Organizational success heavily relies on the competitiveness of products and services under rapidly changing market conditions. This enterprise competitiveness becomes more critical for project-based enterprises as modernization of the Chinese construction industry creates greater challenges and uncertainty in construction operations, which determines the sustainable advantages of enterprises to a certain degree. Traditional wisdom focuses on cost efficiency, asset differentiation, and service performance to gain competitive advantages. This paper explores the influence of organizational flexibility and organizational innovation on enterprise competitiveness for Chinese construction organizations. A designed structured questionnaire was developed and conducted targeting the project-based enterprises in China’s construction industry and is accompanied by a structural equation modeling analysis. Results indicate a positive impact of organizational flexibility on enterprise competitiveness along with a mediation role of organizational innovation. The study concludes that new organizational strategies are required for Chinese project-based enterprises to maintain enterprise competitiveness in order to realize the sustainable development of enterprises.

China’s construction industry developed rapidly and safety production has become a vital issue. Improving the safety behavior of construction workers is an important measure to effectively decrease construction safety accidents. At present, a New Generation of Construction Workers (NGCWs) born after 1980 has gradually become the main force of construction companies in China and the special group characteristics coming from the intergenerational difference may make them behave differently in safety-related activities, therefore, it is very important to study how to promote their safety behavior. This paper aimed to explore the influencing mechanism of job satisfaction on the safety behavior of NGCWs and examine the mediating role of safety knowledge sharing and work engagement. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling analysis were applied to test the theoretical model. Empirical research results indicated that job satisfaction can effectively promote safety behavior through safety knowledge sharing and work engagement. Safety knowledge sharing plays a complete mediating role between job satisfaction and safety compliance behavior, as well as between job satisfaction and safety participation behavior. Moreover, work engagement plays a complete mediating role between job satisfaction and safety participation behavior, which can provide valuable management references for China’s construction companies to strengthen their safety behavior.

China’s construction industry is facing serious problems of aging construction workers and labor shortages. Improving the job satisfaction of construction workers is a key point for retaining existing construction workers and for attracting younger generations into the construction field in China. At present, the new generation of construction workers (NGCW) born after 1980 has been the main force on construction sites in China. Therefore, it is very important to study and explore the influencing factors of the job satisfaction of the NGCW. This paper aims to determine the influencing factors of job satisfaction of the NGCW through literature research and to clarify the interaction mechanisms and hierarchical structures of influencing factors using the Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) and Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) to design appropriate human resource practices to promote their job satisfaction. Research findings show that there are 12 main influencing factors of job satisfaction of the NGCW, which are at three levels: personal traits, job characteristics and social environment, and the influencing factors can be divided into a cause group and an effect group, including four layers: the root layer, controllable layer, key layer and direct layer in the multi-level hierarchical structure model. Furthermore, the critical influencing factors of the job satisfaction of the NGCW consist of education level, competency, career development, salaries and rewards, rights protection and work–family balance. This research enriches the job satisfaction literature of construction workers and provides an important reference for decision makers in construction enterprises and the construction industry to understand what influences the job satisfaction of the NGCW and how it is influenced to then improve it in China.

Purpose: This paper aims to investigate the relationships between empowering leadership, basic psychological needs satisfaction, work-related well-being, and project citizenship behavior.Design/methodology/approach: Drawing upon the self-determination theory (SDT), a conceptual model was developed and then empirically tested using a cross-sectional survey of 435 project members in Chinese construction projects.Findings: The results fully support the research hypotheses proposed in the study, illustrating the positive impacts of empowering leadership on work-related well-being and project citizenship behavior, the mediating role of basic psychological needs satisfaction, and the positive association between work-related well-being and project citizenship behavior.Practical implications: This research determines the utility of empowering leadership in the context of construction projects, especially in enhancing individual outcomes (i.e. work-related well-being and project citizenship behavior). Therefore, construction project managers can apply empowering leadership to meet the basic psychological needs of subordinates to increase project members' work-related well-being and project citizenship behavior.Originality/value: To our knowledge, the present study first explores the micro-level impacts of empowering leadership in the construction context. Additionally, this study enriches the understanding of the mediating mechanism between empowering leadership and individual outcomes from a self-determination perspective.

Purpose: The deviant behavior (DB) of construction workers has always been a troubling event in project management. Although scholars continue to search for the main causes of this behavior to curb it at the source, the authors know less about the role and contribution of the team. This study aims to uncover the mechanisms and conditions under which collective moral judgment focus on self (CMJS) effectively enhances DB.Design/methodology/approach: Adopting Chinese construction enterprises as samples, a hierarchical linear model (HLM) is used to test the results of the hypothesis. Moderated mediating effects are used to analyze the potential mechanisms and boundary conditions of DB.Findings: The results of the HLM analysis show that CMJS could directly and significantly induce DB, and moral disengagement (MD) plays a mediator role in this association. In addition, the positive relationship between MD and DB is stronger when performance-avoidance goal orientation (PaGO) or overqualification (Overq) is higher.Research limitations/implications: The conditions and mechanisms that influence DB are not unique. Future study could examine the explanatory and weighting mechanisms of DB from other perspectives or to construct a framework and summarize the factors that may influence DB.Practical implications: This study provides a rich theoretical basis for the prevention and correction of construction workers' DB in Chinese construction firms from the perspective of CMJS. In addition, objective moral judgments contribute to guiding employees' moral cognitive processes and positive work.Originality/value: This study extends existing research on DB and advances the practical outcomes of construction project governance. It not only illustrates that CMJS has a direct impact on DB but also clarifies the mechanisms and conditions that predispose to the generation of DB, filling the research gap on construction workers' DB from cross-level mechanisms and also enriching the theoretical system for preventing this behavior.

Purpose: Evidence remains limited on how unsafe behaviors connect and progress directionally within construction accident sequences. This study investigates these relationships using 329 written fall-from-height (FFH) accident investigation reports from Jiangsu Province, China. Design/methodology/approach: Text mining was integrated with complex network analysis. Unsafe behavior nodes were identified through coding and topic modeling, while a convolutional neural network was used to extract progressive and parallel relations from accident narratives. The resulting directed network comprised 71 nodes and 217 edges and was analyzed using degree, node strength, betweenness centrality, and shortest-path measures. Findings: The resulting network exhibits a heterogeneous structure, with a limited number of unsafe behaviors occupying prominent positions across multiple structural measures. The analysis further identifies recurrent behavioral pathways linking unsafe acts during FFH accident development, indicating that documented accident processes involve interconnected rather than isolated behaviors. The identified directional relations represent reported behavioral progression in accident narratives. Practical implications: The findings can support safety interventions that move beyond isolated unsafe acts by targeting structurally important behaviors together with their associated behavioral pathways. Application of the identified priorities to other settings should consider differences in local construction and accident-reporting contexts. Originality/value: This study develops an evidence-linked approach for constructing unsafe behavior networks directly from accident narratives. By extracting directional behavioral relations from documented accident sequences rather than defining network connections solely through co-occurrence or expert judgment, the approach provides a reproducible basis for examining the organization and progression of unsafe behaviors in construction accidents.