Network analysis of interconnections between theoretical concepts associated with principal–agent theory concerning construction projects

Journal	Acronym	Publisher
Automation in Construction	AIC	Elsevier
Building Research and Information	BRI	Taylor and Francis
Construction Innovation	CI	Emerald
Construction Management and Economics	CME	Taylor and Francis
Engineering, Construction, and Architectural Management	ECAM	Emerald
International Journal of Project Management	IJPM	Elsevier
Journal of Construction Engineering and Management	JCEM	ASCE

Tab. 2

Incidence of keyword ‘principal–agent’ in selected journals

Keyword/Journal	*AIC*	*BRI*	CI	*CME*	*ECAM*	*IJPM*	*JCEM*
Papers	1	5	7	23	17	70	25
Titles	0	0	0	0	0	3	1
Abstracts	0	1	0	4	4	8	5
Keywords	0	1	0	2	2	6	3

[i] P–A, principal–agent.

Tab. 3

Papers cited

Acronym	Papers cited
AIC	Xu et al. (2019)
BRI	Lützkendorf and Speer (2005), Ürge-Vorsatz et al. (2007), Sha (2013), Zhang et al. (2016), Ströbele and Lützkendorf (2019)
CI	Davidson (2009), Vennström and Eriksson (2010), Van Duren et al. (2015), Saini et al. (2018), Saini et al. (2019), Van den Berg et al. (2020), Van Oorschot et al. (2020)
CME	Boukendour (2007), Bowen et al. (2007), Ward and Chapman (2008), Yung and Lai (2008), Hossain (2009a), Tuuli et al. (2010), Sha (2011), Bowen et al. (2012), Ling and Tran (2012), Rose and Manley (2012), Chang (2013a), Espinoza and Morris (2013), Javed et al. (2014), Fu et al. (2015), De Valence and Runeson (2015), Winch (2015), Snippert et al. (2015), De Biasio and Murray (2017), Liu et al. (2017), Odoemena and Horita (2018), Gao and Liu (2019), Sha (2019), Zhang et al. (2020b)
ECAM	Hsieh and Forster (2006), Eriksson and Laan (2007), Badenfelt (2008), Bemelmans et al. (2012), Hughes et al. (2012), Hosseinian and Carmichael (2014), Li et al. (2014), Chong and Oon (2016), Adam et al. (2017), Mei et al. (2017), Chen et al. (2019), Han et al. (2019), Hasan and Jha (2019), Laryea (2019), Lee (2019), Wang and Shi (2019), Zhang et al. (2020a)
IJPM	Ward et al. (1991), Ward and Chapman (1991), Williams (1993), Ogunlana (1996), Farrell (2003), Turner and Müller (2003), Müller and Turner (2005), Yu et al. (2005), Jensen et al. (2006), Koch and Buser (2006), Smyth and Morris (2007), Turner et al. (2008), Hossain (2009b), Hossain and Wu (2009), Huang and Chang (2009), Pinto et al. (2009), Corvellec and Macheridis (2010), Hölzle (2010), Mahaney and Lederer (2010), Müller and Turner (2010), Bakker et al. (2011), Kapsali (2011), Koppenjan et al. (2011), Eriksson (2012), Hsu et al. (2012), Ika et al. (2012), Bond-Bernard et al. (2013), Braun et al. (2013), Chang (2013b), Chang (2013c), Flyvbjerg (2013), Ahola et al. (2014), Biesenthal and Wilden (2014), Carbonara et al. (2014), Floricel et al. (2014), Guo et al. (2014), Liu et al. (2014), Pinto (2014), Toivonen and Toivonen (2014), Chang (2015), Shen et al. (2015), Wang and Liu (2015), Xiang et al. (2015), Zwikael and Smyrk (2015), Badewi (2016), Conforto et al. (2016), Joslin and Müller (2016), Laursen and Svejvig (2016), Liu et al. (2016), Müller et al. (2016), Näsänen and Vanharanta (2016), Samset and Volden (2016), Cao et al. (2017), Musawir et al. (2017), Niknazar and Bourgault (2017), Teo and Bridge (2017), Zheng et al. (2017), Bryde et al. (2018), Cui et al. (2018), Pilkienė et al. (2018), Pollack et al. (2018), Sirisomboonsuk et al. (2018), Sydow and Braun (2018), Vuorinen and Martinsuo (2018), Wang et al. (2018), Daniel and Daniel (2019), Volden (2019), Hedborg et al. (2020), Musawir et al. (2020), Picciotto (2020)
JCEM	Cheah et al. (2004), Ho (2006), Puddicombe (2009), Zhang (2009), Xiang et al. (2012), Hosseinian and Carmichael (2013), Chang (2014), Chang and Chou (2014), Chen et al. (2014), Le et al. (2014), Van Buiten and Hartmann (2015), Chang and Chen (2016), Szentes and Eriksson (2016), Xiong and Zhang (2016), Chang et al. (2017), Shen et al. (2017), Wen et al. (2017), Shrestha et al. (2018), Tembo-Silungwe and Khatleli (2018), Solheim-Kile and Wald (2019), Yao et al. (2019), Hosseinian et al. (2020), Li et al. (2020), Yao et al. (2020), Zhu et al. (2020)

