Abstract: In the complicated and changing environment of construction project, project governance mainly depends on the integration of contract governance and relationship governance with trust as the core element. However, most of the existing researches about the integration governance mechanism focus on static combination or use external factors to explain the dynamic relationship between them, with little quantitative researches into the integration governance mechanism in the time dimension. In view of this, this study divides contract governance into pre-contract design and post-contract performance, which correspond respectively to initial trust and continuous trust. Based on the analysis of the existing literature, hypotheses of the relationship among contract governance, initial trust, continuous trust and project management performance are put forward and the conceptual model is constructed. The partial least squares method is used to analyze 183 collected questionnaires. The results show that: in the contracting stage, contract governance can effectively improve project management performance, and the clarity and adaptability of contract terms are complementary to initial trust; in the contract performance stage, continuous trust can effectively improve project management performance, and the rigor of contract performance and continuous trust have a substitutive relationship. These findings deepen the research on the dynamic mechanism of integrated governance, and provide theoretical basis for managers to choose right governance mechanism in different stages of construction project.

Key words: construction project, contract governance, initial trust, continuous trust, project management performance