Effects of stress and commitment on the performance of construction estimation participants in Hong Kong

Cost-estimation participants play an essential role in the success of construction projects, as well as determining the profit margin of an organization. However, these participants must always work to rigid and urgent deadlines, putting them in stressful situations. Such a stressful environment influences estimation participants' perceptions of the project and organization, which ultimately affect their performance. This study sets out to investigate the complicated relationships between stress, commitment, and performance for construction estimation participants through a questionnaire survey. A reliability test, correlation analyses, and regression modeling were applied to analyze the data collected from 101 construction estimation participants. The results indicate the impact of stress on both commitment and performance: (1) objective stress influences career commitment via an inverted U-shaped relationship; (2) subjective stress is linearly related to both career and continuance commitment; and (3) subjective stress also directly influences ineffective working processes through a U-shaped relationship. Other results show a separate and direct impact of the three types of commitment on different kinds of estimation performance: (1) affective commitment reduces ineffective working process; (2) continuance commitment exerts positive impact on organizational nonbelongingness; and (3) career commitment improves estimation accuracy. To optimize the performance of estimation participants, organizations are encouraged to monitor their abilities and arrange their workload accordingly, provide suitable support and assistance, and help staff formulate a long-term career development plan.