there is a positive relationship between
culture and strategy (with a path coefficient of 0.907 and a p-value < 0.001 shown in Table 5).
However, whether culture has a relationship with implementation or reflection has not been
confirmed based on the collected empirical data. For H2, as the results show, there is a positive
relationship between strategy and implementation based on the collected data (with a path
coefficient of 0.955 and a p-value < 0.001 shown in Table 5). For H3, there is a positive
relationship between implementation and reflection based on the collected data (with a path
coefficient of 0.960 and a p-value < 0.001 shown in Table 5). For H4, the hypothesized
relationship between PMPs and ISS is partly validated based on the empirical data.
According to the analysis results, culture and reflection play important roles in the
achievement of ISS (with path coefficients of 0.598 and a p-value < 0.001 shown in Table 5).
Nevertheless, the relationship between strategy and ISS and the relationship between
implementation and ISS have not been directly corroborated.
5.1 Positive relationship between Culture and Strategy Project
Organizational culture is the personality of an organization. It creates an invisible management
atmosphere surrounding the organization members. Organizational culture works as a
latent factor influencing the company’s daily operation. Different organizational culture
practice and
types focus on different strategies. For example, a culture appreciating unity may emphasize goal setting
on group-based strategy. However, a culture emphasizing individualism may focus on
personal gains. More importantly, these strategies may result in different project outcomes.
As Arditi et al. (2017) pointed out, in international project contexts, clan culture of American 2813
company performs better than the market culture of Indian company in project delay.
Furthermore, this study found that the positive impacts of culture on strategy can be
explained based on measurement variables of PMPs and ISS. First, organizational leadership
impacted by the PMP culture may lead to performance maturity measuring PMP strategy.
This is corresponding to the findings drawn by Meng et al. (2015) who argued the
interrelationships between different leadership abilities of top managers and infrastructure
sustainability in Chinese urbanization contexts. Second, strategic emphases as cultural
signals may help to generate tactics strategizing the implementation of the infrastructure
projects. Third, setting criteria for success regarding sustainability achievements may lead to
goal-orientated strategies toward a project’s ultimate sustainability outcomes. This shares
similar findings from existing studies (Atkinson and Westall, 2010; Ozorovskaja et al., 2007)
which highlighted the positive influence between goal setting and goal achievement in PMPs.
Finally, PMP culture emphasizing communication level and trust among the project team and
stakeholders may result in positive reactions to internal and external changes and problems
in PMP strategy realizations.

5.2 Positive relationship between strategy and implementation

Strategy generally defines the long-term direction of an organization and makes the
organization’s goal clear and visible to its members. It outlines how goals will be achieved. To
better manage the strategy under a changing environment, corporations emphasize on
strategic management. It is a process that changes as the goals of the organization develop.
Normally, these goals are set at the operational level. Therefore, these goals can be put into
practice by utilizing all the necessary and available resources. In this way, the corporation can
do the right things and do things right. Besides, clear strategies and operational goals can
increase the efficiency of implementation. This is echoed by conclusions drawn from de
Carvalho et al. (2015), which indicate that project management efficiency is influenced by
strategic tactics and reactions to project implementations. Project managers and team
members in the organization are sure of what he or she should do and how to do to accomplish
the goals. This can be explained by the positive impacts of PMP Strategy on PMP
Implementation based on the evidence from this study. That is goal orientation strategies
orienting project’s ultimate objectives may lead to goal realization achieving project targets in
project implementation.

5.3 Positive relationship between implementation and reflection

Implementation is the determinant action leading to project outcomes. The action is the only
way to know what is known and learned from what is unknown and unlearnt (Besner and
Hobbs, 2013; Kozak-Holland and Procter, 2014). During the implementation process,
weaknesses and strengths of the organization, which otherwise would be hidden underwater,
expose. Moreover, if anything off tracks the original path or has the probability of resulting in
bad consequences, the organization should take control. Furthermore, organizational
personnel learn more by making mistakes and learning from others. All the movements
should always be recorded by a monitoring system for post analysis. Reflection is some kind
ECAM of assessment that measures the attribution of each effort made to the project. By recalling the
27,10 implementation process and assessing each action, the organization can be sure what
behaviors lead to bad or good project performance. For instance, this study found that
efficiency in project implementation measured by productivity may be capable of realizing a
positive assessment of team performances in project reflection meetings. Building upon this,
financial returns in project reflection may be benefited from effective resource allocation and
utilization in the implementation stage. This finding has also been highlighted in previous
2814 studies on enhancing project performances enabled by soft PMP skills (de Carvalho and
Junior, 2015). As a result, the organization and organizational members can correct the
behaviors and accumulate related experiences. In addition, the organization has the chance to
perfect the project management system.

