Partnering definition, theory and evaluation

Abstract: The concept of partnering in the construction industry stands for a collaborative way of working. Examples of partnering projects can be found on every continent. As suggested in the title this thesis makes contributions to three areas of partnering research: the definition of partnering, the theory behind partnering and how to evaluate the effects of the concept.The thesis consists of six papers with the following main results. A new definition of the concept is provided with the partnering flower in the first paper. This definition model is a concrete, flexible and structured way to define partnering. It forces people to concretise and pinpoint which components they include in partnering in a specific setting. The second paper uses contract theory to understand how partnering can be justified from an efficiency perspective. Partnering can either be seen as something that neutralises opportunism when there is an incomplete contract or something that reduces transaction costs for renegotiation of complete contracts when new information arises. Paper 3 is an empirical study of attitudes towards partnering in the Swedish construction industry, which complements the preceding studies. Among the results can be mentioned that support for the definition of partnering presented in paper 1 is found and that most respondents do not see partnering just as a new fad - a result that is consistent from 2004 to 2006. With the theory and the definition settled, it remains to evaluate the effects of partnering. This is done in two steps. The first step (in paper 4) is through reviewing earlier evaluations and providing suggestions on how the assessments can be improved. One of these suggestions is applied in paper 5, with a quasi-experimental evaluation of partnering comparing ten partnering projects to ten similar non-partnering projects. With improved data, mainly based on site meeting minutes, and a more well-founded method, no support can be found for the strong positive outcome of partnering reported in earlier evaluations. The final paper makes a contribution to economic contract theory by questioning one of the essential assumptions in this literature, the distinction between observable and verifiable characteristics. This aspect surfaced during the study of partnering contracts and contract theory.