Editorial

Citation

McCaffer, R. (2007), "Editorial", Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, Vol. 14 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/ecam.2007.28614faa.001

Editorial

ECAM, Vol. 14 No. 6 is a special issue publishing selected papers from The Joint Conference on Construction, Culture, Innovation and Management held in Dubai from 26 to 29 November 2006. The conference was sponsored by the British University in Dubai, CIB and CICE from Loughborough University. The sub-title of the conference was “Sustainable Development through Culture and Innovation”. The conference builds on CIB’s working commission on “Culture in Construction”.

For this special issue Dr Mohammed Dulaimi of the British University of Dubai has acted as Guest Editor responsible for the selection of the papers and overseeing the refereeing process.

There are a total of 19 authors involved in the writing of these seven papers. The distribution are one paper with a single author, two with two authors, two with three authors and two with four authors.

It is an international group of authors with two from Australia, four from Singapore, four from Hong Kong, four from Turkey, one from Dubai and four from the UK.

One paper has three nations represented, Hong Kong, Singapore and UK and are one paper has two nations Hong Kong and UK. I always like the papers authored from different countries. The tensions of the cultural differences usually generate some creativity.

The overwhelming theme of this issue is culture. Reflecting the theme of the conference.

So this issue addresses cultural issues between the Chinese and foreigners, the cultural issues of workforce empowerment, the culture of Turkish Construction, cultural issues in implementing ICT, cultural issues in international joint ventures and knowledge sharing and cultural issues in relationally integrated teams and finally cultural issues in collaborative projects.

The recurrent theme is trust, lack of it, how to build it, the value of it. It seems that the current unsolved research area in construction management is trust. It also seems that there is a growing research community pursuing this particular Holy Grail. Will there ever be a solution?

The papers in this issue are as follows.

Ling, Ang and Lim address the issues of cultural differences, in particular the interface between Chinese and foreigners. Using questionnaires to collect data the researcher’s hard-hitting findings include the absence of team spirit in Chinese staff, lack of initiative, distrust and a lack of health and safety. This paper highlights an apparent cultural gap and should be of great interest to international companies operating in China and developing their working knowledge of Chinese culture.

Oney-Yazici, Giritli, Topcu-Oraz and Acar examine the organisational culture of Turkish construction. This paper is derived from work by the CIB’s working commission W112. The data from construction and architectural firms was collected by questionnaire. The main finding is that they firms that dominate the Turkish construction industry are a mixture of a clan culture and a hierarchical culture. The paper contributes to the understanding of organisational culture in Turkey.

Gajendran and Brewer examine the influence of the cultural environment on the use and integration of information and communication technology. The researchers are attempting to develop a framework for analysing organisational culture in respect of implementing ICT in the construction industry. The researchers conclude that if the influence of the organisation’s culture is highlighted on the success of ICT implementation this would lead to a greater shared understanding. The researchers conclude that the deployment of ICT without consideration of the cultural issues will only generate disappointing results. They present a framework for considering the cultural issues.

Dulaimi presents some case studies on knowledge sharing across cultural boundaries in respect of international joint ventures. The paper is intended for firms involved in international joint ventures that require the sharing of knowledge with a foreign partner. The conclusion is that there is a weakness at all levels caused by a lack of clear commitment to create an environment for effective knowledge sharing. The major barrier seems to be an incompatibility between the cultures of the different countries. This work needs to be taken further to formulate how we overcome these cultural gaps and generate the commitment needed to share knowledge for the benefit of the project.

Liu, Chiu and Fellows explore how to enhance commitment through workforce empowerment. The researchers believe that empowerment of the workforce will give greater commitment than “command and control”. The focus of their investigations was quantity surveyors. They claim their results show that as the perception of work empowerment increases so does organisational commitment. Professional qualifications positively correlate with organisational commitment. Chinese chartered quantity surveyors show more commitment than other nationalities and male quantity surveyors show less commitment. In general, the conclusion is more empowerment more commitment. Interesting but maybe I am a victim of my generation I think my default thinking is based on command and control. Maybe I have spent too much time in University senior management.

Kumaraswamy, Ling, Anvuur and Rahman want to develop a comprehensive approach to pre-qualifying teams for Public Private Partnerships. The researchers claim they are building theory by bringing together relational contracting, team building and PPP performance research streams. To do this, the researchers present a conceptualised framework to show linkages from relational contracting, sustainable relationship and sustainable infrastructure. As the researchers say, selecting good teams is essential for successful projects. They hope their research is moving towards making that task more certain.

Akintoye and Main describe the UK contractors’ perception of collaborative relationships in construction. Motivated by the increased use of collaborative arrangements Akintoye and Main conducted a UK wide survey. They report that contractors are positive about collaboration and the reasons behind this are risk sharing, access to innovation and technology, response to market efficiency in the use of resources and client requirements. What makes collaboration succeed is commitment, equity of relationships and clarity of objectives. The biggest cause of failure is lack of trust. Trust seems to be the emerging main theme of research in culture and relationships.

Ronald McCaffer