Organizational Culture: the Case of Turkish Construction Industry Essay

The current issue and full textual matter archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/0969-9988.htmorganisational nicety the case of Turkish building effort Ela Oney-Yazc, Heye lowside Giritli, Gulfer Topcu-Oraz and Emrah Acar Department of Architecture, Division of Project and complex body part solicitude, Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey AbstractPurpose The crucial stimulus of this story is to realise the ethnic masterle of construction plaques at bottom the context of Turkish construction manucircumstanceure. Design/methodology/approach This get wind is a part of a cross-ethnical enquiry, initiated by CIB W112 (Working Commission W112 of the Inter study Council for enquiry and Innovation in Building and twisting), concurrently ongoing in 15 antithetic countries. Data were collected from 107 undertake and 27 architectural rms, by means of a questionnaire establish on OCAI (organisational finishing Assessment Instrument), a tumesce-known(a) and widely apply measurement dick positive by Cameron and Quinn (1999).Findings The ndings show that the Turkish construction industry has been dominated by rms with a mixture of federation of tribes and pecking order conclusions. In addition, the analysis reported hither indicates cultural differences at organisational level in terms of rm type, size, and age. Originality/value This paper contributes to the perceptiveness of organisational shade in the construction industry by providing empirical evidence from the Turkish construction industry. As future research direction, it highlights the need of a cross-cultural comparison among different countries, and an investigation of the effects of cultural proles of the organizational members on organizational flori finishing. Keywords organizational culture, Construction industry, Turkey Paper type seek paperTurkish construction industry 519 admittance Understanding of organizational culture is fundamen tal to examine what goes on in organizations, how to run them and how to improve them (Schein, 1992). Organizational culture is dened as the overlap assumptions, beliefs and normal behaviors (norms) pitch in anorganization. Most organizational scholars and observers recognize that organizational culture has a powerful effect on the performance and long-term effectiveness of organizations.Cameron and Quinn (1999) propose that what differentiates productive rms from others is their organizational culture. With the worldwide globalization trends, special concern has been given to the study of organizations and their cultures. Empirical studies of organizational culture contrive been carried out across various countries and industries (Hofstede, 1997 Trompenaars and Hampton-Turner, 1998 Cameron and Quinn, 1999 chink among others). In comparison on that point seems to be a limited number of published studies cerebrate The living for this study was provided by the Istanbul Techni cal University, Turkey and is gratefully acknowledged.After reviewing research on organizational culture, Ankrah and Langford (2005) scram concluded that there is a need to constrain more aw ar of the importance of this phenomenon and its impact on organizational performance in the construction industry. The main reasons for the ripening importance of the organizational culture can be explained by the internationalization of the construction markets (Low and Shi, 2001), and the illogical nature of the industry (Hillebrant, 2000). It is a well-known fact that international construction rms have faced legion(predicate) problems due to conicts, confrontations, misunderstandings, and the differences in ways of doing melodic line with other cultures (Gould and Joyce, 2000). On the other hand, the adversarial relations amongst different project participants ar assumed to be inuenced by the cultural orientations of the stakeholders (Phua and Rowlinson, 2003).Thus, the study of c ultural issues should be addressed when considering the globalization of construction markets. Additionally, it is a common belief that organizations that have real within similar environments usually have similar cultures and related mindsets with regard to ways of doing business. For this reason, the research reported in this paper, aims to contribute to an understanding of organizational culture in the construction industry using selective information from a developing country, such as Turkey, where there is no study in this eld.Findings of the study whitethorn to a fault have implications for other cultures with a similar make-up. priming coat study Despite different denitions of organizational culture, there is a consensus among organizational researchers that it refers to the shared meanings or assumptions, beliefs and understandings held by a root. More umbrellaly, Schein (1992) dened organizational culture as . . . a pattern of shared basic assumptions that the group le arned as it solved its problems of external edition and internal integration that has worked well enough to be considered valid and therefore to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think and feel in relation to those problems. Similarly, Deshpande and Webster (1989, p. 4) proposed that organizational culture is . . . the pattern of shared values and beliefs