Tab. 4

Incidence of associated keywords in selected journals

Keyword/Journal	*AIC*	*BRI*	CI	*CME*	*ECAM*	*IJPM*	*JCEM*	Sum
Adverse selection		1						1
Agency theory				1		4	2	7
Change management				1		1		2
Cooperation/collaboration	1			1	1	1	2	6
Communication				1		3	1	5
Contracts				7	5	2	12	26
Corruption				2			1	3
Financial management				1			2	3
Governance		2		2		14	1	19
Hold-up				1		1		2
Incentives				2	4	3	6	15
Information asymmetry	1	1				1	2	5
Information systems		1	1		2	3	2	9
Institutional theory						1		1
Moral hazard						1		1
Opportunism			1	3		1		5
Organisation theory				1				1
Partnership				5	3	3	9	20
Procurement			2	1	1	1	1	6
Professional ethics/professionalism		1				1		2
Reputation							1	1
Risk management				2	2	10	6	20
Social capital							1	1
Social networks				3		2	1	6
Social theories						1		1
Stewardship theory				1		2		3
Strategic planning					2	1	1	4
Supply chain management			3		2	2		7
Temporary organisations						2		2
Transaction costs				3	1	5	1	10
Trust				1	1	1	3	6
Uncertainty		1		2		4		7

Network visualisation of interconnected keywords in Gephi.

Tab. 5

Node characteristics, data from Gephi

Node	Degree	Weighted degree	Closeness centrality	Betweenness centrality
Adverse selection	3	3.0	0.44	0.0
Agency theory	8	13.0	0.54	5.3
Change management	0	0.0	0.0	0.0
Cooperation	7	11.0	0.56	9.04
Communication	5	8.0	0.52	2.78
Contracts	18	46.0	0.72	61.63
Corruption	0	0.0	0.0	0.0
Financial management	4	6.0	0.48	0.28
Governance	12	24.0	0.64	40.0
Hold-up	2	2.0	0.44	0.0
Incentives	13	27.0	0.65	30.26
Information asymmetry	8	10.0	0.58	8.06
Information systems	9	11.0	0.54	37.42
Institutional theory	1	1.0	0.35	0.0
Moral hazard	2	2.0	0.43	0.0
Opportunism	5	5.0	0.52	0.9
Organisation theory	1	1.0	0.38	0.0
Partnership	14	28.0	0.64	39.53
P–A theory	16	28.0	0.7	68.26
Procurement	9	12.0	0.52	10.82
Professionalism	3	4.0	0.45	0.0
Reputation	2	2.0	0.44	0.0
Risk management	11	24.0	0.61	15.92
Social capital	4	5.0	0.47	1.23
Social networks	4	5.0	0.47	0.38
Social theories	0	0.0	0.0	0.0
Stewardship theory	4	7.0	0.49	0.56
Strategic planning	2	2.0	0.42	0.0
Supply chain management	4	4.0	0.5	1.18
Temporary organisations	0	0.0	0.0	0.0
Transaction costs	10	23.0	0.6	39.07
Trust	11	14.0	0.56	15.62
Uncertainty	6	10.0	0.54	2.76

[i] P–A, principal–agent.

Keywords	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22	23	24	25	26	27	28	29	30	31	32	33	Sum
1. Adverse selection												1	1						1															3
2. Agency theory		1				1			3									1		1			2	1			3					1		14
3. Change management			2																															2
4. Cooperation/collaboration						2					3	1	2		1				1													1		11
5. Communication					1	2													2						2						1	1		9
6. Contracts		1		2	2	4		1	3	1	5	1				1		7	3	2			5		1		1				6	3	1	50
7. Corruption							2																											2
8. Financial management						1												2		1			2											6
9. Governance		3				3			9		1		1					2	1		1		3				2	1			4		2	33
10. Hold-up						1												1																2
11. Incentives				3		5			1		3	1	1			1		3	6			1	2						1		1	1		30
12. Information asymmetry	1			1		1					1		2						2				1								1			10
13. Information systems	1			2					1		1	2	2	1					1				1					1						13
14. Institutional theory													1																					1
15. Moral hazard				1															1															2
16. Opportunism						1					1					1		1	1	1														6
17. Organisation theory																	1														1			2
18. Partnership		1				7		2	2	1	3					1		2	1	2		1	3	1	1							2		30
19. Principal–agent theory	1			1	2	3			1		6	2	1		1	1		1	2		1		2						1		3		1	30
20. Procurement		1				2		1								1		2		1							1		1		2	1		13
21. Professional ethics/Professionalism									1										1														2	4
22. Reputation											1							1																2
23. Risk management		2				5		2	3		2	1	1					3	2				4									1	2	28
24. Social capital		1																1													2	1		5
25. Social networks					2	1												1							3							1		8
26. Social theories																										1								1
27. Stewardship theory		3				1			2											1														7
28. Strategic planning									1				1															2						4
29. Supply chain management											1								1	1									4			1		8
30. Temporary organisations																														2				2
31. Transation costs					1	6			4	1	1					1		3	2				2										2	23
32. Trust		1		1	1	3					1							2		1			1	1	1				1					14
33. Uncertainty						1			2										1		2		2								2		2	12