Performance Of Construction Organizations Research Articles

Enhancing construction organizations’ performance through strategic decision-making: unveiling the mediating role of quality of information

Purpose Formulating strategic decisions poses a significant challenge for construction organizations, profoundly impacting their overarching strategic management. The success of an organization’s strategy relies on how information is managed and decisions are executed. However, the literature has a limited understanding of the connection between information quality and strategic decision-making, particularly in construction business performance. This study aims to bridge this gap by exploring how information quality mediates the relationship between strategic decision-making and the performance of construction businesses in New Zealand. Design/methodology/approach This quantitative study aims to fill this gap by assessing how information quality shapes strategic decision-making practices, impacting construction organizations’ performance. Analysing 102 viable responses through partial least squares structural equation modeling structural equation modelling offers partial support to the research framework. Findings The study used statistical analysis to gauge the impact of adopting strategic management practices on construction business performance, considering the mediation of the quality of information within New Zealand’s context. It affirmed a positive correlation between strategic decision-making management and construction business performance, underpinned by the mediation of quality of information. Practical implications This study underscores the critical role of information quality in evaluating strategic decisions for bolstering construction business performance. In essence, it affirms that enhancing the performance of construction organizations via strategic decision-making is intrinsically linked to the quality of information. Originality/value This study makes a noteworthy contribution by establishing connections between decision importance, process effectiveness, information quality, intuition in decision-making and model development, providing valuable insights to the field.

Developing and Validating an Assessment Instrument for Organizational Performances of Construction Organization

Evaluating the performance of construction organizations is important for ensuring the success of construction projects-based nature. However, there are no standardized instruments and a single way to measure how well construction organizations perform, making it difficult for researchers and practitioners to get an accurate picture of their performance. This study aims to develop and validate an instrument for assessing organizational performances of construction organizations. The instrument was reviewed by an eight (8) panel of experts, who rated the items on their relevance (essential) to the construct of organizational performance. The Content Validity Ratio (CVR) results showed that 21 of 59 items were considered the most critical by the content experts, and the results for Item Level Content Validity Index (I-CVI) showed that 46 items were considered appropriate. These results showed that the instrument has adequate content validity. The outcomes of this study have important implications for the use of this instrument in organizational performance assessment for the construction industry. The instrument can be used to measure construction organizational performance in a comprehensive and systematic way. This will help researchers and practitioners to better understand the factors that contribute to construction organizational performance and to develop interventions to improve this construct.

Organizational Factors Influencing the Sustainability Performance of Construction Organizations

Construction projects contribute significantly to the growth of countries in terms of GDP and employment opportunities. However, construction organizations are often criticized for not adopting sustainable practices in delivering their projects. Underpinned by the resource-based theory (RBT) this research aims to investigate the organizational factors influencing the sustainability performance of construction organizations. This study used a mixed method approach in which the data was collected from the top management of Australian construction organizations. PLS-SEM was used to analyze the data. The findings revealed that, among the five key factors, business strategies, technological capabilities, and organizational culture are found to have a significant positive impact on the environmental sustainability performance of construction organizations. Also, it is found that the organizations’ social sustainability performance is positively influenced by their organizational culture and business strategies. The research findings have several practical implications, such as the construction companies could use the operationalized measurement items of each determinant (i.e., organizational resources and capabilities) to self-assess and improve their organizational practices, which will help them develop strategies for improved sustainability performance.

Developing a Safety Climate Assessment Tool for Omani Construction Industry

One of the methods which could improve the safety performance of construction organizations is the safety climate approach which is helpful to know the existing maturity level of the safety climate and to develop plans to achieve the required level of maturity. Most of the existing safety climate tools were developed considering different industries in developed countries while construction was based only on few tools. Construction projects in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member countries are at a peak. This article, therefore, attempts to develop a safety climate assessment tool for the Omani construction industry. A mixed research method consisting of systematic review (N = 32), structured questionnaire (N = 102) and email interview (N = 19) was adopted in this research. An assessment tool that has seven factors and 62 simple questions that the participants have to answer on a Likert scale of 1 to 5 is finally developed.