that help individuals understand organizational process and thus provide them with norms for behaviors in the organization.There is an lengthy body of knowledge in the literature that deals with organizational culture. Many researchers have proposed a variety of dimensions and attributes of organizational culture. Among them, Hofstede has been very inuential in studies of organizational culture. skeleton on a large sample of 116,000 employees of IBM in 72 countries, Hofstede identied quaternion dimensions of culture. These four dimensions used to differentiate between cultures are power distance, uncert ainness avoidance, masculinity/femininity and individualism/ fabianism. Beyond these, Hofstede (1997) overly identied the process/results oriented, employee/job oriented, parochial/ superior, outspoken/closed system, loose/tight get wind and normative/pragmatic dimensions of culture. These dimensions have been unremarkably adapted and utilize in studies of organizational culture(Sdergaard, 1996).Other comprehensive studies into organizational culture have been carried out, notably by Trompenaars and Hampton-Turner (1993), who conducted an extensive research into the attitudes of 15,000 managers over a ten-year stop consonant in 28 different countries. They proposed ve cultural dimensions (1) universalism/particularism (2) sovietism/individualism (3) neutral/affective relationships (4) diffuse/specic relationships and (5) achievement/ascription. When dealing with a multitude of dimensions, typologies are usually considered as an alternative to provide a simplied means of asses sing cultures. In this regard, typologies are commonly used in the studies of organizational culture. Notable contributors to these typologies accommodate ready to hand(p) (1993, 1995) who identied the club, role, task and person typologies, and Quinn (1988) who identied the market, pecking order, adhocracy and kin group typologies of culture.Since the culture is regarded as a important factor in the long-term effectiveness of organizations, it becomes important to be able to measure organizational culture. jibely, a range of tools designed to measure organizational culture have been developed and utilise in industrial, educational, and wellness care settings over the last two decades. all told these tools examine employee perceptions and opinions about their working environment (the so-called climate of an organization) but only a few, such as the Competing determine Framework and the Organizational socialization Inventory (OCI), try to examine the values and beliefs that declare those views (Scott et al., 2003). The majority of the existing studies in the Construction Management eld for the most part attempt to appropriate the speculative models and measurement tools of the management literature.For instance, Maloney and Federle (1991, 1993) introduced the competing values textile for analyzing the cultural elements in American engineering and construction organizations. focalization on the relationship between the organizational culture and effectiveness, Zhang and Liu (2006) examined the organizational culture proles of construction enterprises in China by means of OCI and Organizational finale Assessment Instrument (OCAI), the measurement tool of the Competing Values Framework developed by Cameron and Quinn (1999). Rowlinson (2001), using Handys organizational culture and Hofstedes national culture frameworks, investigated the cultural aspects oforganizational change in the construction industry.Ankrah and Langford (2005) proposed a new me asurement tool after analyzing all cultural dimensions and typologies developed in the literature and highlighted the cultural variability between organizations in the project coalition. Literature review shows that despite the growing importance of organizational culture in construction research, there are few cross-cultural, empirical studies. This may be due to the difculties of conducting research in several(prenominal) countries. The study reported in this paper forms a part of a cross-cultural research, initiated by CIB W112 on finishing in Construction, concurrently ongoing in 15 different countries. The aim of the research project is to develop an international Inventory of Culture in Construction. It continues to stimulate new participants from Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and America.Research methodology Measurement of culture represents difculties, particularly in respect of the identication of cultural groups and boundaries. This is further complicated by the nature of the construction industry in which projects are temporary and participants are subject to the values and beliefs of their employing organization, professional groups and project organizations. There is an ongoing debate concerning the study of culture among construction management scholars. However, it is beyond the field of this paper to discuss the methodological aspects of studying culture in the construction industry. In order to be compatible with the studies conducted in other countries alive(p) in the CIB W112 research, Cameron and Quinns (1999) Competing Values Framework (CVF) as well as their measurement tool named Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI) are select as the conceptual paradigm for analysis in this study.The CVF was to begin