In recent years Western project management theories and practices have become increasingly recognized and dispersed in China, particularly in construction-related work. The assessment and development of project management competence in China are driven by attempts to follow the Western standards-based competence certification programmes. Yet little is known about whether and how the predefined set of knowledge embodied in the Western standards are used by Chinese project managers in their workplace. In this paper we report an empirical exploration of Chinese construction project managers’ ways of conceiving and accomplishing their work. We replicate in the Chinese context the previous UK-based phenomenographic study of construction project management competence, which revealed three different conceptions arranged in a hierarchy of performance. The results of this China-based study confirm the conceptual determinants of construction project management competence first revealed in the UK, and provide practical implications for effective training and professional certification of project management competence in China. Meanwhile, the replication of the phenomenographic approach to understanding project management competence in China enhances the cross-cultural validity of the approach and highlights its potential for explorative management research.
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