1. Introduction
As one of China’s pillar industries, the construction industry has remained at more than 6.7% of GDP, with an overall upward trend, which plays a great role in promoting China’s economic development [
1]. However, with the promotion of the concept of high-quality development, the crude development method of the construction industry has gradually revealed more problems. The various stages of construction project management are isolated from one another, and this fragmentation pattern has an impact on construction’s future growth, which urgently requires a shift from high-speed to high-quality development. Engineering consulting is inseparably related to the construction industry. Engineering consulting is a crucial step in the construction of engineering projects, and this major decision is directly related to the rational degree, economic benefits, and use value of the whole project. Therefore, the high-quality development of engineering consulting plays a significant role in promoting the transformation of the construction industry. The concept of whole process engineering consulting was first proposed by the state in 2017, followed by the promulgation of relevant documents by provinces and cities to begin the pilot work of whole process engineering consulting projects (hereinafter referred to as whole consulting projects). Whole process engineering consulting aims to provide engineering consulting services involving organization, management, economy, and technology, including planning and design, for the preliminary research and decision-making of engineering construction projects and the whole life cycle of project implementation and operation [
2]. This concept was proposed to overcome the fragmented management mode and improve project management performance in China. The concept has altered the original project management model, transforming the owner self-managed into project management entrusted by the owner to the consultant, resulting in a cooperative relationship between the owner and the consultant based on the commissioning agency. In addition, the probability of the owner changing the consulting company is low, which increases the probability of opportunistic behavior from the consultant and thus affects project management performance. How to improve the project management performance of the whole consulting service and how to implement the model have become pressing issues that must be addressed.
The findings of many scholars on project governance theory provide a theoretical basis for improving project management performance. Numerous studies have found that contract governance and trust, as core elements of project governance, are important factors in improving project management performance [
3], are frequently used to mitigate conflicts between collaborating parties and inhibit one party’s opportunistic behavior [
4], and are regarded as the cornerstone for promoting inter-organizational cooperation. Cheng et al. classified contract governance into three dimensions: control, coordination, and adaptation, and studied its impact on project performance in PPP projects. The results show that the three dimensions of contract governance have a significant positive effect on the improvement of project performance [
5]. Qumar analyzed the impact of two contract types on PPP performance, applying empirical tests using LOGIT and difference techniques on 157 Indian highway projects, and the results showed that different strengths of contractual clause regimes can have different impacts on performance [
6]. Yang and Chen empirically analyzed the influence of trust between partners on project performance, and the results proved that trust between partners not only directly affects project performance, but also indirectly affects project performance through contract flexibility and risk sharing [
7]. Based on attribution theory and dual process theory, Zhang et al. established a dual attribution model for trust development and verified that trust can significantly promote project performance [
8]. Lee et al. studied the impact of trust, contract control, and contract coordination on project performance by referring to transaction cost theory and social exchange theory, and the results proved that trust indirectly affects project performance through contract control and coordination [
9]. Through the research of relevant scholars, it can be found that reasonable use of the contract governance mechanism and cultivating sufficient trust between both parties can improve the sense of cooperation between the two parties, and reduce the consultant’s possible opportunistic behavior, to improve project management performance.
