Clear terms first and courtesy later: the role of contractual governance in construction project resilience from the integrative perspective

Construction projects are confronted with disruptive events. This study explores the effects of con-tractual governance on construction project resilience. By adopting an integrative perspective (i.e. inte-grating the governance stage perspective and the contract content perspective), this study dividescontractual governance into contract design (furthermore contract specificity and contract flexibility)and contract application. Besides, this study explores the mediating role of relational ties and themoderating effects of environmental uncertainty. Survey data were collected from Chinese construc-tion firms. The results suggest that contract specificity and flexibility enhance proactive and reactiveresilience while relational ties partially mediate the above enhancements. Contract application ham-pers reactive resilience. Besides, environmental uncertainty strengthens the positive role of contractflexibility. Theoretically, this study investigates the less-explored construction project resilience and itsantecedents and contributes to explaining the contradictory role of contractual governance by adopt-ing the integrative perspective. Practically, this study provides recommendations to enhance construc-tion project resilience.