Towards an organizational culture framework in construction

Abstract

Organizational culture gives identity to an organization. Notwithstanding the individuality of the staff members, their actions are collectively bound by the organizational culture. A review of the literature in this topic reveals that despite a number of organizational culture models have been developed, these are mainly for generic business settings and there has yet one developed for construction contracting organizations. This paper reports a study for this purpose conducted in Hong Kong. Firstly, artifacts of organizational culture were long-listed through a literature review. Construction professionals working for developers, consultant offices and contractors assessed the appropriateness of using these artifacts to identify organizational culture in construction. Through a principal component factor analysis, these artifacts are arranged into a seven-factor organizational culture framework. The seven factors are ‘Goal settings and accomplishment’, ‘Team orientation’, ‘Coordination and integration’, ‘Performance emphasis’, ‘Innovation orientation’, ‘Members’ participation’ and ‘Reward orientation’. The ANOVA result suggests no significant difference in the rankings across respondents working for developers, consultants and contractors. The relative importance rankings among these factors were also assessed according to their significance scores. The findings of the study suggest that the construction contracting organizations in Hong Kong favor culture of clear goals with stability. They are less externally focused with a relatively lower emphasis on innovation. These findings suggest construction maintains a local industry mentality.