Simultaneously, the growing importance of knowledge resources causes knowledge sharing to become a research hotspot. The engineering consulting service in the whole consulting project is a highly knowledge-intensive professional consulting service activity. The consultant uses their professional knowledge to provide innovative solutions for the owner. Knowledge content is an important indicator of the quality of consulting services. Therefore, knowledge sharing is becoming increasingly important in the field of engineering consulting. Many studies have shown that knowledge sharing can significantly improve project performance. Li et al. used knowledge management theory to collect 234 valid questionnaires from organizations participating in complex infrastructure projects and conducted an empirical analysis. The results proved that knowledge sharing had a significant positive effect on project performance, and showed multiple mediating effects through knowledge organization, knowledge integration, and knowledge formation [
10]. Khan et al. studied the mediating role of knowledge sharing between psychological empowerment and project success, and confirmed that psychological empowerment indirectly affects project success through knowledge sharing [
11]. Some scholars have also studied the relationship between trust, contract governance, and knowledge sharing [
12,
13,
14]. For example, Curado studied the relationship between trust, knowledge sharing, and inter-organizational commitment with 582 small- and medium-sized enterprises that are the largest exporters in Portugal. The results showed that trust has a positive and significant impact on knowledge sharing and emotional and normative commitment [
15]. Taking supply chain partners as the research object, Jen et al. analyzed the impact of risk-sharing contracts in contract governance on knowledge sharing and project performance. The results showed that contract governance promotes knowledge sharing among partners, and knowledge sharing completely mediates the relationship between contract governance and project performance [
16].
In conclusion, knowledge sharing, contract governance, and trust will all affect the whole consulting management performance, but it is still unclear how. Therefore, this paper will construct the corresponding theoretical model. It will then use a structural equation model (SEM) to analyze the direct effects of contract governance and trust on the performance of whole consulting project management as well as the mediating effects of knowledge sharing. At the same time, in order to enable the owner to know more about the factors that effectively improve project performance, to better manage and improve project performance, the antecedent configuration of improving project management performance is analyzed using the qualitative comparison technique of fuzzy sets. Finally, based on the results of empirical research and path configuration analysis, suggestions and measures to improve the whole process engineering consulting project management performance are put forward.
5. Qualitative Comparative Analysis of Fuzzy Sets
Charles Rajin proposed qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) as a research method that combines the qualities of both qualitative and quantitative research. In academia, traditional empirical research employs both qualitative (case-oriented) and quantitative (variable-oriented) research approaches. Quantitative approaches are based on statistical calculations, rely on huge data samples, and rarely focus on the special conditions of a given case. Qualitative methods focus on individual situations, and the conclusions gained reflect only individual cases and cannot be generalized. The strengths of “qualitative” and “quantitative” research approaches are combined in qualitative comparative analysis, which focuses on both the causal linkages between individual components and the impact of common patterns on overall case outcomes. The complex combination of main and secondary influences that affect the outcome of a case is evaluated by systematically investigating the internal relationships and logical combinations of causes and conditions that influence the course of events. Depending on the data and analysis procedures assigned, qualitative comparative analysis can be split into three types: clear sets, fuzzy sets, and multi-valued sets. The type of variables must be separated between 0 and 1 for qualitative comparative analysis utilizing clear sets. Not all variables can be dichotomized to define relationships in practice. On the contrary, there is no explicit requirement for dichotomization in the analysis of fuzzy sets or multi-valued sets, and various values can be utilized to construct variable dependencies.
Due to different combinations of contract governance, trust, explicit knowledge sharing, and tacit knowledge sharing having different effects on project management performance, the traditional quantitative research method of “explanatory variables—mediating variables—explained variables” cannot fully and thoroughly examine the effects of multiple combinations of conditional variables, whereas the qualitative comparative analysis method can effectively analyze the effects of multiple combinations of conditional variables. The qualitative comparative analysis method is appropriate for this study since it can successfully assess several conditional variables. Due to the difficulty in assigning values to some of the variables in this study that cannot be dichotomized into affiliations, this study employs the fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis method to investigate the effect of the proposed factors on the combination of the outcome variable of project management performance.
5.1. Variable Selection and Calibration
In this study, the mean values of contract governance, trust, explicit knowledge sharing, tacit knowledge sharing, and project management performance were used as intersection points, and the upper and lower quartiles were used as full and non-complete affiliation points of each variable.
