There has been over two decades of research investigating partnering within the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry. The partnering concept within the AEC industry was developed in the 1980s by the US Army Corp of Engineers to mitigate the rise in construction disputes and its damage to business relationships (Gransberg et al., 1999). From this point forward, its use has remained stagnated across countries and projects. Much research has been undertaken to learn key factors for successful partnering and to report performance outcomes; yet, researchers continue grapple with underlying dilemmas found in partnering implementation. As such, some have resorted to detailed literature reviews through qualitative approaches intended to summarize the status of partnering research (Hong et al., 2012; Bygballe et al., 2010; Li et al., 2000). Still others have saturated the AEC partnering literature with studies on "critical success factors" for partnering often leaving researchers and practitioners in a state of confusion (Chan et al., 2004; Cheng et al., 2002; Black et al., 2000; Cheng et al., 2000). To answer this need, a meta-analytic approach is used for this research to synthesize 173 studies from AEC partnering literature. A mixed method data analysis approach is followed in this study. Findings from this study achieves several goals established for this research being: 1) synthesize the body of knowledge in AEC partnering literature; 2) develop a proposed taxonomy of key partnering drivers (KPD) and performance outcomes with preliminary quantitative evidence from the AEC partnering literature. The results will provide theoretical underpinnings of AEC partnering literature making a contribution to broader organizational knowledge and theory. In fact, this research closes the gap in the literature illustrating a clear connection between key partnering drivers and performance outcomes using a systematically derived taxonomy.
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