INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN BUSINESS AND SOCIAL SCIENCE 8(6)(2019) 201-211 * Corresponding author.ORCID: x Peer review under responsibility of Bussecon International Academy. © 2019 Bussecon International. Hosting by SSBFNET- Center for Strategic Studies in Business & Finance. All rights reserved. https://doi.org/10.20525/ijrbs.v8i6.534 Interplay of relational governance, task conflict, opportunism and their effect on the performance of projects Jawad Talha Rehan a* , Xuefeng Zhao b , Rafiq Mansoor c a,b,c School of Management, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei, China A R T I C L E I N F O Article history: Received 14 August 2019 Received in revis. form 19 Sept. 2019 Accepted 29 September 2019 Keywords: Relational Governance Project performance Task Conflict Opportunism JEL Classification: O22 D23 D74 A B S T R A C T Practitioners and academics have been perplexed over the years by low efficiency and bad performance in construction projects. Several critical factors have been uncovered by previous studies which are governance mechanism, task conflict and opportunism. But an obvious question arises how the mechanism of governance in the presence of conflict can mitigate opportunism. The overarching objective of this study is therefore to create a model to study the effectiveness of these mechanisms of governance in the presence of task conflict. This paper is based on a positivist study philosophy in which a quantitative deductive method was used to collect data from 139 participants. Hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling (SEM) through SmartPLS3.The research findings show that relational governance affects project efficiency considerably and is helpful in decreasing opportunism and conflict. In addition, there is proof that opportunistic behavior will increase the task conflict among parties but both task conflict and opportunism doesn’t have direct impact on the performance of project © 2019 Bussecon International Academy. Hosting by SSBFNET. All rights reserved. Peer review under responsibility of Bussecon International Academy & SSBFNET. Introduction In construction industry low efficiency and poor performance of projects have baffled the practitioners and researchers (Briscoe & Dainty, 2005; Cox & Ireland, 2002; Love, Irani, & Edwards, 2004; Segerstedt et al., 2010; Vrijhoef & Koskela, 2000).Over the last few years profit rates in construction industry have been lower than other industries (Lu, Guo, Qian, He, & Xu, 2015). Lack of coordination among participants is the root of these problems (Love et al., 2004),which in turn stems primarily from opportunistic behaviours and project conflict(Williamson, 1985; Wu, Zhao, Zuo, & Zillante, 2018).Mechanisms of governance have recently garnered interest from researchers and academics within the domain of project management. Often the model of project governance and organisational governance is aligned, which in turn offers extensive and coherent techniques of project control. Project governance structure provides managers with structures, procedures, decision-making models and project management instruments in the organisational structure (PMI, 2008) Past research on governance is mostly focused toward the effect of both relational and contractual mechanisms on each other which sometimes is supplementary. Governance mechanisms are significant predictors of project results that raise a query as to how governance structure affects project results in the presence of opportunism and project conflict? Opportunism occurs in various forms such as not keeping promises, misinforming stakeholders (Das & Rahman, 2001) these actions can effect project performance negatively (Phelps & Reddy, 2009). (Thomas, 1974) specified conflict is a method that begins when one group perceives that the other group has disappointed or is about to frustrate some of its benefits.During the conflict self- awareness and conscious behaviour would come in play which will emerge rational behaviour. Different types of conflicts played a Research in Business & Social Science IJRBS VOL 8 NO 6 ISSN: 2147-4478 Available online at www.ssbfnet.com Journal homepage: https://www.ssbfnet.com/ojs/index.php/ijrbs