Stakeholders’ preference towards the use of conflict management styles in dual concern theory in post contract stage

Abstract

Conflicts often act as obstacles to the project success by wasting time, money and energy of the construction stakeholders; resulting numerous harmful effects to the project. Having conflicts is a natural phenomenon which is inevitable due to the unbreakable bond between the nature of the construction industry and the sources of conflicts. It is identified that the tendency of having conflicts is enormously high, especially in post contract stage of any construction project. Even though the conflict management found to be existing in the construction sector, still the construction stakeholders often have to face many unmanaged conflicts which subsequently convert into disputes, demanding expensive and time consuming dispute resolution. Therefore, the requirement of an effective conflict management should receive a prior importance. It was verified that the effective conflict management can be derived from the opinions of construction stakeholders since they are the personnel who create and experience the conflict situations. Therefore, the aim of this study was to develop a stakeholder preferred framework for effective usage of dual concern theory for conflict management in post contract stage. Case study was selected as the most suitable research approach due to the qualitative nature of the study. Twelve semi structured interviews were conducted; selecting three stakeholders representing each case. The collected data was analyzed using content analysis and conclusions were drawn and recommendations were put forward. The findings of this study proved that effective conflict management is a broad spectrum which should be fully followed from the commencement of the project till the end. Moreover, it was recognized that the main reason for increment of having conflicts is that the construction stakeholders ignore to follow the entire conflict management spectrum. Furthermore, the findings confirmed that inclusion of dual concern theory which manages conflict situations by providing consideration for both self and others at the same time yet in different degrees in the conflict management spectrum will provide more effective results. Hence, this study proposed a framework for effective conflict management with the usage of dual concern theory for post contract stage.