5.4 Positive relationship between culture and infrastructure sustainable success

Project management culture defines the overall vision of an interorganizational project.
Evidence from this study reveals that PMP culture may have a direct and indirect influence
on the achievement of ISS from four dimensions, i.e., project economy, organizational
integration, social utility and environmental implication. From the economic perspective,
business success including profit maximization and reputation creation measuring ISS (Cruz
and Wakolbinger, 2008) may be achieved by the setting of success criteria during PMP
culture formation. Furthermore, a good modern construction company would incorporate
sustainability into their culture, which would impact the behavioral patterns of other
organizations and participated members. One possible reason for the identified positive
relationship between project management culture and ISS lies in that project management
culture can play a role when various organizational cultures from participated stakeholders
are well-integrated (Fong and Lung, 2007), which makes such influencing effect possible to
achieve ISS. Such intercultural alliances appeal to the long-term integrated commitment and
smoothen cooperative behaviors among interorganizational participants. Regarding the
social utility viewpoint, management rationales formalized from PMP culture – PMP tools/
philosophy – may positively drive to adaptability and productivity (Benedict and McMahon,
2012; Salman et al., 2007) of infrastructure product and security and livability (Martens and
Carvalho, 2016; Valdes-Vasquez and Klotz, 2013) of the influenced public community. With
respect to environmental implication, the environmental-friendly mindset formed from PMP
culture may control the reduction of nonrenewable resources and the utilization of green
energies. This finding is also highlighted in (Gimenez et al., 2012) who indicate that
environmental-friendly programs implemented under organizational cultural requirements
have positive impacts on the triple bottom line of project sustainability.
In addition, project management culture is, to a large extent, influenced by the country’s
culture. Moreover, national culture is also influenced by the economic condition and natural
environment (Meng et al., 2018). For example, developed countries like the United States put
more emphases on sustainability as the country evolves. However, developing countries like
India pay more attention to economic and district development rather than sustainability
(Arditi et al., 2017; Konanahalli and Oyedele, 2016).

5.5 Positive relationship between reflection and infrastructure sustainable success

Project management culture also affects reflection through strategy and implementation.
However, according to the results of this study, strategy and implementation do not have
direct influences on ISS. To be precise, the influential effectuation between strategy and
implementation and ISS is via reflection. Reflection has a direct positive influence on the
achievement of ISS. This contradicts to the conclusions drawn by Tan et al. (2015), who
discovered an inverse U-shape relationship between sustainability performance and
international revenue and a U-shape relationship between sustainability performance and Project
international revenue growth for international contractors. One of the possible explanations management
may lie in that the reflection of the PMP offers opportunities to the organization on whether
their carrying-on project goes sustainable or not. If the answer is no, the organization should
practice and
make decisions on identifying and solving challenges. If the answer is yes, then the goal setting
experience should be summarized for later use. This experience may be stored into a
knowledge base indicating lessons learned for enhancing project quality and energy use
efficiency, as well as improving productivity once multiple PMP alternatives have been 2815
analyzed (Olawumi and Chan, 2018). However, the effect of reflection on ISS does not reflect
on the project under progress but on the afterward projects.
Other evidence drawn from this study also highlighted such a positive relationship
between PMP reflection and ISS. Economically, the business success of an infrastructure
project can be measured and explained by reflection variables (Cruz and Wakolbinger, 2008;
Fombrun, 2005; Gimenez et al., 2012), such as the business impacts on market development
and competency enhancement and the financial returns including profit benefits.
Organizationally, reflective team performances may lead to the integration of teams and
stakeholders (Pietrosemoli and Monroy, 2013) measuring organizational performances of an
infrastructure project. Socially, absorptive capacity enabled by reflective PMP knowledge
(Vicente-Oliva et al., 2015) may help to enhance the consciousness and awareness of
sustainability for the public, which may lead to public support of developing infrastructure
projects underpinned by smooth relationships with the local community. Environmentally,
the reflective knowledge base may help to develop efficient environmental-friendly
management systems, which has the potential of systematically realizing eco-efficiency
and balancing biodiversity.

5.6 Theoretical and practical implications

As the world is continuously concerned about sustainable development, infrastructures
integrating economic, social, environmental and managerial performances follow up.
Infrastructure project often stands and serves the public for a relatively long period of time,
approximately 50–100 years (Lee and Ellingwood, 2017). Attention should be paid to how to
realize the goals of safe execution, smooth operation and easy maintenance without
disturbing the external surroundings. To this end, the main findings of this empirical study
reveal that the effectuation should own to project management, which is the practice for the
final product.
Theoretically, this study has implications in bridging the knowledge gap between PMPs
constructs – i.e. culture, strategy, implementation and reflection – and ISS performance
assessments. To be precise, the four-dimensional measurement for PMP contributes to the
PDCA ideology, while the relationships between PMPs and ISS contribute to the goal-setting
theory in sustainable infrastructure management contexts:
(1) This study is innovative in demonstrating how professionals manipulate their PMPs,
i.e. project management culture, project management strategy, project management
implementation and project management reflection, in infrastructure management
scenarios. Specifically, the interrelationships among PMP determinants are claimed
in the context of achieving ISS. Culture of an organization is identified as having a
significant influence on strategy formulation. Furthermore, the established strategies
will impact the implementation processes and performances and how the
implementation carried out will affect reflection effectiveness.
(2) This study is novel in clarifying the relationships between four PMP determinants
and ISS. Particularly, the start and end of the PMPs cycle (i.e. culture and reflection)
ECAM have a positive relationship with the achievement of ISS, which demonstrates that if
27,10 sustainability is incorporated into the organizational culture it is of high possibility to
fulfill sustainability goal. Besides, during the reflection process, priorities should be
given to the fact of the infrastructure going sustainable and lessons learned about
sustainable PMPs. On top of that, the other two PMP factors, strategy and
implementation, are found to have no direct relationships with ISS based on the
collected empirical data. However, it is evidenced that by affecting the moderate
2816 factors of reflection they are found to present an indirect influence on ISS.
Practically, this study has implications in supporting intraproject and interproject
management teams and stakeholders (i.e., organization) to deliver infrastructure projects
with sustainable performances (i.e. product) through leveraging four project management
functions (i.e., process). This is echoed to the product–organization–process framework
(Fischer et al., 2017) enabling PMPs to be aligned with the sustainability goals of AEC
projects:
(1) From the product perspective, sustainable infrastructures with high-performing
criteria – i.e. project economy, organizational integration, social utility and
environmental implication – can be delivered by multidisciplinary project teams.
(2) Regarding the organizational dimension, intraproject and interproject professionals
perform PMPs by integrating their multidisciplinary knowledge and expertise.
(3) With respect to the process viewpoint, organizational practitioners can monitor and
adjust the continuous PMPs – i.e. direct influence practices of culture and reflection
and indirect influence practices of strategy and implementation – to achieve ISS
during their lifecycle management periods.

