A cultural profile of construction project organizations in the UK

There is a common belief that the culture of the construction industry 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 recruitment, machismo and sexism. 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 often arbitrary making it difficult to systematically assess the impact of culture on performance. As part of a wider study to empirically examine the impact of culture on performance, construction project organizations (CPOs) were profiled to determine their cultural orientations. Analysis of the data collected through a questionnaire survey revealed five principal cultural dimensions of workforce, performance, team, client and project orientation. Results of a cluster analysis based on these five dimensions of culture yielded five clusters of project organizations. Profiles of the five clusters of CPOs are compared and contrasted and implications for project management and performance outcomes are discussed.