with proposed by Quinn and Rohrbaugh (1983) to understand organizational effectiveness, and was later applied to explore differentissues relative to organizations (Al-Khalifa and Aspinwall, 2001). The CVF is establish on two major dimensions. The rst dimension emphasizes the organizational way (internal versus external), whereas the second one distinguishes between the stability and control and the exibility and discretion. These two dimensions form four quadrants (see Figure 1), apiece(prenominal) representing a major type of organizational culture (1) clan (2) adhocracy (3) market and (4) hierarchy.Figure 1. The competing values frameworkTheoretically, these four cultural typologies exist simultaneously in all organizations therefore, archetypes may be used to attain the pattern of the organizational culture (Paperone, 2003). Sampling and data collection Unit of analysis for this study were the contracting and architectural rms operating in the Turkish Construction Industry. A number of 351 rms were contacted, and 134 of them participated in the study freehand a response rate of 38.18 per penny. The rms were selected by faultfinding(prenominal) sampling procedure. The judgment criteria used for selection were . pipeline of nationality, with emphasis on local rms . size found on number of employees, with emphasis placed on medium and large rms and . industry position based on market share, with the revolve about on the 12 largest rms.Sample consisted of a total of 826 respondents (74.9 per centime male, 25.1 per cent female) including both managerial and non-managerial professionals. The questionnaire comprised two parts. Part I included questions regarding the demographic characteristics of the rms and respondents, which are presented in control panel I. Although the analysis conducted in this study was at rm level, the characteristics of the respondents are also provided in Table I to reect a better prole Frequency Characteristics of the rms (N 134) Number of rms Contracting Architectural tauten age (years) ,15 16-25 .25 Size of rms (number of full-time employees) Small second-rate Large Characteristics of the respondents (N 826) Number of respondents Contr acting Architectural grammatical gender Female Male Age of respondents (years) 30 and under 31-40 41-50 51 and above Percentageof the sample. As is seen in Table I, contracting rms are representing the 79.9 per cent of the sampled organizations and 87.5 per cent of the respondents.For the purpose of this study, organizations with less than 50 employees were classied as small (46 per cent), those with 51- one hundred fifty as medium (28 per cent), and those with more than 150 as large (25 per cent). The contracting rms in the check into were generally medium and large-sized whereas the architectural rms were small in size. Searching for the cultural orientations of the rms, Part II was adopted from the Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI) developed by Cameron and Quinn (1999). OCAI consists of six different questions which are pertinent to the key dimensions of organizational culture (1) preponderant characteristics (2) organizational leadership (3) management of em ployees (4) organizational glue (5) strategic emphases and (6) criteria for success.Each question has four alternative statements representing different cultural orientations making a total of 24 questions. All respondents were asked to rate their organizations culture on a ve-point Likert scale. In this scoring system, for each of the ve response categories ( altogether true, mostly true, partly true, slightly true, never true) a tick of 1-5 was assigned, with the highest score of 5 being assigned to completely true. The overall cultural prole of an organization was then derived by calculating theaverage score of all respondents from the same rm. Reliability coefcients (Cronbach alpha) were calculated for each of the different culture types being assessed by the instrument.Coefcients were 0.89 for the clan and adhocracy cultures, and 0.86 for the market and hierarchy cultures, which indicate the rightfulness of all culture types. Results and discussion A cultural prole score for each organization was obtained by averaging the respondents rating for each cultural type across the six dimensions. This provided an index of the cultural orientation of sampled rms based on the four cultural types. The average scores for all the participating rms are shown in Table II. As is seen from the table, the sovereign culture of the sample is clan culture. Respondents identied hierarchy type as the next most dominant in their organizations.These predominant cultures were followed by adhocracy and market, respectively. The sampled rms tend to have values consistent with employee focus or clan culture and internal process or hierarchy culture. The values consistent with external orientation and results focus are emphasized to a lesser extent. This nding contributes to our understanding of the alignment between national and organizational cultures. According to Hofstedes (1980, 2001) model of national culture, Turkey has been draw as being high on the collectivism and pow er distance value dimensions. This suggests that organizational cultures in Turkish rms are characterized by both uneven (or hierarchical) and harmonious, family-like (clan) relationships.