Root Causes of Recurring Contractual Conflicts in International Construction Projects: Five Case Studies from Vietnam

Abstract

While many studies have identified contractual conflicts as a major cause of construction delays in international construction projects, their underlying causes have been rarely explored. The current study attempts to contribute to knowledge that could help minimize international construction project delays through an examination of contractual conflicts. Through qualitative analyses of interviews with 33 practitioners involved in large-scale international construction projects in Vietnam, this study has extracted 19 causal factors of recurring contractual conflicts falling under six categories. The causal factors have been adapted into a causality diagram that serve as a tool for mapping the sequential development and investigating the root causes of contractual conflicts in international construction project cases. The causality diagram is applied to five case studies in Vietnam, a country of which relatively few case studies on the construction sector can be found in the literature. Two case studies clarify how causality chains that develop into contractual conflicts are initiated by the following root causes: (1) low levels of political support; (2) low levels of international project management experience by the owner; (3) low utilization of relational-approaches; and (4) inadequate contract clarifications performed during the precontract period. Three project cases that have avoided contractual conflicts are then presented, along with descriptions of how one or more of the root causes were addressed in each project.