The role of organizational culture in construction partnering to produce innovation

• Main Authors: Abdul Nifa, Faizatul Akmar, Ahmed, Vian
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Language: English
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: HD28 Management. Industrial Management; TH Building construction
• Online Access: http://repo.uum.edu.my/11621/1/F3.pdf; http://repo.uum.edu.my/11621/
• Institution: Universiti Utara Malaysia

Construction firms are faced with problems with learning curve in projects, dissimilarities in organizational culture and business practices with other firms in temporary organizations and distrust in the traditional bidding process.The partnering strategy is being advocated by many literatures as the solution to the many problems in the construction industry.Various studies have collectively added to the current knowledge of known partnering factor, frameworks, possible outcomes and barriers to partnering.Several studies indicate the need for similar organizational culture for partnering organizations to ensure partnering success.This need can be heightened when partnering occurs between firms of varying sizes.However, there seem to be little effort on formulating an organizational cultural based framework for partnering.Apart from that, measure of success is rarely included within these frameworks.The measure is critical as to give the partnering firms an indication whether the partnering venture is succeeding or not, after all guidelines in the framework had been applied.This paper is based on the literature review for a research which aims to develop a new framework that meets the needs of organizational culture in partnering firms which would improve innovation, as a measure of partnering success.This paper proposes that when the elements of organizational culture are present and similar in partnering firms, the partnering effort have a greater chance of succeeding and producing improvements such as innovation in the construction industry. Accordingly, this paper gives a synthesis of literature review on the overview of partnering, the role of organizational culture and how it can help improve innovation in the construction industry.A review of available frameworks for partnering is also included, indicating the lack of focus on the element of organizational culture.By providing an in-depth understanding of the research area, this paper will be adding a significant knowledge to current partnering practices within the construction industry.