Study On The Impact Of Project Plan Maturity On Project Knowledge Integration Of General Contracting Project

Due to the advantages of specialization, optimizing resource allocation, and enhancing comprehensive benefits, the general contracting model has gradually become the mainstream management mode of large and complex projects all over the world. It changed the past dispersed management model into the the systematic management model with the overall consideration of various stages. Which makes the project management more efficient and meets the requirements of modern engineering management well. Since the introduction of the general contracting model in the 1980s, the general contracting market in China has been developing rapidly. The industry has gradually expanded to industries such as chemical industry, metallurgy, electric power, railways, and construction. The strength of large enterprises has been continuously enhanced, as well as the development of overseas engineering contracting business scale. However, compared with the outstanding intenational general contracting enterprises, the general contracting capacity and project management level of Chinese enterprises still have a big gap, which embodies the mismatch between the operational capability and the integrated management ability. This situation makes it difficult to achieve the "going out" strategy through general contracting mode, the international competitiveness of Chinese general contracting enterprise has yet to be improved. Because of the obvious knowledge-intensive and knowledge-driven characteristics of general contracting projects, the application of general contracting mode is not only a problem of project management, but also a knowledge integration problem. Therefore, how to solve the problem of organizing knowledge failure in the general contracting project and improve the efficiency and benefit of knowledge integration is the key of general contracting project management. In view of this, starting from the project plan which runs through the project life cycle and focusing on the mechanism of knowledge integration of general contracting projects, this paper carried out a series of in-depth qualitative and quantitative researches to solve the problem of how project plan maturity affects project knowledge integration and project performance. The formation of the research results are as follows.First of all, we defined and measured the project plan maturity of general contracting project. Based on related literature research, the qualitative data interview and content analysis was used to analyze the construct structure of project plan maturity, and the initial item of project plan maturity was obtained through node coding, node analysis and purification process. Then the structure of the construct was further confirmed by exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis based on large sample, and the project plan maturity measurement scale with reliability and validity was formed. The results show that the project plan maturity of the general contracting project is a construct with three core relevant dimensions, they are "direct and control", "risk response" and "work consensus". Project plan maturity then was divided into three levels. The measurement of the construct of project plan maturity have laid a foundation for further research on the relationship between project plan maturity, knowledge integration and project performance of general contracting projects.Secondly, the knowledge integration process based on the project plan and the mechanism of project plan maturity affect knowledge integration were identified. Based on the classification of project plan maturity, three case studies of typical general contracting projects from different project plan maturity level were selected to carry out multi-case analysis. On the basis of inductive and contrastive analysis of multi-case, a knowledge integration model of project plan-oriented and a dual-function model of project plan maturity on knowledge integration was constructed. The former focus on the matching analysis of project knowledge integration elements, and results show that the process of project knowledge integration is a synergetic process of integration level, knowledge, subject, boundary, carrier, obstacle and environment. The later reflects the influencing mechanism, and results show that project plan maturity will create the common knowledge through the cooperation of codification and socialization path. Then it promotes the invocation of knowledge carrier, knowledge interaction, and knowledge reconstruction, finally enhances the effect of project knowledge integration. The study identified the rules of knowledge integration in the context of general contracting projects and proposed knowledge integration strategies for general contracting projects.Thirdly, the relationship between project plan maturity, knowledge integration and project performance was tested. Based on the literature review and the results of case study, this paper constructed the research model and research hypothesis of three concepts, and then tested the research hypothesis by the structural equation model with large sample. The results show that the project plan maturity has a significant positive impact on the project knowledge integration and project performance, and the project knowledge integration has a positive impact on the project performance. The intermediary effect test results show that project plan maturity is also largely contributed to project performance by enhancing the effect of project knowledge integration. The study confirms the important role of project plan maturity and project knowledge integration in the general contracting project, and provides the theoretical guidance for the general contracting project management practice. Therefore, the general contracting enterprise can promote the project's knowledge integration effect by improving the project plan maturity, thus guaranteeing the performance of the general contracting project and the enhancement of the enterprise's core competitiveness.