Research On The Internal Conflict Management Mechanism Of Construction Programs Based On Grounded Theory

Nowadays,with the rapid increase of the national economy and the development of infrastructure construction,the construction industry has been given more opportunities and faced more new challenges.An increasingly number of construction projects are starting to run in the shape of programs,which bring more challenges to the management of them.In view of the fact that conflict will influence the achievement of goals and relationships,and even affect the success or failure of the project,conflict management has been one of the most important parts in project management and has been gaining prevalent interest from researchers.Comparing with single project,the structure of program is more complex and more stakeholders involved in whose relationships are more complicated within programs,therefore,the management of conflicts therein proves more new problems.By reviewing the concepts of program,program management and conflict management,and researches on program management and conflict management in projects,it was found that conflict management at the project level has been widely studied from various perspectives by previous researchers,however,very little attention has been paid to conflicts experienced in programs.In order to fill the gap of program conflict management theoretically and practically,this research selected a typical construction program which is located in Jinan as a case,and grounded theory was introduced to explore the conflicts management mechanism between the internal stakeholders of construction programs.Firstly,document review,site observation and semi-structured interview surveys are employed to collect data,and three coding steps which including open coding,axial coding and selective coding were adopted at the same time.During this period,nearly 30000 words of original data was collected and relevant concepts and categories were formed through theoretical sampling and continuous comparison.After confirming the saturation of the theory,the research team clarified the logical relationship and main contents of all aspects of the internal conflict management of the program.Eventually,an internal conflict management mechanism which is consist of four stages:prevention,identification,resolution and feedback was built from a stakeholder perspective.The result reveals that 1)comparing with conflict management in single project,there are some special conflicts in construction programs,and the strategies of resolving conflicts rely more on the optimization of organization and institutions;2)"prevention prior to cure",experiences and lessons of internal conflict program can provide reference for subsequent conflicts;3)conflicts in program come from plans in early stage,organization of program,communication in program,institutions of program,partners and construction conditions;4)there are five types of conflicts between internal stakeholders in program,including construction management conflicts,organization management conflicts,design management conflicts,financial management conflicts and production management conflicts;5)conflict resolution principles will guide the stakeholders within the program to choose the proper resolution strategies to deal with conflicts;6)conflict will affect the program work,objectives and relationships.The research findings provide a solid foundation for future research regarding program conflict and assist practitioners in the construction industry to effectively manage program conflicts.