6. Conclusions and future works

The current empirical study solicits the interrelationships among PMPs and how PMPs lead
to ISS in infrastructure projects. International infrastructures were selected across more than
eight countries and regions to guarantee the generalizability of the empirical study. By
adopting SEM, the original hypothesized model developed based on goal-setting theory and
PDCA ideology is refined and validated to fit in empirical data collected from infrastructure
professionals.
This study theoretically fills the knowledge gap of revealing linkages between
international infrastructure project management and successful performances of lifecycle
sustainability. The findings contribute to measuring the sustainability success of project
management performances by clarifying critical relationships of how PMPs lead to ISS. This
corresponds to the criteria of successfully managing international projects, including
enhancing stakeholders’ sensitive awareness of cultural differences, nurturing adequate
capabilities of establishing and implementing strategies and gathering reflective lessons
learned throughout the project (K€oster, 2009; Lientz and Rea, 2012).
To summarize, this study has novelty in demonstrating how professionals manipulate their
PMPs, i.e. project management culture, project management strategy, project management
implementation and project management reflection, in infrastructure management scenarios.
Furthermore, this study is novel in clarifying the relationships between four PMP determinants
and the ISS. Based on the above theoretical integration of PMPs with ISS, the empirical findings
not only provide steps as to how to execute excellent project management and checklist for
sustainable international infrastructure but also generate cutting points to solve the problems
in PMPs for international infrastructure projects. To be precise, if construction practitioners
find themselves having difficulties in achieving the expected ISS, they can be informed by Project
knowing what should be emphasized in their current PMPs. management
Despite the above contributions and implications, this study encounters limitations. First,
only professionals working in Chinese AEC companies were surveyed and interviewed.
practice and
Second, most of the surveyed projects were limited to be delivered in Asian countries and goal setting
regions. Due to the above unavailability of empirical data and samples, the external validity
of generalizing the findings to global infrastructure PMPs may be difficult to be claimed.
Therefore, to generalize the presented findings, suggestions for further studies on PMPs and 2817
ISS can be put forward to validating their relationships using sustainable infrastructure
development scenarios outside Asia. In detail, the SEM model developed in this study can be
further extended or improved by comparing domestic and international infrastructures. In
addition, a larger sample size incorporating opinions from AEC professionals with various
project management roles has to be analyzed in further research efforts.

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ECAM Appendix 1
27,10
Construct Variable Indicator Definition Sources

PMPs Culture Dominant The most outstanding (Arditi et al., 2017;

