به سوی یک چارچوب فرهنگ سازمانی در ساخت و ساز

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.

Several major industrial reviews (Latham, 1994, Egan, 1998 and CIRC, 2001) have pinpointed that construction industry need to improve its efficiency. A conducive, progressive and enduring culture is believed to be a foundation for efficiency (Kotter and Heskett, 1992). In this connection, developing organizational culture has several important purposes. Firstly, it conveys a sense of identity for organization members. Secondly, it facilitates the generation of commitment (Peter and Waterman, 1982). Thirdly, culture enhances stability of the organization (Louis, 1980). Fourthly, culture serves as a sense-making device that can guide and shape behavior (Siehl and Martin, 1981). From the 1980s, the concept of organizational culture has received considerable attention in the field of organizational theory (Smircich, 1983). Organizational culture has been defined as the social or normative glue that holds an organization together (Siehl and Martin, 1981). It expresses the social ideals, values and beliefs that members of an organization come to share (Louis, 1980). These values or patterns of belief are manifested by symbolic devices such as myths (Boje et al., 1982), rituals (Deal and Kennedy, 1982), stories (Mitroff and Kilmann, 1976), legends (Wilkins and Martin, 1980), and specialized language (Andrews and Hirsh, 1983). These studies also advocated that culture could have powerful consequences, especially when they are conducive and enduring. It can have a powerful positive effect on individual and organizational performance that is of increasing concern with the ever-increasing competitive environment (Kotter and Heskett, 1992, Wilkins and Ouchi, 1983 and Lim, 1995). A number of studies seeking to relate organizational culture and performance have been reported (Wilkins and Ouchi, 1983, Peter and Waterman, 1982, Kanter, 1983, Denison, 1984, Hansen and Wernerfelt, 1989, Gordon and DiTomaso, 1992, Safford, 1988 and Wilderom et al., 2000). Most of these studies employed correlation analysis and found significant statistical correlation between organizational culture and performance (Calori and Samin, 1991 and Petty et al., 1995).One of the early influential studies on organizational culture was on its definition and implications for managers. Schein (1986) advocated the organizational culture/leadership model and defined ‘culture’ as a pattern of basic assumptions – invented, discovered, or developed by a given group as it learns to cope with its problems of external adaptation and internal integration. Organizational culture thus serves the leader of an organization through nurturing the value system created by him to both serving and incoming members. According to Schein (1986), a strong culture is therefore one where the implicit and explicit assumptions are in harmony. Schein (1986) further pointed out that there may be several cultures operating within an organization: managerial culture that is occupationally based, group culture that is derived from geographical proximity, and worker culture that is based on shared hierarchical experiences. The organization as a whole will have an overall culture “if that whole organization has a significant shared history”. Furthermore, Cole (1997) considered culture as a two-tiered set of “shared values, norms and beliefs within an organization”. On the surface is the explicit culture, which manifests itself in the ‘official’ organizational and communication structure. Beneath the surface is the implicit culture that management and staff consider of real importance. Cole (1997) believes that implicit culture is probably closer to reality. This conception is similar to the 3-level framework of organizational culture proposed by Schein (2004) as shown in Fig. 1.