5.2. Analysis of the Necessary Conditions
Necessity analysis is the prerequisite of configuration analysis, and its purpose is to judge whether a certain antecedent condition is a necessary condition for the result variable. In this paper, project management performance (PMP) is taken as the result variable; trust (TR), contract governance (CG), explicit knowledge sharing (EKS), and tacit knowledge sharing (TKS) and their negative sides (~TR, ~CG, ~EKS, ~TKS) are taken as the antecedent condition variables; and necessity analysis is carried out through fsQCA3.0 software. Generally, the threshold for consistency is set to 0.9; if the consistency of the antecedent condition is greater than 0.9, condition X can be used as a necessary condition for the result Y. As shown in
Table 5, the maximum consistency value of the four antecedent conditions is 0.782, which is less than the judgment standard of 0.9. The result shows that all single conditional variables do not constitute a necessary condition for achieving project management performance in the general consulting project. This confirms that project management performance is not only the result of the influence of a single variable but also needs the joint matching of multiple variables to achieve.
5.3. Discussion of Configuration Analysis Results
According to Schneider and Wagemann, the consistency level for determining adequacy should not be less than 0.75. For small- and medium-sized samples, the frequency threshold is generally 1 or 2, while for large-sample studies, a higher frequency threshold will be considered. In this paper, considering the actual situation of the research object, the original consistency threshold is set to 0.8, the case frequency threshold is set to 2, and the PRI threshold is set to 0.7, according to Greckhamer’s advice [
47]. A black circle (●) indicates that the antecedent condition is present (or at a high level), while a blank space indicates that the antecedent condition is “irrelevant” (that is, its presence or absence does not affect the outcome) [
48]. Finally, according to the truth table analysis, two configuration results are obtained, as shown in
Table 6. Because the simplified solution and the intermediate solution in this study are completely consistent, only the core condition exists in the final result. It can be seen from the table that the overall consistency of all configurations is 0.899, which is greater than the critical value of 0.8, indicating that 90% of the sample cases that meet these two configurations present a high degree of synergy. Because the coverage of the model solution is 0.532, the results of this study explain 53.2% of the reasons for the improvement of project management performance and meet the coverage standard proposed by Woodside [
49].
According to the above table, the results of configuration analysis to improve project management performance can be classified into two models:
Model 1: The core conditions are contract governance, explicit knowledge sharing, and tacit knowledge sharing, regardless of the existence of trust. This configuration shows that project management performance can be enhanced regardless of whether the owner uses trust to control the consultant if certain contract governance is put into place along with the consultant’s explicit and tacit knowledge sharing behavior. The configuration of the path requires owners and consultants to have a more rigorous and clear industry to comply with the norms and guidelines, in addition to cooperation between the two sides to have a certain ability to develop detailed and complete contract terms. The research of Galvin and other scholars also believes that contracts are an important means to prevent and control opportunistic risks [
50]. It is costly to violate contracts that clearly specify penalties for opportunistic behavior, and formal contracts facilitate the establishment of common goals among the partners, thus making it better to achieve project success. However, not only the contract terms drawn up between the owner and the consultant can effectively improve project management performance. The consultant also needs to share explicit and tacit knowledge with the owner independently to realize knowledge exchange [
16].
Model 2: The core conditions are trust, contract governance, and explicit knowledge sharing, with tacit knowledge sharing not considered. This configuration indicates that when the owner jointly adopts contract governance and trust, it is not necessary to consider whether the consultant has carried out implicit knowledge sharing, but the owner only needs to cooperate with the consultant to share explicit knowledge to achieve project management performance. This configuration strategy requires the owner to have strong project management ability. On the one hand, the owner needs to use the design of flexible contract content to clarify the distribution of rights and responsibilities, the scope of consulting services, the schedule, the consulting results provided, and other matters, and to exert the legal enforcement of the contract to ensure the implementation of the contract terms [
51]. On the other hand, the owner needs to maintain a certain level of trust with the consultant, which will enable the partners to properly consider the interests of the other party in the transaction process, and ultimately reduce transaction costs and information asymmetry, so that both parties can more easily reach a scientific and consistent decision [
45]. However, in this process, explicit knowledge sharing between the consultant and the owner is still very important, mainly because part of the explicit knowledge content is the result stipulated in the contract governance, so it is still necessary for the consultant to share the explicit knowledge well, so as to achieve an improvement of the final project management performance.