Potential of adopting a resilient safety culture toward improving the safety performance of construction organizations in Nigeria

PurposeDespite the efforts of organizations to improve safety performance, shortfalls of the strategies have been reported in numerous studies around the globe. However, previous studies in countries with more organized construction sectors show that adopting a resilient safety culture by organizations has a tendency of improving safety performance. As safety culture is dynamic which differs with geographical context, the purpose of this paper is to achieve two objectives: testing the causal relationship between safety performance and resilience safety culture in the Nigerian construction environment; and determining the key components for ensuring the resilience of construction organizations with regards to safety.Design/methodology/approachQuantitative research approach was used. Data was collected using a structured questionnaire. The population of the study comprises small and medium construction organizations predominantly across the Northern region in the Nigerian built environment. A total of 180 questionnaires were distributed to construction managers and safety managers in respective organizations to serve as respondents to the study. Partial least square – structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to test the relationship between safety performance and resilience safety culture. While principal component analysis was used determining the key components for ensuring the resilience of construction organizations with regards to safety.FindingsFindings of this study revealed that resilient safety culture has a significantly strong positive relationship with safety performance. Safety hazard recognition and effective safety response attitude were identified as the key components for guaranteeing a resilient safety culture.Practical implicationsWith a view to achieve a consistently high safety performance, organizations have to acknowledge and anticipate unexpected hazardous events and provide the necessary safety resources to manage them. Furthermore, there is also the need to create awareness on recognized safety concerns on safety hazards, coupled with a dynamic risk response attitude to ensure consistent improvement in safety performance.Originality/valueThis study presents an alternative to the slow and reactive safety culture of the Nigerian built environment. This study builds on existing literature, and the findings explore the potential impact of adopting a resilient safety culture in construction organizations in Nigeria. This study provided further insights into key factors organizations need to focus on to ensure resilient nature. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no prior study in this regard was conducted in Nigeria despite its apparent need.

The role of environmental management control systems for ecological sustainability and sustainable performance

PurposeThe purpose of this study determines how environmental management control system (MCS) packages influence ecological sustainability and sustainable performance through the mediating role of environmental strategies. Furthermore, this applies organizational capabilities as moderating variables between environmental strategies, ecological sustainability and sustainable performance in a sample of 373 construction firms.Design/methodology/approachThe authors apply quantitative questionnaire data from construction firm representatives (from project, sales and construction managers and contract managers, executive directors and engineers) to structural equation modeling and SmartPLS for our analysis.FindingsThe results demonstrate that recourse to environmental MCS packages significantly influence ecological sustainability, sustainable performance and environmental strategies. Additionally, environmental strategies and organizational capabilities significantly influence ecological sustainability and sustainable performance. Moreover, environmental strategies mediate between environmental MCS packages, ecological sustainability and sustainable performance. Organizational capabilities significantly moderate the relationship between ecological sustainability and sustainable performance.Practical implicationsThis research highlights the issue of how the management of construction organizations deploy environmental MCS packages, organizational capabilities and business strategies to measure ecological sustainability and improve their sustainable performance. This study fills a gap in the literature and facilitates the management of construction organizations in strengthening their internal resources in terms of environmental MCS packages, environmental strategies and organizational capabilities able to help improve their ecological sustainability and sustainable performance.Originality/valueThere are few studies building theoretical frameworks for incorporating environmental MCS packages, organizational capabilities, environmental strategies, ecological sustainability and sustainable performance into a single study. Although the influence of various types of intangible resources on ecological sustainability and sustainable performance receive considerable examination in the literature, there is a dearth of attention paid to understanding the role of environmental MCS packages, environmental strategies and organizational capabilities in determining the ecological sustainability and sustainable performance of construction organizations.

Потенциальные направления развития методов измерения и оценки эффективной деятельности строительных организаций

The article presents the study results of potential directions for the development of methods for assessing and evaluating the efficient performance of construction organizations that increase the objectivity of assessing and evaluating the results of activities in the field of production and sale of construction products (works, services) and the quality of management decisions. The authors propose systematization of the applied and recommended methods of assessing and evaluating the economic efficiency of construction organizations. Herewith, several methods are considered, namely: the integrated cost method based on a comprehensive accounting of the totality of production, management, commercial and transaction costs; the integrated resource method that implements the concept of accounting for the applied totality of labor, material, technical and financial resources; the resource-integral method based on the symbiosis of resource and cost methods; the optimization method reflecting the concept of a criterion approach; the polystructural method, reflecting the concept of measuring and assessing economic efficiency based on the assessment of the growth potential of construction organizations, due to the influence of factors of intensification of production; the index method based on the concept of following the «golden rule of enterprise economics». A potential methodological approach to assessing alternative types of efficiency (socio-economic, socio-ecological, ecological-economic, ecological-socio-economic ones) in the Descartes spatial coordinate system is proposed.

