The effects of sustainable practices and managers’ leadership competences on sustainability performance of construction firms

Abstract

Sustainable practices performed throughout the construction project cycle positively affect the environment, society, and economy – three dimensions of sustainability. Awareness of the importance of sustainable practices’ implementation is currently greater than in the past. In this regard, leaders need to integrate sustainability into firm activities, making the business strategy’s sustainable development part. However, the understanding of leadership and its linkage to sustainable construction are still limited, thus more work is required to establish the leaders’ vital role in the implementation of sustainable practices. To our knowledge, the extant literature still lacks the empirical evidence to prove the relationships among sustainable practices, sustainability performance, and leadership competences of construction managers. Therefore, this study developed a survey questionnaire to collect data and used Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to empirically investigate the relationships between sustainable practices (environmental, economic, and social) and sustainability performance and the moderating effect of construction managers’ leadership competences on these relationships. The findings revealed that environmental, economic, and social practices have the positive influences on sustainability performance. Moreover, this study also discovered that leadership competences strengthen the environmental practices-sustainability performance relationship. However, we did not find the empirical evidence to support the moderating effect of leadership competences on the relationships between economic, social practices and sustainability performance. This study attempts to fill the certain gaps of the sustainable construction literature and provides researchers and construction managers with a deeper understanding of the roles of sustainable practices and construction managers’ leadership competences in sustainable construction.