Architects and contractors: a comparative study of organizational cultures

N. A. Ankrah and D. A. Langford

Construction Management and Economics, 2005, vol. 23, issue 6, 595-607

Abstract: Conflicts between project participants have been identified in various construction industry reports as being one of the principal causes of poor performance on construction projects. These conflicts occur at the interface level in one respect because participants have different objectives and different organizational cultures which define their approach to work and relationship with the other project participants. This research was therefore undertaken to investigate and identify the organizational cultures of two significant players in the project coalition - architects and contractors - on the premise that by revealing specific cultural characteristics and orientations, establishing significant areas of difference and initiating discussion on some of the implications for conflicts and project performance, the context would have been set for assessing and understanding the behaviour of these project participants. A questionnaire survey based on some specific indices of organizational culture conducted on these two groups of participants revealed that in terms of specific traits, significant differences exist in task organization, sources of power and influence, control and coordination, formality, people issues and nature of tasks. The implications are that conflicts are likely to occur within the project coalition at the interface level where human interaction elements occur and this could detract from achieving project objectives. Awareness of these differences, however, improves the chances of achieving the right balance when constructing the team and this could lead to the development of synergy and good 'project chemistry' with positive consequences for overall project performance.

Keywords: Architects; construction industry; contractors; organizational culture; project coalition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01446190500126973 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:conmgt:v:23:y:2005:i:6:p:595-607

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RCME20

DOI: 10.1080/01446190500126973

Access Statistics for this article

Construction Management and Economics is currently edited by Will Hughes

More articles in Construction Management and Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().