Project Organization Structure and Design Coordination in Architecture and Engineering Design Projects: An Advanced Structural Contingency Perspective

Peter Morris calls for attention to the front-end in construction project. Design stage is an important part in the front-end of construction project. Due to lack of coordination amongst different professionals in design stage, information inconsistency (e.g. clash) amongst different disciplines (e.g. architecture, structure engineering) results in delay and cost overrun in construction stage. How to design project organization structure in design team in order to improve design coordination performance is concerned. Structural contingency theory argues that there is no best organization structure. The effect of organization structure on performance depends on task uncertainty. However, organization structure does not react sensitively to contingency change. But project organization structure, as a temporary organization structure is much easier to be adjusted. Coordination is an information processing activity to deal with task uncertainty. It is postulated that project organization structure affect project performance by facilitating or prohibiting information processing to reduce task uncertainty. Incorporating structure-conduct-performance perspective into traditional structural contingency theory, an advanced structural contingency framework is developed to investigate the relationship between project organization structure and project performance. It is postulated that, when task uncertainty changes its level, performance restores by organization structure-conduct adapting to fit new information processing requirement. A case study is conducted to test the framework. The advanced framework helps to understand how project organization structure affects project performance from a more systematical and process view.