characteristics culture feature of the
2824 organization
Organizational The leadership style of the
leadership organization
Management of How organization leaders
employees manage their staff
Organization glue The cohesion that gathers
all the organization
members
Strategic emphases The critical points the
organization’s strategies
should focus on, e.g., human
or performance
Criteria of success The kind of achievement
which is regarded as success
once accomplished, e.g.,
market share improvement,
staff benefits enhancement
etc.
Management tools/ The rationale of project
philosophy management during
execution
Communication Communication level and
trust fostering within the
project team and among
stakeholders
Strategy Tactics Specific steps to carry out
the project
Acceptance The degree of acceptance to
internal and external
changes
Reaction Ability to adapt to internal
and external changes and
solve the problems caused
by them
Goal-orientation The strategies should orient
the project’s ultimate goals
Performance Application level of
maturity management tools,
advanced technologies, and
resources
Implementation Goal-realization Utilization of management
Table A1. tools to achieve project
Variables measuring targets, such as cost
constructs PMPs and
ISS (Xue et al., 2018)
Cameron and Quinn,
2011)
(Arditi et al., 2017;
Cameron and Quinn,
2011; Giritli et al., 2013)
(Arditi et al., 2017;
Cameron and Quinn,
2011)
(Cameron and Quinn,
2011)
(Artto et al., 2008)
(Atkinson and
Westall, 2010;
Atkinson, 1999)
(Chan et al., 2004)
(Sanvido et al., 1992)
(Miles and Mangold,
2002)
(Konanahalli and
Oyedele, 2016)
(Meng et al., 2015)
(Ozorovskaja et al.,
2007)
(Morris and Jamieson,
2005)
(Besner and Hobbs,
2013; de Carvalho
et al., 2015)
(continued )
Construct Variable Indicator Definition Sources
Project
management
Efficiency Measured by cost, (de Carvalho and practice and
satisfactory productivity is Junior, 2015)
work accomplished at a fair goal setting
price to the owner and with a
reasonable profit for the
contractor 2825
Skill utilization Utilization of transferable (Biggart, 2013)
skills learned from other
projects
Resource utilization/ Effective and efficient (Kozak-Holland and
allocation resource utilization methods Procter, 2014)
Innovation New technology (Gimenez et al., 2012)
development
Reflection Absorptive capacity Management of knowledge (Pietrosemoli and
learned Monroy, 2013; Vicente-
Oliva et al., 2015)
Impact on business Core competency (Robert et al., 2017)
enhancement, market
development etc.
Financial returns Increase of profits benefited (de Carvalho et al.,
from efficient management 2015; de Carvalho and
Junior, 2015)
Team performances Assessment of an (Pietrosemoli and
individual’s performance Monroy, 2013)
and its effect on the
organization
ISS Project Economy Labor practice Improvement of labors’ (Martens and
health, working conditions Carvalho, 2016, 2017)
etc.
Buildability The ability to transform the (Meng et al., 2015)
project plan into reality
efficiently
Business success Profit maximization by (Cruz and
minimizing the cost of Wakolbinger, 2008;
producing and Fombrun, 2005;
manufacturing and creating Gimenez et al., 2012)
a reputation
Maintainability The ability to maintain the (Meng et al., 2015)
infrastructure during the
operation period
Organizational Impact on team Employee’s satisfaction (Miles and Mangold,
Integration level 2002)
Stakeholders Participation of (Martens and
involvement stakeholders and Carvalho, 2016)
relationship management
among them
Internationalization Compliance with (Gimenez et al., 2012;
international standards Hart, 2017; Sanchez,
2015; Starik and
Rands, 1995)

(continued ) Table A1.

ECAM Construct Variable Indicator Definition Sources
27,10
Adequate resources Balance resources and (Willar et al., 2016)
technologies across the
project efficiently to meet
needs as many as possible
Social Utility Policy The government’s pursuit of (Choguill, 1996;
2826 the creation of high-level Martens and Carvalho,
sustainable policies 2017)
Consciousness Foster respect for (Martens and
environment and society Carvalho, 2017)
Adaptability The infrastructure’s ability (Salman et al., 2007)
to withstand and fit in
external environmental
disturbance and public
requirement changes
Security Maintenance of safety (Martens and
during the operation period Carvalho, 2016;
Valdes-Vasquez and
Klotz, 2013)
Livability Improvement of quality of (Elkington, 1997;
people’s life via application Martens and Carvalho,
of infrastructure 2016; Valdes-Vasquez
and Klotz, 2013)
Productivity Efficiency and productivity (Benedict and
enhanced to all the McMahon, 2012)
industries and communities
based on the constructed
infrastructure
Education and Awareness education of (Martens and
training sustainability for the public Carvalho, 2016;
and stakeholders involved Valdes-Vasquez and
during the process of Klotz, 2013)
exercising sustainable rules
Public support Smooth relationship (Martens and
maintained with the local Carvalho, 2017)
community during and after
construction
Benefit enhancement Enhancement of people’s (Krajangsri and
health, wealth, etc. after Pongpeng, 2017)
infrastructure constructed
Environmental Natural resources Reduction for use of the non- (Gimenez et al., 2012;
Implication renewable resource, less Hart, 2017; Martens
wastage, and contamination and Carvalho, 2016)
Energy Efficient utilization of (Gimenez et al., 2012;
energy and no pollution Martens and Carvalho,
2016)
Biodiversity Biodiversity increase and (Martens and
attraction to other species Carvalho, 2016)
Eco-efficiency Less environmental (Gan et al., 2015;
footprints Martens and Carvalho,
Table A1. 2016)
Appendix 2. Project
A questionnaire sample collected from one respondent
management
A Survey on relationships between Project Management Practices and Infrastructure Sustainable Success practice and
Please complete this questionnaire according to your construction project management experiences (infrastructure projects would be better). You goal setting
may find some variables similar with each other, just ignore the similarity and complete each one separately. Your valuable opinions will exert a
decisive impact on the research outcomes. Your cooperation will be sincerely appreciated.

