Antecedents of project partnering in the construction industry — The impact of relationship history

•For the customer to change procurement mode to partnering, a high level of risks seems to act as prerequisite•The customer's decision in terms of continued partnering and partners depends on its previous experience of partnering•The history of relationships among the project actors seems to influence the customer's selection of partnering and partners•Partnering enables exploitation of the investments made in previous partnering agreements and relationships with a given partner

This paper aims at increasing the understanding of construction partnering and relationships in project marketing by analyzing the impact of previous relationships among project stakeholders on the choice of partnering and of partners. Based on a conceptual framework combining the insights of the Industrial Network Approach with the model of project co-development proposed by Crespin-Mazet and Ghauri (2007), the paper analyzes a focal partnering project and its connections to other projects. It concludes that the context of the relationships seems to influence the customer's selection of partnering and partners. The paper's contributions address the relative importance of the project's functional challenge and relational congruence in the project network on the customer's procurement choice. For a first partnering agreement, this choice seems primarily influenced by the project's functional challenge while the subsequent choice of partners relies on high relational congruence. Once a positive experience of project partnering gained, the customer's choice seems primarily influenced by the relational congruence in the project network so as to harvest previous investments (resource adaptations) made in their relationship with a given partner. The paper highlights several contributions to the construction partnering literature and project marketing literature.