A Sociotechnical Analysis of Organizational Behavior Impact on Cost Estimation in Offsite Construction

Cost overruns and estimation instability persist in construction projects despite sustained advances in cost estimation models and digital tools. In offsite construction, these challenges are intensified by early design freeze, distributed production, and tightly coupled supply chains. Yet, cost estimation research continues to treat uncertainty primarily as a technical or computational problem. This study examines cost estimation in offsite construction from a sociotechnical and organizational behavior perspective. A multilayered review methodology was employed, combining bibliometric analysis of 526 Scopus-indexed publications, a systematic literature review of 57 core studies, and qualitative synthesis of explanatory evidence. Bibliometric mapping was used to identify dominant research themes, followed by an in-depth analysis of studies explicitly linking organizational behavior to cost estimation and cost-related performance. The results identified five recurring organizational behavior mechanisms influencing estimation reliability in offsite construction: information quality and stability, coordination efficiency, decision behavior and bias, risk sensing and response capacity, and learning and calibration. Based on these findings, a sociotechnical conceptual framework is synthesized from the reviewed evidence to illustrate how organizational behavior shapes estimation processes and cost outcomes. The study concludes that cost estimation in offsite construction is best understood as an organizational capability embedded within broader sociotechnical systems, with implications for future research and the development of forecasting and decision-support tools.