Ying-Yi Chih

Towards a Comprehensive Understanding of Public Private Partnerships for Infrastructure Development

Public Private Partnerships (PPP) have emerged as one of the major approaches for delivering infrastructure projects effectively. This article develops a PPP framework for infrastructure development. It discusses examples of worldwide applications, as well as benefits and obstacles of PPP through a literature review on PPP-related research over the last 20 years. The syntheses of the knowledge present foundations from which the laws, regulations, and guidelines for effective and successful PPP implementation can be established. This analysis reveals that PPP can create new and long-term business opportunities with a chance to deliver infrastructure services of higher quality and efficiency. However, these benefits will only be materialized when a PPP project is properly planned and managed and both the public and private sectors work together successfully.

Investigating Employee Turnover in the Construction Industry: A Psychological Contract Perspective

AbstractEmployee turnover has long been, and will continue to be, a significant concern in the construction industry. Organizations that can retain skilled employees have a stronger competitive advantage. In two independent studies in China and the Philippines, the authors investigated the role of psychological contract breach in predicting employee turnover in the construction industry. The results reveal that psychological contract breach results in emotional exhaustion, which in turn predicts employees’ turnover intentions (Study 1) and actual turnover (Study 2). The results further suggest that younger as opposed to older construction workers who experience psychological contract breach are more likely to experience greater levels of emotional exhaustion and exit their organizations. Accordingly, to retain skilled workers, construction organizations should understand and continuously manage employees’ psychological contract expectations and provide more support to younger workers. This paper offers si...

Feeling positive and productive: role of supervisor–worker relationship in predicting construction workers’ performance in the Philippines

AbstractGiven the complex and dynamic nature of construction work, workers rely heavily on their supervisors for task allocation and ongoing guidance and support. Their relationships with superviso...

Enhancing Project Funding Decision Quality

Successfully implementing projects accelerate organizational growth. Given the limited organizational resources available, project funding is a critical strategic decision to ensure the most appropriate projects are selected. Recent research suggests that a proposed project’s target benefits—those anticipated to be realized at project completion—are important to consider when making decisions for project funding. Yet, the literature provides few measures to appraise the quality of target benefits. Consequently, sub-optimal projects are funded due to estimations errors, optimism bias about the future (“planning fallacy”) and strategic misrepresentation of target benefits. This paper presents three studies to develop and validate a new “Quality of Target Benefits” (QTB) scale consisting of three dimensions: specificity, attainability, and comprehensiveness. This scale can be used practically—that is, to objectively appraise a proposed project’s target benefits and to support an informed funding decision. It can also be used theoretically—as an instrument to facilitate theory development in areas of decision making, organizational strategy implementation, and project performance.