Understanding post-contract changes in partnering projects: An ethnographic approach

Partnering continues to be widely used in the UK. However, the partnering literature often presents polarized views of reality, which has stunted our understanding of the enactment of partnering as an informal and emergent practice. Power permeates social interactions and potentially affects partnering relationships in ways that contradict best practice guidance. However, understandings of power in partnering projects are limited. Post-contract changes (PCCs) are a common source of conflict on projects around which to explore interactions. Power relations and interactions are embedded practices that must be understood within the context of the project. Therefore, the aim is to adopt an ethnographic approach to explore how individuals interact on projects when managing PCCs and to explore how power affects these interactions. As part of ongoing doctoral research, preliminary findings from a public sector partnering project are discussed. There is a strong reliance on the contract to manage PCCs, which partly removes the power from individuals to negotiate changes. However, PCCs involving specialist information are less constrained by the contract. There is evidence of the Client adapting the contract to their preference and the Contractor opportunistically using the Client’s dependency to overprice PCCs, despite claiming to have amiable relations. These seemingly contradictory behaviours emphasize the complexity of interactions around different PCCs, involving different individuals.