Curing congenital construction industry disorders through relationally integrated supply chains

Despite several strident calls for industry-wide reforms, construction industries remain 'disabled' by apparently congenital defects and inherent weaknesses. A barrage of remedial reforms and revisions of procurement regulations, practices, and contracting styles have been recently targeting enhanced value, superior performance, overall satisfaction and harmony. Many of these initiatives focus on integration of construction supply chains through significant upheavals in contractual arrangements, operational styles and contractor selection approaches, often using relational contracting approaches such as partnering, alliancing and even deeper collaborative/relation-building bonding initiatives. This paper is based on a synergistic integration of relevant results from a series of related research studies, as reinforced by knowledge distilled from other studies and experiences, and as reported in the recent literature. A relationally reinforced supply chain integration model is developed in this paper, to supplement the basic transactional contractual links and to release the latent energies that are needed to elevate construction industries in many countries. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.