Introduction to the Special Issue on Research Methodologies in Construction Engineering and Management

The purpose of this special issue is to initiate a dialog on the rigorous application of research methodologies in construction engineering and management (CEM) research. It is our hope that engaging the CEM research community in such a dialog will have a positive impact on the methodological consistency of our collective research endeavor. The application of research methodologies in the context of construction engineering and management introduces unique challenges and creates new opportunities for researchers. The interdisciplinary project-based nature of the work, industry fragmentation, one-of-a-kind end products, site-based production, and other factors combine in ways that make following established research methodologies difficult.

Over the past fifteen years, the construction engineering and management field has steadily improved the comprehensiveness and rigor of articles published. In preparation for this special issue, we examined 1,102 manuscripts published over the period from 1993 through 2007 in the Journal of Construction Engineering and Management to examine trends in methodological utilization and rigor. We found a broad range of methods in use by the CEM community. The relative frequency of each method is presented in Table 1. We also observed an increasing trend in the specification of formal models over the period examined, which is one indicator of the comprehensiveness and rigor of the methods employed. In the period from 1993–1997, 70% of the 272 articles specified formal models. Over the following five years, 72% of the 296 articles specified formal models. And over the remaining five-year period from 2003–2007, 76% of the 534 articles specified formal models. (The number of articles increased during this period due to an increase in the number of issues published per year.) Research that produces formal models—qualitative or quantitative—can provide the foundation for further formalization, combination with other models, and development of new models with clearly argued contributions to knowledge. Therefore, the collective contributions to CEM knowledge are enhanced by this trend toward more rigorous model development.

With this special issue we aimed to capitalize on the trend toward methodological rigor and comprehensiveness by soliciting papers on methodologies we identified as being typically employed in CEM research. Contributing authors were asked to: (1) identify and discuss exemplar papers in the Journal that apply various methods; (2) establish conventions for methodological rigor for each method as applied to CEM research; (3) outline the unique challenges and opportunities researchers will face when applying each method in CEM; and (4) present a path forward for future research applying each method. The response by the CEM research community to the special issue request for proposals far exceeded our expectations. Nearly 40 proposals were submitted to develop research methodology articles for inclusion in the special issue. Due to space limitations in the Journal and methodological overlaps, we were limited to inviting 13 manuscripts.

This special issue includes five papers on rigorous application of quantitative methods, five contributions on the rigorous application of qualitative methods, and three cross-cutting papers that provide methodological insights that apply to a range of research methodologies. Quantitative research methods covered include papers on discrete event simulation by Julio Martinez; multiobjective optimization by Amr Kandil, Khaled El-Rayes, and Omar El-Anwar; experimental research by Leonhard Bernold and Tai Sik Lee; empirical modeling by Ian Flood and Raja R. A. Issa; and archival data analysis by Gunnar Lucko and Zane Mitchell. In the area of qualitative research we have contributions on ethnographic theory building by Andreas Phelps and Michael Horman; industry best practice charrettes by Edward Gibson and Donald Whittington; observational video research by Robert Leicht, Samuel Hunter, Chitwan Saluja, and John Messner; action research by Salman Azhar, Irtishad Ahmad, and Maung Sein; and the Delphi method by Matthew Hallowell and John Gambatese.

Together the 10 aforementioned methodology papers provide a comprehensive spectrum of the methods used by CEM researchers over the past 15 years. In addition to these, the special issue includes three cross-cutting methodological contributions. Deborah Abowitz and Mike Toole provide a view on the fundamentals of social science research. Stuart Green, Chung-Chin Kao, and Graeme Larsen discuss an empirically grounded approach to understanding enactment in CEM research. And finally, Gunnar Lucko and Eddy Rojas examine the challenges and opportunities of research validation in CEM. We would like to thank all of these authors who have developed what we believe is a collection of papers that can have a meaningful impact on the collective research and contributions to knowledge in the CEM domain.

We were supported in the strategic development of this special issue and the review of manuscripts by a special issue Board of Advisors. We would like to express our gratitude to the following thought leaders from the CEM academic community who gave a significant amount of time participating on the special issue Board of Advisors.