Part 1: General information 2827

1) Type of your company:
A. State-owned B. Foreign C. Private D. Others
2) Your working experience in construction industry (number of years):
A. <5 B. 5-10 C. 10-15 D. 15-20 E. >20
3) Role your company played in the project:
A. Owner B. Contractor C. Consultant D. Supplier E. Others
4) Role you played in the project:
A. Project manager B. Managerial personnel C. Technical staff D. Others
5) Delivery method of the project:
A. Design-Bid-Build/Design-Build B. Construction Management
C. Public-Private Partnership D. Integrated Project Delivery E. Others
6) Type of the project:
A. Transportation B. Water/gas/electricity/network supply
C. Public service buildings (e.g. schools, hospitals, etc.) D. Others

Part 2: Variables affecting project management practices

7) Based on your selected projects, please indicate the degree to which your company has achieved the following practices (1 indicating strongly
low, 4 indicating neutral, and 7 indicating strongly high).
No. Description 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
1 Communication within management team and among stakeholders √
2 Mutual trust within management team and among stakeholders √
3 Partnership within management team and among stakeholders √
4 Morale of team members √
5 Project management maturity of the organization √
6 Support for the use of tools and techniques, e.g. raining √
7 Availability of competent personnel √
8 project management leadership √
9 Perceived rate of project success √
10 Structures and resources to support changes of internal and external project environments √
11 Receptive context for changes of internal and external project environments √
12 Personnel reaction to changes of internal and external project environments √
13 Goals and requirements-oriented strategies √
14 PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Action) control √
15 Project value for organization: sales, profits, etc. √
16 Time, cost, quality compliance √
17 Risk management √
18 Information management √
19 Client requirements fulfillment √
20 Roadmap or milestones formulation √
21 Production rate (including labor, resources, equipment, etc.) √
22 Resources utilization/allocation methods √
23 Standardization of working techniques and management mechanisms √
24 Transferrable skills utilization √
25 Absorptive capacity for new knowledge √
ECAM 26
27
Technology / market / core competency / organizational capacity development
Team performance enhancement √
√

27,10 28 Team satisfaction enhancement √

29 adjustment of financial management (e.g. ROI, ROE, cash flow, etc.) √
30 Utilization of project management technology √
31 the organization is a very personal place. It is like an extended family. People seem to share a lot of themselves √
32 the organization is a very dynamic and entrepreneurial place. People are willing to stick their necks out and take risks √
the organization is very results-oriented. A major concern is with getting the job done. People are very competitive and
2828 33
achievement-oriented
√

34 the organization is a very controlled and structured place. Formal procedures govern what people do √
35 the leadership in the organization is generally considered to exemplify mentoring, facilitating, or nurturing √
36 the leadership in the organization is generally considered to exemplify entrepreneurship, innovation, or risk taking √
37 the leadership in the organization is generally considered to exemplify a no-nonsense, aggressive, results-oriented focus √
38 the leadership in the organization is general considered to exemplify coordinating, organizing, or smooth-running efficiency √
39 the management style in the organization is characterized by teamwork, consensus, and participation √
40 the management style in the organization is characterized by individual risk taking, innovation, freedom, and uniqueness √
41 the management style in the organization is characterized by hard-driving competitiveness, high demands, and achievement √
the management style in the organization is characterized by employment, conformity, predictability, and stability in
42 √
relationships
43 The glue that holds the organization together is loyalty and mutual trust. Commitment to this organization runs high √
The glue that holds the organization together is commitment to innovation and development. There is an emphasis on being
44 √
on the cutting edge
45 The glue that holds the organization together is the emphasis on achievement and goal accomplishment √
The glue that holds the organization together is formal rules and policies. Maintaining a smooth-running organization is
46 √
important
47 The organization emphasizes human development. High trust, openness, and participation persist √
The organization emphasizes acquiring new resources and creating new challenges. Trying new things and prospecting for
48 √
opportunities are valued
The organization emphasizes competitive actions and achievement. Hitting stretch targets and winning in the marketplace
49 √
are dominant
50 The organization emphasizes permanence and stability. Efficiency, control, and smooth operations are important √
The organization defines success on the basis of the development of human resources, teamwork, employee commitment,
51 √
and concern for people
The organization defines success on the basis of having the most unique or newest products. It is a product leader and
52 √
innovator
The organization defines success on the basis of winning in the marketplace and outpacing the competition. Competitive
53 √
market leadership is key
The organization defines success on the basis of efficiency. Dependable delivery, smooth scheduling, and low-cost
54 √
production are critical
Others:
Part 3: Variables affecting infrastructure sustainable success
Project
8) Based on your selected projects, please indicate the degree to which your project has achieved the following outcomes (1 indicating strongly
management
low, 4 indicating neutral, and 7 indicating strongly high).
No. Description 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
practice and
1 Resources are used and allocated timely, adequately, and efficiently √ goal setting
2 Labor practice (health, safety, training and education, working condition, etc.) √
3 Ability to transform project plan into reality √
4 Project construction efficiency √ 2829
5 Business success, e.g. profit, reputation, market share increase √
6 International standard compliance √
7 Employees’ satisfaction √
8 Project maintain efficiency √
9 Easy operation and governance √
10 Participation and involvement of community stakeholders √
11 Relationship management between company and customers (fulfill customers’ benefits, satisfaction, loyalty, etc.) √
12 Sustained government policy (in pursuit of and create higher standards, management system of environmental policies) √
13 Fostering of respect for environment and society √
14 Function preservation under environmental disturbances √
15 Function preservation under social and public requirement changes √
16 Long-term security maintained during project operation √
17 Livability of the public community (enhancement of convenience, happiness, etc.) √
18 Working and living productivity improvement to industries and communities √
19 Environmental consciousness increase due to the project (environmental education & training to the public) √
20 Smooth relationship maintained between local community and project internal stakeholders during and after construction √
21 Human benefits enhancement (e.g. health, wealth, government policies, etc.) √
22 Creation of business opportunities for products and services √
23 Reduction of impact on environment √
24 Protection enhancement of biodiversity in surroundings √
25 No contribution to global warming √
26 Efficient energy utilization, e.g. more generation, less use, efficient transmission √
27 Reduction for use of non-renewable resources and increase of renewable resources √
28 Less wastage production √
29 Less air, soil and water contamination √
30 Compliance with human resource dimension target √
Others:

