Trust in Swedish Construction industry – obstacles, facilitators and positive outcomes

Abstract: This thesis makes a contribution to the trust literature by analysing and pinpointing specific actions and behaviours that are seen as negative or positive to the building of trust in the construction industry in Sweden today. The thesis therefore aims to look at trust from different perspectives – developer, contractor, consultant and subcontractors in the Swedish construction industry. Specifically, it examines the different notations and definitions of trust from the literature along with a qualitative study aiming at understanding the underlying factors and principles for creating trust. The qualitative data was collected through interviews with seven people. The results show that trust is considered important in all projects and is a prerequisite for a good project. However, there is a lack of trust in the construction industry today, but with a shift of generation and a forthcoming digitisation, a positive trend might be pending. Partnering and other forms of collaboration are seen as facilitating for trust building processes – if implemented in a proper manner. However, partnering is rarely implemented in such a way, why those processes many times fail in ending up in trust. Further, it has been concluded that trust is highly affected in a negative way by changes in standard contracts such as AB/ABT, whereupon such changes should be avoided. Trust is seen as strongly connected with building long-term relationships where opportunism is avoided and future profits rather are given priority. Lastly, trust helps to keep focus on the important things in a project, making the way for a better product in the end. It is also seen as a factor for creating a better work environment and an attractive industry.  The study has identified that the major factors affecting trust in the Swedish construction industry are: changes from the standard contracts (AB/ABT), different collaboration forms and the execution of these (mainly partnering), the digitisation and coming generational change, the focus on cheap constructions and a lack of long-term relationships.