A CRITICAL EVALUATION OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE AND ITS IMPACT ON CONSTRUCTION PROJECT COMPLETION RATE IN NIGERIA

A CRITICAL EVALUATION OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE AND ITS IMPACT ON CONSTRUCTION PROJECT COMPLETION RATE IN NIGERIA

BACKGROUND OF STUDY

The construction sector, according to Ashworth et al. (1997), is one of the most important sectors of the economy, employing a varied variety of skilled and unskilled people. These professionals offer a wide range of products and services, including building design, alteration, and refurbishing, as well as building and civil engineering structural repairs. These interactions, on the other hand, are designed to help the company achieve its goals and objectives. As a result, in order to achieve as many objectives as feasible, businesses operate within the context and emphasis of a certain organizational culture.

Organizational culture is defined as a set of shared assumptions, values, and ideas that teach employees what is acceptable and undesirable conduct. This set of ideas has a considerable influence on employee behavior as well as organizational efficiency. In the early 1980s, Peters and Waterman's best-selling book In "Search of Excellence" popularized the concept. Its roots may be traced back to the 1940s, when the early human relations view of organizations arose according to Hatch (1993).

According to Durkheim in Hatch (1993), organizational culture is the shared set of beliefs, ambitions, values, conventions, and work routines that influence how members of an organization connect to one another and collaborate to accomplish organizational goals. Organizational culture, in essence, defines the various ways in which organizational members carry out their responsibilities and interact with others both inside and outside the company.

Culture, on the other hand, is seen as an essential predictor of management practice; hence, culture is a critical success element in the execution of building projects (Weber, 2007).

According to Armstrong, as described in Weber (2007), culture allows individuals to recognize purpose alignment and inspires them to higher levels of achievement, because shared values make people feel good about the organization and commit their capacity and potential really to the firm. A strong community naturally serves as a motivation. Empowerment, decisiveness, a learning mentality, and cooperation are some of the qualities of a healthy company culture. At this point, culture is the actual driver for greater achievement and a genuine source of competitive advantage that competitors struggle to imitate.

The value of corporate culture in construction organizations cannot be emphasized since it serves as an inherent code of operation geared at project completion (Weiner, et al 2005). Construction companies are led by a broad collection of individuals, resulting in a vast spectrum of human behavior (Marosszeky 2002). Individuals with complicated habits and/or personalities, he believes, have a significant influence on project performance. Cultural differences, in particular, may generate disputes in human interaction, limiting construction organizations' ability to fulfill specific tasks (Tijhuis, 2011). As a result of these restrictions, a cooperative corporate culture that orients and binds people toward job completion, organizational success, and priorities is required. As a result, it may be said that, in the majority of organizations, corporate culture plays a crucial part in the success or failure of construction enterprises. According to Cameron & Quinn (1999), organizational culture should be addressed as a vital component in regulating and reinforcing cooperation, increasing quality results, and promoting creativity in order to accomplish a project. On the other hand, the accomplishment of construction organizations on project completion is significantly dependent on the dimension of organizational culture accepted by the organizations and the direction of the culture chosen. As a result, the purpose of this study is to look at the impact of organizational culture on building project completion. As a result, this is attainable through well-defined objectives.

1.2 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM

The construction sector has continued to bemoan the industry's poor performance, with several projects unable to exceed or even meet customer expectations (Egan, 1998). As a consequence, prospective clients will continue to demand increased efficiency upon project completion. According to Hofstede (2011), the difficulty of most construction firms to finish projects and meet customer expectations is based on a few main problems, which include running over budget, missing deadlines, dangerous construction, and client unhappiness. According to his opinion, all of these intimidating features are encapsulated in a single key feature of an organization called as "Organizational Culture."

Organizational culture is a logical instrument established by senior management to purposefully influence employee behavior. Corporate culture is viewed as the normative glue that binds the group with their surroundings, engagement, adaptation, shared goals/values, and absorption of workforce-related duties in today's construction sector. However, in this context, culture acts as a mechanism of attaining corporate goals via completing projects. According to Trompenaars (2004), organizational culture has a substantial impact on performance because it influences how participants approach work, whereas the efficacy of each construction organization is associated with the type of culture embraced by the company. As a result, the scope of this study has been enlarged to investigate the influence of organizational culture on construction project completion rates in Nigeria.