Part 4: Other suggestions

Apart from the abovementioned questions/items, based on your experience, do you have any other comments concerning how project management
practices may lead to infrastructure sustainable success? Please write them down and further explain your reasons.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Note: All information collected will be kept confidential and used for research purpose only. Thanks again for your great contribution to our research
work!
ECAM Appendix 3.
Detail results of the ANOVA test
27,10
95% confidence interval
for mean
Std. Std. Lower Upper
PMPs Groups N Mean Deviation Error bound bound Minimum Maximum

2830 C1 Owner 24 4.8333 0.73598 0.15023 4.5226 5.1441 3.00 5.75

Contractor 100 5.0025 0.98761 0.09876 4.8065 5.1985 1.75 7.00
Consultant 26 5.1827 0.82024 0.16086 4.8514 5.5140 3.50 7.00
Designer 12 4.8750 1.44403 0.41686 3.9575 5.7925 1.75 6.00
Total 162 4.9969 0.96684 0.07596 4.8469 5.1469 1.75 7.00
C2 Owner 24 5.0729 0.92219 0.18824 4.6835 5.4623 2.25 6.50
Contractor 100 5.3925 0.95429 0.09543 5.2031 5.5819 2.00 7.00
Consultant 26 5.6058 0.80054 0.15700 5.2824 5.9291 3.75 7.00
Designer 12 5.3542 1.21757 0.35148 4.5806 6.1278 2.00 6.50
Total 162 5.3765 0.95115 0.07473 5.2290 5.5241 2.00 7.00
C3 Owner 24 5.1250 0.84378 0.17223 4.7687 5.4813 3.25 7.00
Contractor 100 5.2800 0.78599 0.07860 5.1240 5.4360 2.00 7.00
Consultant 26 5.3846 0.81618 0.16007 5.0550 5.7143 3.75 7.00
Designer 12 5.1458 1.12542 0.32488 4.4308 5.8609 2.00 6.00
Total 162 5.2639 0.82340 0.06469 5.1361 5.3916 2.00 7.00
C4 Owner 24 5.0521 0.89071 0.18182 4.6760 5.4282 3.50 7.00
Contractor 100 5.1875 0.88075 0.08808 5.0127 5.3623 2.00 7.00
Consultant 26 5.5000 0.72111 0.14142 5.2087 5.7913 3.75 7.00
Designer 12 5.1042 1.14047 0.32922 4.3795 5.8288 2.00 6.00
Total 162 5.2114 0.88227 0.06932 5.0745 5.3483 2.00 7.00
C5 Owner 24 4.8958 0.89052 0.18178 4.5198 5.2719 3.00 7.00
Contractor 100 5.0875 0.97142 0.09714 4.8947 5.2803 1.50 7.00
Consultant 26 5.4904 0.71582 0.14038 5.2013 5.7795 4.00 7.00
Designer 12 4.9792 1.31624 0.37997 4.1429 5.8155 2.00 5.75
Total 162 5.1157 0.96086 0.07549 4.9667 5.2648 1.50 7.00
C6 Owner 24 4.9583 0.77903 0.15902 4.6294 5.2873 3.25 7.00
Contractor 100 5.1350 0.86487 0.08649 4.9634 5.3066 1.75 7.00
Consultant 26 5.3365 1.04867 0.20566 4.9130 5.7601 1.75 7.00
Designer 12 5.0417 1.08624 0.31357 4.3515 5.7318 2.00 6.00
Total 162 5.1343 0.89994 0.07071 4.9946 5.2739 1.75 7.00
C7 Owner 24 5.4167 0.98540 0.20114 5.0006 5.8328 3.00 7.00
Contractor 100 5.4450 0.89864 0.08986 5.2667 5.6233 2.50 7.00
Consultant 26 5.6154 0.73902 0.14493 5.3169 5.9139 4.00 7.00
Designer 12 5.2500 1.33995 0.38681 4.3986 6.1014 2.50 6.50
Total 162 5.4537 0.92213 0.07245 5.3106 5.5968 2.50 7.00
C8 Owner 24 5.4308 0.60172 0.12283 5.1767 5.6849 4.33 6.50
Contractor 100 5.5000 0.86594 0.08659 5.3282 5.6718 2.00 7.00
Consultant 26 5.7562 0.53420 0.10477 5.5404 5.9719 5.00 7.00
Designer 12 5.2917 1.57019 0.45327 4.2940 6.2893 2.00 6.33
Total 162 5.5154 0.86016 0.06758 5.3820 5.6489 2.00 7.00
C9 Owner 24 5.0833 1.10990 0.22656 4.6147 5.5520 2.50 7.00
Contractor 100 5.4600 1.01921 0.10192 5.2578 5.6622 2.00 7.00
Consultant 26 5.5385 0.99923 0.19597 5.1349 5.9421 3.50 7.00
Designer 12 5.3333 1.49747 0.43228 4.3819 6.2848 2.00 7.00
Total 162 5.4074 1.06937 0.08402 5.2415 5.5733 2.00 7.00
S1 Owner 24 5.5000 0.93250 0.19035 5.1062 5.8938 4.00 7.00
Contractor 100 5.3700 1.23628 0.12363 5.1247 5.6153 1.00 7.00
Consultant 26 5.4231 0.98684 0.19353 5.0245 5.8217 3.00 7.00
Designer 12 5.5000 1.44600 0.41742 4.5813 6.4187 2.00 7.00
Total 162 5.4074 1.16659 0.09166 5.2264 5.5884 1.00 7.00
S2 Owner 24 5.0833 1.13890 0.23248 4.6024 5.5643 3.00 7.00
Contractor 100 5.2900 1.44456 0.14446 5.0034 5.5766 1.00 7.00
Table A3. Consultant 26 5.6923 1.04954 0.20583 5.2684 6.1162 4.00 7.00