THE EFFECT OF COMPETITIVE STRATEGIES ON THE PERFORMANCE OF CONSTRUCTION ORGANIZATIONS IN INDONESIA

This study was aimed at examining the effect of competitive strategies and performance of construction organizations in the large construction industry in Indonesia. This study adopted a quantitative research approach using a questionnaire survey to obtain data from 260 senior managers and CEOs of enormous construction organizations in Indonesia. Using Partial Least Square (PLS), we examined the relations between the constructs discussed in the study. We found out that competitive strategies affected the performance of construction organizations; competitive strategies positively impacted on the organizational performance. These findings showed that we needed to harmonize a competitive strategy as a prerequisite to achieving superior performance. We believed that this study positively contributed to the role of competitive strategy and the performance of large construction organizations in Indonesia and ongoing discussions on issues arising in construction management in development.

Impacts of Effective Communication towards Performance of Construction Organization

The purpose of this study is to examine the significant impacts of effective communication towards the performance of the construction organization. The objectives of the study include to identify impacts of effective communication and evaluate the degree of agreement to which effective communication influence construction organization from construction contractors and consultants’ viewpoint. A sample of 200 construction contractors and consultants were randomly selected from the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) database, out of which the response rates received were 160 (80%). Data analysis include Relative Importance Index (RII) for ranking comparison among the construction professionals on a scale range from 1-5 for rating their responses. Kendall’s coefficient of concordance was used to evaluate the degree of agreement between construction professionals related to the ranking of each group of the practices. The results of RII revealed that improve productivity in the organization, reduce project delay, better safety precautions on construction sites, better use of materials and equipment and improve professional commitment to the organization are the top five impacts of effective communication towards the performance of construction organization. The results of Kendall’s coefficient of concordance revealed that a high agreement between construction professionals occurred in the ranking of the impacts of effective communication towards the performance of construction organization. The findings revealed that effective communication help to facilitate better understanding among all parties in the construction organization. It was recommended that stakeholders in the construction organization should adopt the use of effective communication tools and instruments for organizational performance.

Influences of Project Management Capabilities on the Organizational Performance of the Saudi Construction Industry

This paper aims to study the relations between construction enterprises’ project management capabilities and organizational performance. A questionnaire survey was administered to 89 Saudi construction contracting organization administrative members. Data were obtained from 32 projects that were held during the last two years and were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM). It was hypothesized in this study that a construction organizational performance is influenced by project management capabilities within the enterprise. A structural equation model was set up to measure the above two latent variables through their constituent variables. This study introduced a method to measure performance both in qualitative and quantitative terms. The strong path coefficients between the constructs of the model are an indication that after decades in pursuit of finding ways to improve the performance of construction organizations, subjective dimensions of performance have proven to be as effective as the traditional objective dimensions.

Evaluating performance of construction organizations using fuzzy preference relation technique

Evaluating the performance of construction organizations is of vital importance for their continuous improvement and long-term survival. Performance measurement enables organizations to compare their performance with that of others to remain competitive in the business. Consequently, identification and evaluation of relevant performance measurement factors is an important research agenda. Although performance measurement at the level of projects has been studied in depth, it has not been investigated properly at the level of organization. In an earlier study , the authors had identified 20 performance attributes based on existing literature and grouped them under six performance factors (PFs): profitability and asset management; satisfaction of key stakeholders; predictability of cost and time; environment, health and safety (EHS); quality consciousness and staff turnover. The present study uses consistent fuzzy preference relation (CFPR) to determine the relative weights of these factors and associated performance measurement attributes. The findings indicate that the satisfaction of the key stakeholders is the most important performance measurement factor whereas, staff turnover is the least important factor for performance evaluation. Based on the findings, a user-interface in the form of a user-friendly software has been developed. The interface will help construction organizations in assessing and improving their performance to remain competitive in a highly competitive business environment.