 1.3 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

The principal purpose of this research is to critically evaluate organizational culture and its impact on construction project completion rate in Nigeria. To  achieve the aim the following objectives were formulated:

1. To examine which organizational culture type are currently present dominant in the construction industry.

2. To examine if there are any culture dimension that are statistically significant to project completion.

3. To create a conceptual model of the relationship between organizational culture and project completion rate.

4. Evaluate project organizations to establish their specific cultural orientations and level of performance.

1.4     RESEARCH QUESTION

1. What type of organizational culture is actively dominant in the construction industry?
2. Is there any culture dimension that is statistically significant to project completion?
3. What is the specific cultural orientation of your organization?
4. Has the cultural orientations of your organization influence their level of performance?

1.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

Because of the relationship between culture and project completion, many people and construction organizations will benefit from this work. More specifically, culture serves as the social glue and generates a we-feeling, thus counteracting the inevitable processes of differentiation that occur in organizational life. Organizational culture has a common system of meanings that serves as the foundation for collaboration and achievement. It should be noted that if these tasks are not performed satisfactorily, culture will dramatically affect an organization's performance.

Specifically, those that will benefit from this work includes: the government, business managers, Directors/Employers, Employees, Scholars/Researchers Statistical Bodies and Agencies, and most importantly construction companies.

1.6  SCOPE OF THE STUDY

This study on the analysis  of the impact of organizational culture on construction project completion rate covers only

1.7  LIMITATION OF THE STUDY

The limitations of this study includes:

a. Finance: Due to the economic difficulty that the people, including the researcher, are experiencing, the prospect of a greater sample size, which would have enabled the study to reach a larger region, has become impossible; thus, this work will be limited to only manufacturing companies/industries in the South Eastern part of Nigeria.

b. Time: It was not surprising that the researcher was limited by timeframe as it posed a direct challenge to the effective coverage intended in the course of this report. It is the intention of the researcher to interview all the employees of the selected manufacturing companies but because of numerous activities of the researcher which borders on both academics, work schedules and other social activities it became relatively impossible to explain the intention.

c. Attitude of respondents: The majority of workers fail to collect the questionnaires, and some who do collect pay urgent attention required in filling and returning it, and others did not return theirs at all. Others were less accommodating and may have provided untrustworthy information because they were afraid of being exposed, despite the researcher's promise that all information would be treated with the utmost secrecy and only for education purpose.

This research was hampered by a lack of cooperation from all personnel and, more specifically, a lack of support from the administration of the organizations, as well as administrative bottlenecks. The researcher overcame the above constraints by devoting more money and time to the research work, as well as attempting to persuade respondents by providing them with gifts/presents in order to ensure prompt cooperation and the provision of reliable and relevant information as might be required to achieve the goal of this work, which is to determine the extent to which an organization's culture can influence or improve..

1.8 DEFINITION OF TERMS

1. Adaptability: This refers to the ability of the company to scan the external environment and respond to the ever-changing needs of its customers and other stakeholders. (Attributes: Creating change, customer focus and organizational learning).

2. Consistency: This refers to the organization’s core values and the internal systems that support problem solving, efficiency, and effectiveness at every level and across organizational boundaries. (Attributes: Core values, agreement, and coordination and integration).

3. Culture: This can be defined as the commonly held beliefs, attitudes and values that exist in an organization. Or more simply, it is the way we do things around here - Furnham and Gunter (1998:25). Culture can also be referred to as the unique configuration of norms, values, beliefs and ways of behaving that characterize the manner in which groups and individuals combine to get done – Eldridge and Crombie (1974:13).

4. Involvement/Commitment: This is the degree to which individuals at all levels of the organization are engaged in pursuit of the mission and work in a collaborative manner to fulfill organizational objectives. (Attribute: Capability development, team orientation, and empowerment).

5. Leadership: This consists of interpersonal influence, exercised in a situation and directed, by means of the communication process, towards the attainment of a specified goal or goals.

6. Organization: This can be defined as a conscious, coordinated social unit, composed of two or more people, that functions on a relatively continuous basis to achieve a common goal –Robbins (2008:434). 

7. Organizational Culture: This refers to a system of shared meaning held by members that distinguishes the organization from other organizations. (Robbins, 2008:435).

8. Organizational Development (OD): This refers to a planned systematic process in which applied behavioural science principles and practices are introduced into an ongoing organization towards the goals of effecting organizational improvement, greater organizational competence and greater organizational effectiveness.

9. Organizational Effectiveness: This refers to the extent to which an organization as a social system, given certain resources and means, fulfils its objectives without incapacitating its means and resources and without placing undue strain upon its members.

10. Performance: This is the measurement of how well organizations do their jobs. Stoner et al (2001).

11. Team Orientation: This refers to the degree to which work activities are organized around teams rather than individuals.

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