工程项目管理专业留学生dissertation范文参考-INTRODUCTION

工程项目管理专业留学生dissertation范文参考-INTRODUCTION

 

RESEARCH BACKGROUND AND DIRECTIONS

The achievement of a construction project is a process during which a project manager allocates the people involved to the most suitable positions and arranges the time and resources. Project evaluation is a systematic method employing critical indicators used to measure the performance of a project.  Project manager is a key personal during the construction of a project, who can have remarkable influence on the performance of a project.  

 

In the past decades, more and bigger construction project planned and conducted with poor performance, such as cost overrun, bad quality, delays and disputes during the delivery process. As the construction project can remarkably influence the macro-economy development, society conditions and environmental preservation, so it is a hotspot to improve the performance level. Project evaluation is a useful method through which we can measure the project performance and summarize the mistakes and problems in the past to deliver better project in the future.

 

Many studies have been conducted focusing on the theme of construction project evaluation. Most of these evaluation methods emphasize the three traditional basic criteria of time, quality and cost. Among cost, quality and time, cost is always the easiest to measure and the most attractive one to project stakeholders in the past decades. But always put so many emphasize on cost even the life cycle cost (Dell'isola, 1982; Ellingham, 2006; Cheng, 2010) can lead to serious problem, such as damaging environment in order to achieve a project lower cost. 

 

There have been some studies on the theory, methods and practice of project managers. Cao et al. (2010) studied the project managers’ performance from the structural elements, indicators and methods of evaluation, identifying the leadership components from four dimensions: technical, operational, human and strategy. Zhang et al. (2013) explored the competencies of project managers particularly from the emotional competencies, http://www.ukthesis.org/dissertation_sample/ establishing a project manager social competency model for Chinese construction project managers.  Zhang (2007) established a three dimension structure model including: managerial skilled, personal relationship and personal traits. All these studies focus on evaluation of project managers’ performance itself. 

 

From the aforementioned, the conclusion is that there are many studies on project performance evaluation as well as many research projects emphasizing on performance of project managers, but few studies have been done on the connection between project performance and project managers themself.  However, with the increasing realization of the importance of project managers (Gaddis, 1959; Pettersen, 1991;  Loo, 2002; Leybourne, 2007; Zhang, 2013), it has been already recommended to evaluate a project manager’s performance to detective its influence on the success or failure of a project. 

 

The importance of project managers has been identified in both academic and construction industrial field. Although various evaluation methods on the influence of project managers on the performance of projects have been studies, most of these studies were conducted within a narrow condition-one culture district. In the past decades, there have being a constantly critical trend which has essential influence on our daily lives as well as on the whole global economy, that is globalization. Understanding, identification and managing the culture difference during the delivery of construction project can increase the success possibility of a project (Kivrak, 2009; Ochieng and Price, 2010). 

 

As those concepts become more importance in construction due to the increase of strategic alliances. Furthermore, there are more and more global companies constructing project in the entire world. In order to completing a project successfully, it is important to select a competent person to be the project manager. The performance outcomes of a project can be influenced by many factors of the project managers during the construction stage, and the interaction between these factors may lead to success or failure of a project. It is therefore necessary to evaluate the project managers’ leadership in a broader sense that is competencies.

 

In the context of the aforementioned problems and emerging trends and requirements, it was decided to plan and conduct a research project to address the issues raised by academia and practice to deal with the increasing issues of the construction industry and the entire world at large.

 

In this present research project, the key indicators for the leadership of Chinese and UK project managers is proposed to identified in order to detective the Critical Success Factors (CSFs) and Critical Failure Factors (CFFs) which is based on the Chinese and UK culture separately.  Project managers’ leadership emanates from different persons which is kind of subjective making it less amendable to objective analysis. In order to measure project managers leadership from a more objective and persuasive perspectives, the indicator, their weightings will be developed in an equation.

 

Although there are many studies conducted on the identification and evaluation of project managers’ competencies, for example the key social competencies for Chinese construction project managers, which introduce new factors into project performance measurement process such as: social competencies – working with others, stakeholder management, leasing others and social awareness (Zhang et al., 2013), the cross-cultural element is not got appropriately attention.  In fact, one indicator which is important in one cultural district may not have the same significance in another cultural district. This cultural issue will be addressed in this research project through comparing the CSFs and CFFs of project managers in Chinese and US construction projects in the form of assigning weightings.

 

Based on the above presentation, it is concluded that it is necessary to identification and comparing the CSFs and CFFs during the project construction project. In this research project,  comparison has two aspect  meanings: (i) the difference between the Chinese CSFs and CFFs sets drawn from previous studies, interview; and (ii) the difference value for one factors which can express the importance of this factor drawn from a questionnaire survey.

 

This two-fold meaning comparison is a more holistic approach, which considers the entirety of CSFs and CFFs sets them self and deals with the significance of every factors. However, considering that very project is unique as well as the distinctive characteristics of each project manager, it is impossible and unnecessary to assign value to all the CSFs and CFFs. The suggested solution is to develop a higher level of factor set based on the preliminary CSFs and CFFS set which means that there will be a step by step pre-determined set before assigning weights to these factors. This set will be developed during the interviews and questionnaire survey. Moreover, this set of factor is based on the assumption that all the personals involved in the project are cooperative with the project manager in order to achieve a successful project.  

 

It is also recommended to establish a database in the future, employed to store the information on similar type of project such as for railway projects, bridge projects, building projects in the form of difference value of indicators. This can improve the usability of the research project in the construction industry. This proposed comparison may help to increase the success of a construction project involved persons have difference culture background.