Financial issues in construction companies: bibliometric analysis and trends

The success of construction contractors largely depends on the specific terms and the availability of sufficient funds for realizing planned projects. Financial issues in construction have been discussed since mid 1970s, yet no consensus about progress has been reached in the construction finance literature. A systematic analysis of 259 finance related studies in construction is undertaken to identify research trends, critical topics, and performance of journals and authors. To map the productivity in construction finance field, Scopus database was searched for the entire period for which this database provides online coverage. Results reveal that “financial health” category, in particular one group of studies aiming to monitor and assess the financial performance of construction organizations for broader strategic issues pervaded the construction finance research. However, notably the “identification of capital structure, determinants and financing instruments” category received less and only recent attention from scholars, despite the significance of capital structure decisions under firm and country specific determinants in preventing company failures.

Approaches to the assessment the innovation-and-investment projects within the system of “Smart City” criteria

The article clarifies the understanding of modern approaches to risk management in construction organizations. The authors have formed a classification of the sources of risks in construction and the reasons causing the uncertainty of the conditions of operation of construction companies. The researchers identified factors that require control in the construction industry. The authors offer, that “smart city” assumes six criteria, including smart economy, smart mobility, smart environment, smart people, smart living, smart governance. The consideration of the tendency to innovations and the assessment of innovation-and-investment risks within the concept “Smart city” was carried out for the Russian practice for the first time. The risk assessment is offered to be carried out with the use of the modern approach. The proposed approach to improve risk management, according to which all the basic processes of risk management should be carried out at each stage of the life cycle of a construction object. The authors propose to use certain methods of qualitative and quantitative risk assessment, enshrined in the risk management standard, at the appropriate stages of the life cycle of a construction object in terms of their advantages. This will increase the effectiveness of risk management and minimize the impact of risk factors identified by researchers on the performance of construction organizations. Research of risk management systems allowed us to determine the priorities and problems of construction companies in the field of risk management and increase its efficiency.

Determining strategic clusters and performance of construction organizations in South Africa

ABSTRACTThis study examines the linkage of strategic clusters and performance of South African organizations, using Porter's generic strategies to determine whether differences exist between clustered organizations in terms of performance, characteristics, resources and capability and how the companies achieve strategic fit within different environments. A questionnaire survey was used to collect data from construction companies registered in Grades 7–9 on the cidb contractor register. The study results show that four clusters of construction organizations exist in the South African construction industry; that the four strategic groups exhibited the characteristics of Miles and Snow's Taxonomy of Strategies; and that human resource capabilities were significantly different across the groups. However, the results show no statistically significant differences among the clusters in terms of performance. It emerged that all the respondents' organizations placed a high premium on employee satisfaction as a measure of achieving success. This study thus proved empirically that different clusters of organizations exist within the South African construction industry, and that they exhibit the characteristics of defenders, prospectors, analysers and reactors.

Environment, competitive strategy, and organizational characteristics: A path analytic model of construction organizations’ performance in South Africa

AbstractWhile mainstream strategic management researchers have paid attention to the causes of performance differential among organizations, there is a dearth of empirical research within the construction industry on the subject. We examine the relationship between environment, organizational characteristics, competitive strategies, and performance of construction organizations in the South African construction industry. In order to develop a model for improving organizations’ performance, partial least squares was employed using quantitative data collected from a sample of 72 large construction firms listed on the Construction Industry Development Board contractors’ register in South Africa. The results reveal that organizational characteristics have a direct influence on organizational performance, while the relationship between the business environment and organizational performance is mediated by competitive strategies. Copyright © 2016 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

비모수 분석방법에 의한 국내 건설조직 성과 측정 방향에 관한 연구 - DEA를 이용한 국내 연구 문헌 고찰을 기반으로 -

Abstract : Data envelopment analysis (DEA) measures the relative efficiency of decision making units (DMUs) with multiple performance factors that are grouped into outputs and inputs. DEA has proven to be superior to simple aggregation of performance measures, and is also useful for evaluating the performance of construction companies for comparison with competitor performance. The purpose of this study was to survey literatures on the application of DEA methodology and to propose a methodological scheme to measure the performance of construction organizations. Articles on previous studies were surveyed and examined as part of a comprehensive review. The survey revealed that the application of DEA in the construction industry was limited. Further, the survey indicated that there is a need for the development of a methodological framework on the special goals and subjects of performance measurement, methods of data structure and collection, selection of appropriate DEA models, analysis of results, and post-test. Based on the survey, this study identified and discussed the types of major issues and topics for future studies from a methodological perspective, which could be helpful to researchers interested in using DEA to study performance issues in construction organizations.

