2.2 Grounded theory and theory building in construction management research
Grounded Theory (GT) includes an iterative course of gathering and investigating information to assemble a theory concerning how research participants decipher their daily realities (Suddaby, 2006). GT is created through the extraction of ideas and their interdependencies that are acquired from analyzing qualitative data (e.g. interview transcripts). There are three methodologies in embracing GT, which are recorded as follows: Straussian approach (Strauss & Corbin, 1990), glaserian approach (Heath and Cowley, 2004), and constructive approach (Charmaz, 2000). Researchers ought to pick their procedure of GT, compatible with their mental style. Likewise, it has been underlined, not to combine various methodologies of GT as one.
GT is a significant strategy for information examination that empowers the efficient development of theory from the data through inductive and insightful reasoning. GT explicitly focuses on (i) the significance of long haul field studies to find what is truly happening; (ii) the presence of intricacy and fluctuation in human activity; (iii) an acknowledgment that individuals act because of significance and that the significance is characterized and reclassified through communication; (iv) an aversion to the significance of the advancing and unfurling nature of occasions; and (v) attention to the interrelationship between conditions, structure, activity, cycle, and outcomes (Walker and Myrick, 2006).
As indicated by Phelps et al., (2010), GT is reasonable for construction management research since construction comprises of activities that include the absolute most complex specialized frameworks that should be planned and built by various specific individuals in friendly frameworks that we know as project teams. The idea of GT permits the evoked information to be ceaselessly evolved, refined, and connected until a theory is assembled. This suggests that theories from GT rise out of information gathered from social climate in its full reality, as well as result in knowledge and understanding that would not be imaginable through different techniques. Likewise, it proposes that GT prompts more prominent agreement and the improvement of constructs that interface them to make a theoretical construct in regards to the repeating idea of what data-sharing practices mean for the advancement of trust and learning within project teams. With GT, construction management scientists could concentrate on peculiarities, for example, (i) practices that emerge because of social conditions; (ii) practices that are not coordinated toward the fulfillment of hierarchical or administrative objectives; and (iii) mental exercises such as critical thinking and other team-oriented activities that in any case would not be imaginable because of systemic restrictions.
Various construction management studies have utilized GT to construct theory. For example, Shojaei and Haeri (2019) proposed an extensive supply chain risk management approach for construction projects that uses, GT, fuzzy cognitive mapping, and grey relational analysis. A true contextual analysis is introduced in the review to show the pertinence and viability of the proposed approach. Different risk mitigation situations are created and assessed by the proposed approach. Kulchartchai and Hadikusumo (2010) dissected the obstructions that forestall the development of a safety culture in Thailand’s large construction industry from various managerial points of view. Subjective exploration techniques were utilized by playing out a progression of semi-structured interviews of eight case studies selected from six prominent construction firms to investigate the obstacles they face. Glaser’s catchphrase coding from GT was utilized to decrease the data load after the interviews. A study by Olugboyega and Windapo (2019) inspected the aspects and parts of construction safety culture and whether the use of BIM technologies to the dimensions of construction safety culture improves the safety maturity levels among construction workers. The study utilized a systematic literature review and GT in accomplishing the research objectives. These examples affirmed the convenience of GT in construction management studies.