Bharti Outsourcing

AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE IMPACT OF CULTURE ON CONSTRUCTION PROJECT PERFORMANCE

by Nii Amponsah Ankrah

A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Wolverhampton for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

June 2007

This work or any part thereof has not previously been submitted in any form to the University or to any other body whether for the purpose of assessment, publication or for any other purpose. Save for any express acknowledgements, references and/or bibliographies cited in the work, I confirm that the intellectual content of the work is the result of my own efforts and no other person. The right of Nii Amponsah Ankrah to be identified as author of this work is asserted in accordance with ss. 77 and 78 of Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. At this date copyright is owned by the author. Signature…………………………………… 31 August 2007 Date………………………………………….

Abstract

For many years, government backed reports have continued to deplore the poor performance of the construction industry with many projects failing to exceed or live up to the expectations of clients. There is a common belief that the culture of the construction industry is one of the factors that has an impact on its performance. The culture of the construction industry at the project level is often associated with such attributes as fragmentation, antagonism, mistrust, poor communication, short-term mentality, blame culture, casual approaches to recruitment, machismo and sexism. These attributes are in turn associated with project outcomes like litigation, poor health and safety performance, and inferior quality. Whilst such associations are helpful to the extent that they focus attention on the failings of the industry, and point to aspects that need to be improved, they are arbitrary and often based on no more than anecdotal evidence, and as such do not provide a systematic basis for assessing the real impact of culture on performance. This...