Saleem, (2017) and Yap and Skitmore (2017) in Malaysia, where the contract alterations had negatively affected impact project outcomes. Design changes, also known as variation order, have been most commonly seen in a contract change by the client. Karrisson and Kindbom (2018) reported that one of the contractors highlighted that it is difficult to perform what the client wants when the design change is found frequently during project delivery, thus, impacting the project performance. The extension of time (EOT), project budget overrun and low quality of work are the interconnected problems found after the contract changes happen. Moreover, the sub-contractors group has assigned this factor a slightly higher rank than the main contractors.
Meanwhile, the main contractors did not suppose that contract renewals are crucial, as they gave it a lower rating (3rd ranking). The finding is akin to Liew, et al. (2012) which recognised that the sub-contractorss have carried more than 50% and capped at a maximum of 90% to the project value. This is because the nature of the construction industry is unique, the labour force is transitory, and numerous sub-contractorss (trades) are engaged to deliver specialist works.
Hence, the sub-contractorss agree that "frequent changes to contract" would negatively impact the project performance rather than the main contractors.
"Lack of mutual trust and respect" is in the third place. Effective communication is planned to fail without mutual trust and respect between each other. Nevstad, et al. (2018) had mentioned that trust could be understood as the pre-requisite or an outcome. Therefore, it is considered the contracting parties are ranking this variable in third place out of the twenty factors of communication. This finding is similar to Jiang, Lu and Le (2016) study in China. Trust and respect between the construction stakeholders can enhance knowledge sharing, resolve issues, better relationships boundaries and achieve the project objectives. To achieve a fruitful project performance, construction stakeholders should position themselves with a high level of information sharing. In short, "lack of mutual trust and respect" can result in poor project performance. Still, it can also increase transaction costs, impede information exchange, discourage joint initiatives, and destroy the groundwork for growing moral interactions on the construction site.
Moreover, “slow information flow” is ranked in fourth place.
Communication is always binding with coordination and cooperation. The construction parties have to coordinate with each other to communicate the project information. Given the volume of information shared between construction stakeholders, failing to obtain and process the relevant information on time can result in significant difficulties and project delays.
This result is consistent with several existing studies that the most effective way to avoid project delays is by ensuring the construction supply chain’s information is well transferred and communicated between the construction stakeholders (Ghaith, 2017; Joshua, Arvinlucy and Peterson, 2016). In addition, the troublesome issues required a speedy, economic judgement to prevent the unwelcome negative outcome. In short, the flow of the project information is the key to the early achievement of the project objectives.
"Unethical behaviour" is ranked fifth, as shown in Table 4.4. One of the most important aspects of professionalism is ethics which is applicable in every industry; Malaysia's construction industry does as well. The growth in the market in the construction industry is causing unethical behaviour to spread at an uncontrollable rate. The quality sector of the project performance directly relates to the unethical behaviour of the construction stakeholders (Hamzah, et al., 2010). This coincides with the research by Rahim, et al. (2019) in Malaysia regarding corruption being ranked first under the type of unethical behaviour found in Malaysia. Bribery is one of the corrupt practices to approve substandard work that would inevitably raise overall project costs when additional costs are necessary to correct the deficiencies of poor quality work (Rahim, et al., 2019; Yap, et al., 2020a). Therefore, this finding indicates that the Malaysian contracting parties are aware of unethical behaviour as one of the factors of communication that would significantly affect the project performance in terms of quality.
4.9.2 Homogeneous Perceptions on Factors of Communication
The Mann-Whitney U test is now used to determine the similar opinions of the main contractors and sub-contractors on the factors of communication that influence project performance. The findings generated by the Mann-Whitney
U test are shown in Table 4.4. All of the outcomes reported were greater than the 0.050 significant level; hence, the null hypothesis (H0) is accepted. Thus, the results indicate no significant difference in the perception between main contractors and sub-contractors at the 95% confidence level.
Table 4.4: Mean and Ranking of Factors of Communication.
Ref. Factors of Communication Overall (N=120) Main Contractors
(N=65)
Sub-Contractors (N=55)
Mann-Whitney U Test
Mean S.D Rank Mean S.D Rank Mean S.D Rank Chi-square Asymp.
F6 Lack of effective communication technique 4.292 0.715 1 4.308 0.747 1 4.273 0.592 3 0.185 0.667
F9 Frequent changes to contract 4.292 0.749 2 4.292 0.701 3 4.291 0.685 2 0.110 0.740
F10 Lack of mutual respect and trust 4.282 0.742 3 4.215 0.795 6 4.345 0.673 1 0.758 0.384
F4 Slow information flow 4.247 0.686 4 4.215 0.758 7 4.273 0.679 4 0.009 0.925
F11 Unethical behaviour 4.225 0.750 5 4.215 0.820 9 4.236 0.666 5 0.035 0.852
F20 Lack of open communication 4.200 0.740 6 4.292 0.749 4 4.091 0.776 8 2.071 0.150
F5 Unclear objective 4.192 0.770 7 4.292 0.785 5 4.073 0.742 9 3.250 0.071
F14 Poor communication skills 4.183 0.756 8 4.308 0.748 2 4.036 0.744 13 4.050 0.051
F18 Inaccessibility of information 4.150 0.729 9 4.123 0.839 13 4.182 0.580 6 0.002 0.965
F7 Lack of communication management plan 4.150 0.774 10 4.185 0.864 10 4.109 0.658 7 1.027 0.311
F3 Language barrier 4.125 0.762 11 4.215 0.760 8 4.018 0.757 14 2.256 0.133
F15 Impropriate communication channel 4.092 0.710 12 4.138 0.788 12 4.036 0.607 11 1.016 0.313 F8 Improper communication time management 4.075 0.780 13 4.154 0.815 11 3.982 0.733 16 1.945 0.163
F2 Complexity of project 4.067 0.683 14 4.092 0.678 14 4.036 0.693 12 0.131 0.718
F16 Stressful working environment 4.025 0.804 15 4.000 0.829 15 4.055 0.780 10 0.170 0.680
F1 Adversarial culture 3.975 0.727 16 3.954 0.623 17 4.000 0.577 15 0.182 0.669
F19 Knowledge hoarding 3.975 0.601 17 3.985 0.739 16 3.964 0.719 17 0.056 0.813
F12 Lack of support of advanced technology 3.917 0.816 18 3.892 0.886 19 3.954 0.731 18 0.055 0.815
F17 Poor feedback 3.867 0.777 19 3.923 0.872 18 3.800 0.650 19 1.275 0.259
F13 Different level of education 3.517 0.840 20 3.600 0.898 20 3.418 0.762 20 2.043 0.153