Identifying combinations of control strategies in dwelling fit-out projects: A latent profile analysis

Despite a wealth of research examining the interplay between formal and social controls, the results still presented great contradictories thus far. One reason might be that these studies failed to recognize the existence of latent subgroups differing in the configuration of formal and social controls. To bridge this gap in knowledge, this study adopts a configurational approach to analyze how project control strategies configure in unobserved subgroups. A questionnaire-survey of dwelling fit-out projects was undertaken in China. Data was analyzed using latent profile analysis. Three latent subgroups are identified from the dataset. These are high control profile, moderate control profile and behavior-social control profile. It is also found that high control profile is associated with better project outcomes than the other two profiles. This study contributes a configurational approach to the project control literature. Implications for project controls are provided in the end.