4.1. Factor structure of organizational culture in construction To investigate the underlying factors of the 26 organizational culture artifacts, principal component factor analysis (PCFA) was performed. PCFA is an effective tool to group a large number of organizational culture artifacts into a smaller number of factors to enhance a more systematic and effective data interpretation (Cheung, 1999 and Hair et al., 1998). Furthermore, to achieve a simpler and pragmatically more meaningful factor solution for interpretation, the commonly used VARIMAX rotations were performed (Hair et al., 1998 and Sharma, 1996). VARIMAX is an orthogonal rotation of the factor axes to maximize the variance of the squared loadings of an identified factor on all the artifacts in a factor matrix. Each factor will tend to have either large or small loadings of any particular artifact. A VARIMAX rotated factor matrix makes it easier to identify sets of artifacts respective to the extracted factors. Factors having Eigenvalues greater than 1 are considered significant. Factors with Eigenvalues less than 1 are considered insignificant and are disregarded. Using the Eigenvalue for establishing a cutoff is most reliable when the number of artifacts is between 20 and 50 (Hair et al., 1998). As the number of artifacts is 26, it is appropriate to use the Eigenvalue criterion. Furthermore, Cronbach alphas reliability testing was employed to examine the internal consistency of the factorized artifacts (Sharma, 1996). The alpha value can range from 0 to 1. The higher the alpha value is, the more reliable the groupings of the artifacts are. A Cronbach alpha value higher than 0.7 is regarded as ‘good’ in reliability testing (Sharma, 1996). Cronbach alphas reliability testing can be done by using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The results of the PCFA after VARIMAX rotation and the Cronbach alphas reliability testing on the data sets are presented in Table 3.For the purpose of this study, the factorized artifacts are grouped and termed as organizational culture factors. With reference to Table 3, the sample data is adequate for data analysis as the Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin measure of sampling adequacy is higher than the threshold of 0.600 (Kaiser and Rice, 1974) and the Bartlett test statistic is also highly significant (p > 0.0000) (Hair et al., 1998). Following the Eigenvalue greater-than-one rule (Sharma, 1996), seven organizational culture factors are suggested. The Cronbach alpha ranges from 0.61 to 0.78 suggesting that all the factors have acceptable internal consistency reliability (Robinson et al., 1991). Moreover, the organizational culture factors account for 57.55% of the total variance, which is considered sufficient to explain organizational culture in construction using the extracted artifacts (Sharma, 1996). Seven artifacts are extracted as significant in organizational culture factor 1: (i) Emphasize team accountability, (ii) Trust atmosphere, (iii) Accept criticism and negative feedback, (iv) Emphasize on reward instead of punishment, (v) performance-based rewards, (vi) Recognize and reward members’ performance and (vii) Equitable reward. Referring to the artifacts descriptions stated in Table 1, artifacts (i–iii) can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of conflict resolution in construction. The rest of the artifacts of organizational culture factor 1 can be used to evaluate the extent of emphasis being put on rewarding good performance. organizational culture factor called Reward orientation is thus proposed. Organizational culture factor 2 consists of four artifacts: (i) Accept adventurous ideas for sustaining competitiveness, (ii) Welcome alternative solutions, (iii) Encourage creative and innovative ideas, and (iv) Allocate resources for implementing innovative ideas. The artifacts aligned in factor 2 are based upon the readiness to accept and employ innovative ideas for performance improvement and sustaining competitive advantages. Thus, organizational culture factor 2 is labeled as Innovation orientation. Three artifacts: (i) emphasize good performance, (ii) guidance for performance improvement, and (iii) explicit set of performance standards are loaded highly in factor 3. These artifacts concern the extent to which emphasis is placed on establishing a performance standard. Thus, organizational culture factor 3 is labeled as Performance emphasis. Organizational culture factor 4 is labeled as Coordination and integration which consists of three artifacts that can be used to evaluate the extent of collaboration among members of an organization: (i) resolve internal problems effectively, (ii) encourage inter-departmental collaboration, and (iii) encourage information sharing. Three artifacts are extracted in taxonomy factor 5: (i) clear goals, (ii) clear approach to succeed, and (iii) actions are matched with organization’s goals. organizational culture factor is labeled as Goal settings and accomplishment as the extracted artifacts can be used to assess the level that members understand and achieve their organizational goals. Organizational culture factor 6 consists of three artifacts: (i) Emphasize team contributions, (ii) Amicable opinions and ideas exchange, and (iii) Members’ commitment to team. These artifacts can be used for assessing the extent that members are committed to their team and thus is labeled as Team orientation. Three artifacts: (i) Employees’ participation in decision-making process, (ii) Value employees’ ideas, and (iii) Employees’ input on major decisions are loaded highly in Organizational culture factor 7. Referring to the nature of these artifacts, this factor concerns with the contributions of the members, in particular, in the decision-making process in an organization. Collectively, organizational culture factor 7 is labeled as Members’ participation. To summarize, the seven organizational culture factors in construction derived from the factor analysis are: (i) Reward orientation, (ii) Innovation orientation, (iii) Performance emphasis, (iv) Coordination and integration, (v) goal settings and accomplishment, (vi) team orientation, and (vii) Members’ participation. Collectively, this forms a structural framework of organizational culture in construction. 4.2. Organizational culture in construction firms In this section, the relative significance of the factors developed in stage two is explored using the following formula: equation(1) View the MathML sourceDi=∑j=1nAijn Turn MathJax on where Di is the organizational culture factor score Aij is the mean score of the jth artifacts of organizational culture factor i The purpose of this ranking exercise is to enhance the understanding of how organizational culture works in construction. The organizational culture factor score is the average of the mean score of its artifacts. For example, ‘Goal settings and accomplishment’ consists of three artifacts (clear goals; clear approach to succeed; and actions are matched with organization’s goals). Hence, the organizational culture factor score of ‘Goal settings and accomplishment’ are as follow: D5=(4.61+4.58+4.21)/3=4.47D5=(4.61+4.58+4.21)/3=4.47 Turn MathJax on The organizational culture factor scores are then ranked and arranged in descending order as shown in Table 4.4.3. Analyses of Variance (ANOVA) The factorization of the artifacts enables the understanding of organizational culture in construction in a more amenable and logical manner. Nevertheless, it is mindful that contracting organizations in a construction project are indeed having different backgrounds and business objectives, the representativeness of the identified organizational culture factors may vary in contracting organizations. In this regard, an Analyses of Variance (ANOVA) was conducted to identify if significant difference in views about the significance of the identified organizational culture factors among the three groups of respondents: public and private sectors developers, consultants, and contractors. The results are summarized in Table 5. The significance scores of the seven organizational culture factors are all greater than 3.5 on a 7-point Likert scale. This indicates that all these Factors are considered by the three groups of respondents as appropriate for identifying organizational culture in construction. Furthermore, it can be seen from the table that, at 99% confidence level (i.e. at ρ < 0.01 level), the group differences in mean scores on the seven organizational culture factors are not significant.There is a general belief that different business objectives, leadership styles, life cycles and work patterns; contracting organizations in construction may engender different culture (Ankrah and Langford, 2005 and Liu and Fellows, 2008). The use of different measures of organizational culture in these studies made direct comparison difficult (Ankrah and Langford, 2005 and Liu and Fellows, 2008). In particular, the measures used were often company-based despite the fact that organizations in construction are collaborating under a project-based situation (Riley and Clare-Brown, 2001). Nonetheless, the ANOVA results do not reveal significant difference among developers, consultants and contractors as far as the Organizational Culture structure in construction as shown in Table 4 is concerned. As such, the seven-factors as identified by the PCFA are agreed by all three groups of respondents as the valid measures of organizational culture in construction. With the acceptance of use by the three groups of construction professionals, the suggested organizational culture structure in construction can be used as a base for modification to suit specific situation. For example, the artifacts can be elaborated to reflect the organizations’ particular circumstances.