6. Conclusions
This paper attempts to investigate how contractual governance and trust between owners and consultants affects project management performance in whole process engineering consulting projects. A sample of 312 consultant–owner relationships in China is used to test the theoretical framework. The following conclusions have been reached: first, in addition to having a directly positive effect on project management performance, contract and trust also have an indirect impact through knowledge sharing; second, the results of the qualitative comparative analysis show that achieving project management performance is a combination of multiple factors, and contract and trust have different alternative and complementary relationships in different contexts.
6.1. Theoretical Contributions
(1) The “black box” of the influence of contract and trust on the whole process engineering consulting project management performance is opened. When studying the project management performance of whole process engineering consulting projects, scholars currently do not consider the knowledge-intensive characteristics of consulting firms and ignore the influence of consultant knowledge sharing on project management performance. We introduce social exchange theory in this paper and focus on the impact of contract and trust on project management performance through the mediation of knowledge sharing and reveal the influence path of contract and trust on project management performance. This paper offers a new theoretical perspective on project management research.
(2) The antecedent configuration influencing the management performance of the whole process engineering project is qualitatively examined. The current study focuses on the quantitative relationship between a single independent variable and project management performance, ignoring the impact of multiple factors combined. As a result, this paper will use qualitative comparative analysis to reveal the complexity of the causal relationship between different combinations of antecedent condition variables and outcome variables, with contract governance, trust, and knowledge sharing as antecedent variables and project management performance as outcome variables; the study’s findings show that contract governance and trust have different complementary substitution repercussions in different situations. The findings of this study offer a new perspective on project management performance research as well as a completely new solution.
6.2. Practical Implications
(1) This study aims to provide owners with clarity on the impact of governance mechanisms on project management performance and corresponding management insights. The findings of this study show that in addition to having a directly positive effect on project management performance, contract and trust have an indirect effect on project management performance through knowledge sharing. Therefore, to improve management performance, owners should use contracts and trust for consultants and encourage consultants to take the initiative to share knowledge in the governance process.
(2) This paper analyzes different ways to improve the management performance of the whole consulting project to provide corresponding strategies for the owner. The study uses qualitative comparative analysis to investigate two antecedent configurations for improving project management performance, making owners aware that improving project management performance is determined by a combination of multiple factors rather than a single factor. Based on this study’s findings, the various combination patterns are analyzed and discussed, providing owners with specific management insights for effective project management.
6.3. Management Enlightenment
(1) Reasonable contract term design. First, design clear contract terms, specify the rights, responsibilities, and obligations of the owner and the consultant, and clearly explain the risk-sharing principle between them in order to effectively reduce the cooperation risks of both parties and limit the opportunistic behavior of partners. Second, the entire engineering consulting project process has a long cycle, a complex project, and a high degree of uncertainty in the cooperation process. Contract terms must be flexible in design. It is necessary to clarify the handling process after the occurrence of future uncertain events when designing contract terms.
(2) Increase the level of governance trust. When selecting a consultant as a partner in the early stages of cooperation, the owner must fully exploit the ability to trust, that is, inspect the consultant’s ability, technology, and reputation level from multiple perspectives. During the collaboration process, the owner can adjust the consultant’s trust in real time based on the consultant’s performance. When the consultant performs well and can complete the project content specified in the contract, the owner should increase his or her trust in the consultant in due time.
(3) Pay attention to the knowledge sharing behavior of the consultant. The owner shall design contract terms with an incentive orientation, flexibly use contract coordination to govern the consultant, and promote the establishment and development of inter-organizational trust through formal contract incentives. In addition, in the process of project implementation after signing the contract, the owner pays attention to maintaining the relationship with the consultant through trust, mainly because trust is more conducive to the owner to obtain tacit knowledge from the consultant than contract governance.