Partnering in construction re-visited: gauging progress in industry practice and prospects for advances in academic research

Bresnen, Michael ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3295-8235, Lennie, Sarah-Jane and Marshall, Nick (2025) Partnering in construction re-visited: gauging progress in industry practice and prospects for advances in academic research. Construction Management and Economics, 43 (1). pp. 59-77. ISSN 0144-6193

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Abstract

Despite the ubiquity of partnering and alliancing in industry discourse and practice and in associated academic research, questions remain about the extent to which we have witnessed transformational change within the sector based on values and norms of collaboration. Revisiting earlier work that highlighted issues, problems and dilemmas associated with partnering that were related to definitional ambiguities, conflicting (commercial) orientations and cultural reach and readiness, this paper highlights continuing problems of definition, formalization, translation and performance. Particular attention is directed towards the lack of external validation and institutionalization, as well as the need for more comparative analysis, situated understanding, awareness of organizational pluralism and recognition of relational dynamics. Based upon this critical review, a framework is presented that embraces the variety and indeterminacy found in the many definitions, pathways to collaboration, realizations in practice and recipes used for evaluating outcomes. Instead, partnering is presented as being constituted through complex and interacting bundles of practices that cut across levels of interaction, and which reflect competing (and contested) institutional influences, situated practices, outcomes/effects and performance evaluations. This practice-based approach is more attuned to the diversity and fluidity of the institutional contexts, organizational processes, and project/programme settings within which partnering is situated and through which it is instantiated and thus affords new avenues of research into its nature and effects.