Thus, it is important to understand what influences contractors’ intention to undertake consummate performance behaviors. As the consummate performance behavior is not mandatory, contractors have the right to take it or not. When parties perform in the spirit of the contract, we may call that parties adopt the consummate performance behaviors. Parties might perform within the contract or in the spirit of contract based on their sense of entitlement. In this theory, a contract provides a reference point for the parties’ trading relationship, i.e., their feelings of entitlement. This concept is developed from the reference point theory. In addition, some studies have examined the consummate performance behaviors (CPB). A large group of studies examined how contractual governance and informal governance influence each other and how they jointly influence project performance (e.g., ). For example, studies, grounded upon transaction cost theory (TCE), presented a complement role of informal governance in inhibiting opportunistic behaviors and nurturing cooperative behaviors. In order to improve project performance, it is important to motivate contractors to undertake efforts that are not written in formal contracts. Because contracts are generally legal shields, written in a biased manner to protect the owner and the weak status of contractors, contractors have little intention to exceed the expected goal of the project.
Obviously, the concern of the owner should be that the contractor should do his best to fulfill the contract and achieve or even exceed the expected goal of the project. However, if the contractor can perform his duties in accordance with the spirit of the contract and perform his duties well, such as actively internalizing risks, making up contract loopholes, and cooperating and assisting each other, the contractor can achieve perfect performance. If the contractor performs the contract only according to the contract, it can only achieve the minimum performance required by the contract terms.
IntroductionĬontractual behaviors often lead to adversarial relationships that might constrain high project performance because written agreements are often weak to adapt to the changes. These two factors cannot be replaced by other factors. Attitude toward cooperation and subjective norm are the core of the contractors’ intention of CPB. In addition, three equifinal combinations result in the intention of CPB. Attitude toward social value has the greatest impact on the intention of CPB, whereas the subjective norm is least effective on the intention of CPB. The results show that the intention of CPB is mainly influenced by attitude toward benefit/cooperation/social value, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control. Data were analyzed through structural equation modeling and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis. To achieve this, a questionnaire survey was undertaken in China, with 195 valid questionnaires from project managers and contract managers being received. Drawing on the theory of planned behavior (TPB), this study aims to examine which factors influence the intention of CPB. However, few studies have investigated why contractors would undertake CPB. This is important to improve project performance. Contractors’ consummate performance behavior (CPB) refers to that contractors perform within the spirit of the contract.