AN INVESTIGATION OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE AND THE PERFORMANCE OF CONSTRUCTION ORGANIZATIONS

The operation of organizations is very much influenced by their culture. Organizational culture (OC) has been defined as a pattern of basic assumptions that are manifested by the behavior of an organization. Positive OC is considered to be catalytic to performance enhancement. As construction aspires to be an efficient industry, this study aims to contribute in this regard by examining the relationship between organizational culture and the performance of construction organizations. Artifacts corresponding to OC identifiers and Performance indicators are short-listed from a literature review. These artifacts are arranged into constructs. The eight OC constructs are: Goal Clarity, Coordination and Integration, Conflict Resolution, Employee Participation, Innovation Orientation, Performance Emphasis, Reward Orientation and Team orientation. The performance indicator constructs are; Financial, Internal Business Process, Custom and Innovation & Learning. The artifacts were elaborated and operationalized for data collection. The constructs, as well as the OC-Performance relationship framework, were then analyzed and tested using Structural Equation Modeling. Innovation was found to be the most critical OC as far as performance of construction organizations is concerned. In today's knowledge based society, innovative organizations have proved to be the performers. This timely finding highlights the need for a culture that fosters creativity and supports innovation.

Facing Turbulence: Driving Force for Construction Organizations to Regain Unlearning and Learning Traction

AbstractOrganizational learning (OL) is recognized as crucial in construction organizations’ performance. Nevertheless, scholars have argued that construction organizations do not seem to learn in a manner that fosters resilience in coping with changes in developers’ demands. Skeptics argue that OL should be facilitated by unlearning (UL)—a process of discarding obsolete beliefs and routines. While OL has emerged as a popular construction management research topic, it is a concept that has yet to be investigated empirically from an unlearning perspective. This paper reports a study that aims to (1) investigate the effect of OL and UL on the performance of construction organizations, and (2) investigate the role turbulence (TU) plays on triggering OL and UL. Data were collected from a questionnaire survey conducted in Hong Kong, and the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique was employed for data analysis. The results indicate that (1) TU triggers the process of UL and (2) UL significantly contribute...

Market Structure and Organizational Performance of Construction Organizations

The structure of a market can be described by how the market is composed of firms of different sizes and how these firms are diversified into different subsectors. In construction, few empirical studies exist on organizational performance at the industry level considering market structure. This paper presents a study investigating the market structure of the construction industry and the organizational performance of large contractors and design firms, focusing on size, growth rate, business stability, and market diversification. The study performs an empirical analysis using publicly available U.S. construction industry data. Four hypotheses were tested to determine relationships among strategic management issues and organizational performance. The study identifies particular patterns and similarities and differences in market structure between contractors and design firms and provides a new finding on market diversification—the existence of certain thresholds at which a firm’s diversification level significantly changes as the firm grows. An analysis on organizational performance concludes that firm growth is independent of firm size, whereas market diversification contributes to a firm’s business stability but not significantly to firm growth.

Building a conceptual framework for measuring business performance in construction: an empirical evaluation

The importance of business performance measurement across industries has elevated in the last decade in what has been described as a revolution. Meanwhile, the construction industry has been criticised for its underperformance and the Latham and Egan reports emphasized the need for performance improvement and measurement. Companies have had to face the dilemma of choosing among different performance measurement frameworks. Hence, a need has been identified for a comprehensive framework. The aim of this research is to fulfil this need by building a conceptual framework for measuring the business performance of construction organizations. The framework had been formulated in previous research upon the principles of the Balanced Scorecard and Business Excellence Models. The research attempts to empirically evaluate and revise the framework through a series of expert interviews and case studies. In addition, empirical feedback has been used to: express the revised framework in a more communicative form, illustrate how business performance can be measured; and highlight the differences between the proposed framework and contemporary performance frameworks.