Descriptives of the Designer 12 5.5000 1.50756 0.43519 4.5421 6.4579 2.00 7.00
means and standard Total 162 5.3395 1.35208 0.10623 5.1297 5.5493 1.00 7.00
deviations between
four subgroups (continued )
 95% confidence interval
Project
for mean management
Std. Std. Lower Upper
PMPs Groups N Mean Deviation Error bound bound Minimum Maximum
practice and
goal setting
S3 Owner 24 5.4167 1.01795 0.20779 4.9868 5.8465 4.00 7.00
Contractor 100 5.1400 1.26347 0.12635 4.8893 5.3907 1.00 7.00
Consultant 26 5.3846 0.85215 0.16712 5.0404 5.7288 4.00 7.00
Designer 12 5.1667 1.26730 0.36584 4.3615 5.9719 2.00 7.00 2831
Total 162 5.2222 1.16896 0.09184 5.0409 5.4036 1.00 7.00
S4 Owner 24 5.0833 1.21285 0.24757 4.5712 5.5955 3.00 7.00
Contractor 100 5.2200 1.18560 0.11856 4.9848 5.4552 2.00 7.00
Consultant 26 5.4231 0.85665 0.16800 5.0771 5.7691 4.00 7.00
Designer 12 5.4167 1.37895 0.39807 4.5405 6.2928 2.00 7.00
Total 162 5.2469 1.15324 0.09061 5.0680 5.4258 2.00 7.00
S5 Owner 24 5.4171 0.75638 0.15440 5.0977 5.7365 3.67 7.00
Contractor 100 5.4232 0.99290 0.09929 5.2262 5.6202 2.00 7.00
Consultant 26 5.5004 0.80103 0.15710 5.1768 5.8239 4.00 7.00
Designer 12 5.1383 1.40969 0.40694 4.2427 6.0340 2.00 6.67
Total 162 5.4136 0.96451 0.07578 5.2639 5.5632 2.00 7.00
I1 Owner 24 5.5696 0.78727 0.16070 5.2372 5.9020 4.17 7.00
Contractor 100 5.5518 0.82987 0.08299 5.3871 5.7165 2.17 7.00
Consultant 26 5.7246 0.72925 0.14302 5.4301 6.0192 3.33 7.00
Designer 12 5.1392 1.25822 0.36322 4.3397 5.9386 2.17 6.33
Total 162 5.5516 0.84872 0.06668 5.4199 5.6833 2.17 7.00
I2 Owner 24 5.1458 0.93807 0.19148 4.7497 5.5419 3.00 7.00
Contractor 100 5.3150 1.07227 0.10723 5.1022 5.5278 1.00 7.00
Consultant 26 5.4423 0.98313 0.19281 5.0452 5.8394 3.00 7.00
Designer 12 4.9583 1.19579 0.34520 4.1986 5.7181 2.00 6.50
Total 162 5.2840 1.04685 0.08225 5.1215 5.4464 1.00 7.00
I3 Owner 24 4.7917 0.97709 0.19945 4.3791 5.2043 3.00 7.00
Contractor 100 4.9700 1.08670 0.10867 4.7544 5.1856 1.00 7.00
Consultant 26 5.1538 0.92487 0.18138 4.7803 5.5274 3.00 7.00
Designer 12 5.0833 1.16450 0.33616 4.3434 5.8232 2.00 6.00
Total 162 4.9815 1.04835 0.08237 4.8188 5.1441 1.00 7.00
I4 Owner 24 5.3333 0.91683 0.18715 4.9462 5.7205 4.00 7.00
Contractor 100 5.4800 1.00985 0.10099 5.2796 5.6804 1.00 7.00
Consultant 26 5.5000 0.94868 0.18605 5.1168 5.8832 4.00 7.00
Designer 12 5.3333 1.23091 0.35533 4.5512 6.1154 2.00 7.00
Total 162 5.4506 0.99722 0.07835 5.2959 5.6053 1.00 7.00
R1 Owner 24 4.8333 1.04950 0.21423 4.3902 5.2765 3.00 7.00
Contractor 100 4.9600 1.05333 0.10533 4.7510 5.1690 1.00 7.00
Consultant 26 4.9615 0.91568 0.17958 4.5917 5.3314 4.00 7.00
Designer 12 4.9167 1.37895 0.39807 4.0405 5.7928 2.00 7.00
Total 162 4.9383 1.04965 0.08247 4.7754 5.1011 1.00 7.00
R2 Owner 24 4.7917 1.14129 0.23296 4.3097 5.2736 2.00 7.00
Contractor 100 5.2700 1.30155 0.13016 5.0117 5.5283 1.00 7.00
Consultant 26 5.5385 1.13950 0.22347 5.0782 5.9987 3.00 7.00
Designer 12 5.1667 1.26730 0.36584 4.3615 5.9719 2.00 7.00
Total 162 5.2346 1.25872 0.09889 5.0393 5.4299 1.00 7.00
R3 Owner 24 4.9167 1.50121 0.30643 4.2828 5.5506 1.00 7.00
Contractor 100 5.2700 1.11785 0.11179 5.0482 5.4918 1.00 7.00
Consultant 26 5.6154 1.06120 0.20812 5.1868 6.0440 3.00 7.00
Designer 12 5.1667 1.26730 0.36584 4.3615 5.9719 2.00 7.00
Total 162 5.2654 1.18894 0.09341 5.0810 5.4499 1.00 7.00
R4 Owner 24 4.0417 1.26763 0.25875 3.5064 4.5769 2.00 7.00
Contractor 100 4.5700 1.23301 0.12330 4.3253 4.8147 1.00 7.00
Consultant 26 4.7308 1.45761 0.28586 4.1420 5.3195 1.00 7.00
Designer 12 4.5000 1.24316 0.35887 3.7101 5.2899 2.00 7.00
Total 162 4.5123 1.28168 0.10070 4.3135 4.7112 1.00 7.00 Table A3.
ECAM Results of the one-way ANOVA test between four subgroups
27,10
PMPs Sum of squares df Mean square F-value Sig.

