Three theoretical perspectives for understanding inter-firm coordination of construction project supply chains

Abstract

The success of construction projects is highly dependent on the coordination of a fairly large number of stakeholders, such as client organizations, designers, general contractors, and subcontractors. Each of those stakeholders can both affect and be affected by the way a project is managed, and none of them usually has the power or the ability to coordinate project supply chains. However, there is no comprehensive theoretical foundation for describing or explaining the coordination of construction project supply chains. This paper discusses the role of three different theoretical perspectives for understanding the inter-firm coordination process of project supply chains in the construction industry: the Theory of Coordination, the Transaction Cost Theory and the Language-Action Perspective. Although the combined use of theoretical approaches has been suggested in the literature, an indepth discussion on how they complement each other, based on empirical data, seems to be necessary. The contribution of each theoretical approach is pointed out in the paper, and their complementary role is illustrated in a case study carried out in a petrochemical construction project in Brazil.