Leadership in construction partnering projects: Research methodological perspective

In recent years there has been a growing interest in the use of partnering in
construction. Central to any successful partnering arrangement is the change in cultural and
behavioural characteristics towards mutual trust and understanding. According to Schein,
cultural and behavioural characteristics can be shaped and reflected by proper leadership.
This research probes leadership as the response to address complex relationships of
behaviour and culture in large scale partnering projects. This involves understanding,
interpreting, explaining and mapping complex human behaviour. Therefore it is very
important to comprehend and implement a suitable research methodology to carefully
extract appropriate information. This paper justifies the social constructionism stance and
case study approach for the leadership study as the response to address complex
relationships challenges of behaviour and culture in construction partnering projects. For
this purpose, the nested approach is used, highlighting the main facets of the arguments to
justify the selection of appropriate research philosophy and research approach.