Root, D S (2001) The influence of professional and occupational cultures on project relationships mediated through standard forms and conditions of contract. PhD thesis, University of Bath, UK.
Abstract
During the 1990's, the UK construction industry came under pressure to change its traditional ways of working. The Egan and Latham reports sought to identify the issues facing the industry and concentrated on promoting new ways of working. Whilst the reports have identified ‘culture’ as a significant factor in explaining the industry's ‘problems’, the focus has been towards new methods of procurement and technical practices rather than understanding the social processes, of which current practices and ways of working are an expression, that occur within construction. This thesis attempts to carry out a more fundamental understanding of the social processes that occur within the construction industry. The concept of culture is explored in depth both at the general level of shared understandings within the industry (in the case of the construction contract) and at the specific level of occupational and corporate groups within the industry. Using Weber's concept of the ‘ideal type’, the thesis proposes that both the corporate/project roles of client, contractor and consultant, and the professional disciplines of architect, engineer and quantity surveyor, represent ‘ideal types’. These ‘types’ interact on the project but share between them a common understanding of the construction process expressed and mediated through standard forms and conditions of contract. These propositions are investigated using 4 case studies of construction projects involving 42 semi-structured interviews and a questionnaire based on Hofstede's VSM with a sample size of 790 individuals selected from a range of occupational and corporate groups. Analysis of the case studies investigates the shared understanding of the construction process expressed through the construction contract and the ways in which the ‘ideal types’ of the occupational images uncovered within the interviews interact with each other within the construction project. From the questionnaire, statistical support for the existence of, and significant differences between, the various ideal types were identified which were correlated to the stereotypical images explored within the case studies.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | architect; client; consultant; professional; quantity surveyor; UK; sample size; case study; culture; construction project; interview |
| Index terms: | engineer, sample size, quantity surveying, case study, Latham, construction industry, social process, architect, construction contract, interview, construction process, construction project, questionnaire |
| Subjects: | production management, industry analysis, communities and social development, industry policy reports, building construction, profession, data collection methods, research design and methodology, contract type |
| Topics: | Site Management, Research Practice, Roles and Professions, Stakeholder Management, Governance, Project Management, Procurement |
| Descriptive scope: | 5 PCTEA |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here