From Act to Outcome - a Cognitive Model of Construction Procurement

Organisational behaviour can be modelled as an Act-to-Outcome process and this behavioural model is found to be applicable to construction procurement. The Act-to-Product and Product-to-Outcome paths are respectively the project realisation stage and post-occupancy stage in construction procurement. Organisational behaviour is governed by organisational goals, seemingly project goals affect the Act-to-Outcome process. There are a number of moderators to this goal-performance relationship, and these moderators (such as ability, task complexity, situational constraints) will in turn affect the Act-to-Product as well as Product-to-Outcome processes. In selecting an appropriate procurement system, the decision maker should take into account the effect of these moderators when choosing amongst the alternatives, and finally, an alternative selection method using conjoint analysis is illustrated.