Investigating Cultural and Structural Influences on Optimizing Engineer-to-Order Project Delivery and Sustainability

Abstract

Several culture theories, which explain the formation, embedment, and propagation of organizational culture, suggest that certain organizational culture practices of an executing organization may enable sustainable outcomes in project manufacturing. However, practices that support sustainability may not support project delivery, and vice versa. We explore the effects of organizational culture practices and structural complexity on the ability of manufacturing projects to optimize both sustainability and project delivery. We use data envelopment analysis to calculate a sustainability-delivery quotient—a measure of each organization's ability to optimize both sustainability and project delivery outcomes—for 186 projects conducted in the U.K. By conducting generalized linear modeling and censored regression of the sustainability-delivery quotient, we estimate the effects of the GLOBE organizational culture dimensions, principal components of culture dimensions, and project structural complexity indicators. Results indicate a noteworthy gap between the delivery of projects and their sustainability performance, which is worse. Both institutional and in-group collectivism may support the optimization of each. However, neither the principal components of culture dimensions nor structural complexity indicators are likely to be significant. We discuss the managerial implications.