C1 Between Groups 1.721 3 0.574 0.609 0.610^

Within Groups 148.777 158 0.942
Total 150.498 161
2832 C2 Between Groups
Within Groups
3.610
142.046
3
158
1.203
0.899
1.339 0.264^

Total 145.656 161

C3 Between Groups 1.035 3 0.345 0.504 0.680^
Within Groups 108.121 158 0.684
Total 109.156 161
C4 Between Groups 2.970 3 0.990 1.278 0.284^
Within Groups 122.352 158 0.774
Total 125.321 161
C5 Between Groups 5.114 3 1.705 1.876 0.136^
Within Groups 143.529 158 0.908
Total 148.642 161
C6 Between Groups 1.910 3 0.637 0.783 0.505^
Within Groups 128.483 158 0.813
Total 130.392 161
C7 Between Groups 1.218 3 0.406 0.473 0.702^
Within Groups 135.685 158 0.859
Total 136.903 161
C8 Between Groups 2.303 3 0.768 1.038 0.377^
Within Groups 116.817 158 0.739
Total 119.120 161
C9 Between Groups 3.310 3 1.103 0.964 0.411^
Within Groups 180.802 158 1.144
Total 184.111 161
S1 Between Groups 0.455 3 0.152 0.110 0.954^
Within Groups 218.656 158 1.384
Total 219.111 161
S2 Between Groups 5.365 3 1.788 0.978 0.405^
Within Groups 288.962 158 1.829
Total 294.327 161
S3 Between Groups 2.306 3 0.769 0.558 0.644^
Within Groups 217.694 158 1.378
Total 220.000 161
S4 Between Groups 1.867 3 0.622 0.463 0.708^
Within Groups 212.256 158 1.343
Total 214.123 161
S5 Between Groups 1.115 3 0.372 0.395 0.757^
Within Groups 148.659 158 0.941
Total 149.774 161
I1 Between Groups 2.827 3 0.942 1.316 0.271^
Within Groups 113.145 158 0.716
Total 115.972 161
I2 Between Groups 2.479 3 0.826 0.750 0.524^
Within Groups 173.960 158 1.101
Total 176.438 161
I3 Between Groups 1.775 3 0.592 0.534 0.660^
Within Groups 175.170 158 1.109
Total 176.944 161

I4 Between Groups 0.645 3 0.215 0.213 0.887^

Within Groups 159.460 158 1.009
Total 160.105 161
R1 Between Groups 0.331 3 0.110 0.099 0.961^
Within Groups 177.052 158 1.121
Total 177.383 161

(continued )
PMPs Sum of squares df Mean square F-value Sig.
Project
management
R2 Between Groups 7.290 3 2.430 1.549 0.204^
Within Groups 247.797 158 1.568
practice and
Total 255.086 161 goal setting
R3 Between Groups 6.223 3 2.074 1.480 0.222^
Within Groups 221.364 158 1.401
Total 227.586 161
R4 Between Groups 6.892 3 2.297 1.409 0.242^ 2833
Within Groups 257.584 158 1.630
Total 264.475 161
Note(s): ^: insignificant at the level of 0.05

Corresponding author
Bin Xue can be contacted at: xuebin527@gmail.com

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