Conflicts and management styles in the Sri Lankan commercial building sector

The Sri Lankan commercial building industry is currently experiencing a construction boom after thirty years of civil war. Creating a dispute free environment through well conflict management is one of the main ways to keep the continuous demand and development of construction. However, the Sri Lankan construction sector is arranged in such a way that they directly approach the dispute resolution rather than avoiding the dispute initially through proper conflict management. The aim of this research is to understand the prevailing conflict management styles in Sri Lankan commercial building industry from the main stakeholders’ perspective. The dual concern theory is applied to this study as a theory foundation. Four cases are selected for this study with the intention of conducting meetings with three main stakeholders of each case who represented client, consultants and contractors respectively. The research findings reveal that compromising is the most common conflict management style used by the industry. Forcing style obtained the second place in the ranking whereas obliging and avoiding received third and fourth places. This study is conducted to provide a full picture of conflicts faced by the Sri Lankan commercial building industry and their proper management so that the future projects will use this information to diminish the destructive effects of conflict situations and provide a real value for money. Key Words: Conflict Management; Dual Concern Theory; Commercial Building Sector; Sri Lank

Stakeholders’ preference towards the use of conflict management styles in dual concern theory in post contract stage

Conflicts often act as obstacles to the project success by wasting time, money and energy of the construction stakeholders; resulting numerous harmful effects to the project. Having conflicts is a natural phenomenon which is inevitable due to the unbreakable bond between the nature of the construction industry and the sources of conflicts. It is identified that the tendency of having conflicts is enormously high, especially in post contract stage of any construction project. Even though the conflict management found to be existing in the construction sector, still the construction stakeholders often have to face many unmanaged conflicts which subsequently convert into disputes, demanding expensive and time consuming dispute resolution. Therefore, the requirement of an effective conflict management should receive a prior importance. It was verified that the effective conflict management can be derived from the opinions of construction stakeholders since they are the personnel who create and experience the conflict situations. Therefore, the aim of this study was to develop a stakeholder preferred framework for effective usage of dual concern theory for conflict management in post contract stage. Case study was selected as the most suitable research approach due to the qualitative nature of the study. Twelve semi structured interviews were conducted; selecting three stakeholders representing each case. The collected data was analyzed using content analysis and conclusions were drawn and recommendations were put forward. The findings of this study proved that effective conflict management is a broad spectrum which should be fully followed from the commencement of the project till the end. Moreover, it was recognized that the main reason for increment of having conflicts is that the construction stakeholders ignore to follow the entire conflict management spectrum. Furthermore, the findings confirmed that inclusion of dual concern theory which manages conflict situations by providing consideration for both self and others at the same time yet in different degrees in the conflict management spectrum will provide more effective results. Hence, this study proposed a framework for effective conflict management with the usage of dual concern theory for post contract stage