2025/11/17 by Peter E.D. Love, Peter E. D. Love, Lavagnon A. Ika
Business, Management and Accounting · Decision Sciences · #Construction Project Management and Performance #Management and Organizational Studies #Public-Private Partnership Projects
paper · doi:10.1109/tem.2025.3632770
openalex created_date 2025/11/17 · openalex publication_date 2025/11/17 · crossref created 2025/11/17 · crossref deposited 2025/12/24 · crossref issued 2026/01/01 · crossref published 2026/01/01 · crossref published-print 2026/01/01 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/25 · crossref indexed 2026/08/01
Cost misperformance, when final construction costs exceed a client's approved budget, continues to be a challenge when procuring infrastructure delivery worldwide. Traditional explanations often emphasize individual and organizational errors and/or biases, while overlooking the institutional contexts that shape decision-making. Our paper extends the Fifth Hand, an emergent theory of project behavior, by embedding it within a neo-institutional perspective, linking micro-level ecological rationality with meso-level organizational pressures and macro-level institutional logics. We integrate isomorphic mechanisms (e.g., coercive, mimetic, normative) with institutional logics (e.g., professional [cost control]; market [competitiveness], collaborative [risk-sharing]) to explain the recurrence and legitimacy of behavioral patterns across infrastructure projects. The Fifth Hand is thus mapped to isomorphic pressures and institutional logics, illustrating how they shape a project's cost performance. By adopting a multi-level, institutional lens, we strengthen the Fifth Hand's explanatory foundation by connecting individual and organizational decisions to broader structural and normative forces. We conclude by outlining research directions to explore how isomorphic mechanisms and institutional logics evolve across projects, interact over time, and sustain cost misperformance.