Exploratory Investigation into Influence of Educational Background on Tendency to Collaborate Among Owners, Architects, Engineers, and Contractors

The construction industry is plagued by problems such as lack of collaboration and trust, ineffective communications, and lack of systems thinking, which may lead to an adversarial relationship among project stakeholders. Relatively low levels of productivity are pushing the construction industry to collaborate on a higher scale. With the introduction of Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) processes and new technologies, collaboration plays an important role. Research shows that collaboration is affected by many factors.

With Maroon-White Game as the simulation tool, this research uses game theory and prisoner?s dilemma concept to verify whether the education background of owners, architects, engineers, and contractors have an influence on tendency to collaborate in the construction industry. It also verifies whether women or personality type measured by Jung/Isabel Briggs Myers Typology have an influence on tendency to collaborate. This research lays the groundwork for additional research into the factors affecting collaboration in the construction industry and the steps that can be taken to improve the same.

Although the results from the research show that there is slight variation (insignificant) in the tendency to collaborate among different disciplines, further research is needed to statistically validate the result. Also, the results show that gender and personality type do not influence the tendency to collaborate in the construction industry. However, for statistical power, further research needs to be done.