Research On The Action Mechanism Of Risk Allocation On Project Management Performance

The construction industry in China is still in a period of high growth at present.The growth of total investment in fixed assets continues to maintain a high level at thelast decade, while another accompanied phenomenon is the frequent occurrence of theengineering contract disputes between owners and contractors, which restricts theimprovement of project management performance (PMP) of construction projectsseriously. The reason can be attributed in large extent to improper risk allocation (RA)between owner(s) and contractor(s), but its theoretical origin lies in the actionmechanism of RA on PMP has not been clearly revealed, which leads to lack ofincentive and practice guidelines of proper RA for the owners in a monopoly positionof the construction market. Therefore, this dissertation tries to explore the relationshipbetween RA and PMP so as to reveal their internal mechanism through literature study,theoretical deduction, questionnaire surveying and empirical analyzing. In thisdissertation, some aspects are studied thoroughly as follows.1. Based on systematically analyzing achievements in project risk allocation, thetheoretical framework of the project risk allocation is reconstructed by the theories ofcontract economics and project governance. Through combining "ex-ante agreement"and "ex-post governance" of risk allocation, the theoretical model includes initial riskallocation at contracting and risk reallocation at contract performance stage isconstructed, which helps to improve the basic theoretical framework of project riskallocation.2. From perspective of incomplete contract theory, the mechanism of theefficiency realizing during initial contract negotiation and renegotiation process isanalyzed. Through mapping the initial contract, re-negotiations and contractefficiencies to the initial risk allocation, risk reallocation and PMP with the logic thatrisk allocation was considered as the core element of trading contract, the correlationmodel between risk allocation and PMP was constructed, and then, this dissertationproposes the theoretical hypothesis on the basis of the existing study of the relation ofrisk allocation and project management performance.3. On the basis of literature review, theory deduction and fully use of theexpertise, the operating definition of initial risk allocation, risk reallocation and PMPis given, according to which the measurement scale of the core concept is developed. After that，the reliability and validity of the measurement scale is tested through thecollected samples data.4. With154samples collected from the project and structural equation modelingapproach employed, this dissertation tests the proposed hypothesis which reveals themechanism of the initial risk allocationâ†'risk reallocationâ†'project managementperformance, and further analyses the specific path between the different dimensionsof the core variables above.