Organizational Culture: the Case of Turkish Construction Industry Essay

The credit lineal issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/0969-9988.htm makeupal burnish the case of Turkish manifestation constancy Ela Oney-Yazc, Heyecan Giritli, Gulfer Topcu-Oraz and Emrah Acar Department of Architecture, Division of Project and Construction Man come onment, Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, bomb gipPurpose The main stimulus of this carry is to examine the heathen masterle of construction organizations within the context of Turkish construction industry. chassis/methodology/ap professional personach This take aim is a part of a cross- pagan research, initiated by CIB W112 (Working Commission W112 of the Inter bailiwick Council for query and Innovation in structure and Construction), concurrently ongoing in 15 contrastive countries. Data were hoard from 107 spying and 27 architectural rms, by means of a questionnaire found on OCAI (Organizational Culture appraisal Instrument), a well-known a nd widely employ measurement tool unquestionable by Cameron and Quinn (1999).Findings The ndings show that the Turkish construction industry has been dominated by rms with a mixture of clan and hierarchy subtletys. In addition, the analysis account here indicates cultural differences at organisational level in terms of rm type, size, and age. Originality/value This paper contri just nowes to the understanding of organisational burnish in the construction industry by providing empirical demonst prescribe 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 goal. Keywords Organizational finishing, Construction industry, Turkey penning type Research paperTurkish construction industry 519 gate Understanding of organizational gloss is fundamental to examine what goes on in or ganizations, how to run them and how to improve them (Schein, 1992). Organizational culture is dened as the dual-lane assumptions, beliefs and figure behaviors (norms) present in anorganization. Most organizational scholars and observers recognize that organizational culture has a originful effect on the carrying into action and long-term strength of organizations.Cameron and Quinn (1999) propose that what differentiates successful rms from others is their organizational culture. With the worldwide globalization trends, special assistance has been given to the study of organizations and their cultures. Empirical studies of organizational culture confuse been carried turn out across various countries and industries (Hofstede, 1997 Trompenaars and Hampton-Turner, 1998 Cameron and Quinn, 1999 see among others). In comparison thither seems to be a limited count of published studies related The funding for this study was abided by the Istanbul Technical University, Turkey and i s gratefully acknowledged.After reviewing research on organizational culture, Ankrah and Langford (2005) hasten concluded that there is a need to find more aware of the importance of this phenomenon and its impact on organizational performance in the construction industry. The main reasons for the growing importance of the organizational culture can be explained by the transnationalization of the construction markets (Low and Shi, 2001), and the fragmented genius of the industry (Hillebrant, 2000). It is a well-known fact that international construction rms get faced many problems due to conicts, confrontations, misunderstandings, and the differences in ways of doing line of work with other cultures (Gould and Joyce, 2000). On the other hand, the adversarial relations in the midst of different insure participants are assumed to be inuenced by the cultural orientations of the stakeholders (Phua and Rowlinson, 2003).Thus, the study of cultural issues should be addressed when c onsidering the globalization of construction markets. Additionally, it is a third estate belief that organizations that have developed 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 data from a developing country, such as Turkey, where there is no study in this eld.Findings of the study may also have implications for other cultures with a similar make-up. Background 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 group. More comprehensively, Schein (1992) dened organizational culture as . . . a praxis of shared basic assumptions that the group learned as it solved its problems of outdoor(a) adaptation and internal integration that has worked well enough to be considered binding and therefore to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, opine and feel in relation to those problems. Similarly, Deshpande and Webster (1989, p. 4) proposed that organizational culture is . . . the pattern of shared determine and beliefs that help individuals understand organizational functioning and thus provide them with norms for behaviors in the organization.There is an extensive body of knowledge in the literary productions that deals with organizational culture. Many researchers have proposed a variety of dimensions and attributes of organizational culture. Among them, Hofstede has been precise inuential in studies of organizational culture. Drawing on a great have of 116,000 employees of IBM in 72 countries, Hofstede identied four dimensions of culture. These four dimensions utilise to differentiate between cultures are power distance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity/wom anhood and individualism/collectivism. Beyond these, Hofstede (1997) also identied the go/results oriented, employee/job oriented, insular/professional, open/closed system, loose/tight control and normative/ mulish dimensions of culture. These dimensions have been commonly adapted and employ 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 period in 28 different countries. They proposed ve cultural dimensions (1) universalism/particularism (2) collectivism/individualism (3) neutral/affective kins (4) fan out/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 assessing cultures. In this regard, typologies are commonly used in the st udies of organizational culture. Notable contributors to these typologies embroil Handy (1993, 1995) who identied the club, role, task and person typologies, and Quinn (1988) who identied the market, hierarchy, adhocracy and clan typologies of culture.Since the culture is regarded as a crucial factor in the long-term lastingness of organizations, it becomes important to be able to measure organizational culture. Accordingly, a consort of tools designed to measure organizational culture have been developed and utilise in industrial, educational, and health care settings over the last dickens decades. totally 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 Values Framework and the Organizational Culture Inventory (OCI), try to examine the values and beliefs that inform those views (Scott et al., 2003). The mass of the existing studies in the Construction Manage ment eld approximatelyly adjudicate to appropriate the theoretical models and measurement tools of the worry literature.For instance, Maloney and Federle (1991, 1993) introduced the competing values framework for analyzing the cultural elements in American engineering and construction organizations. Focusing 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 Culture sound judgement 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 measurement tool after analyzing all cultural dimensions and typologies developed in the literature and highli ghted the cultural variability between organizations in the learn 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 countries. The study reported in this paper forms a part of a cross-cultural research, initiated by CIB W112 on Culture in Construction, concurrently ongoing in 15 different countries. The aim of the research upchuck 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 the ir 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 scope 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 active 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 originally 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 study dimensions. The rst dimension emphasizes the organizational focalize (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 form 1), distributively 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 describe 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 giving a response rate of 38.18 per cent. The rms were selected by judgmental sampling procedure. The judgment criteria used for selection were . origin of nationality, with emphasis on local rms . size based on number of employees, with emphasis placed on medium and la rge rms and . industry pip based on market share, with the focus on the 12 largest rms.sampling consisted of a total of 826 respondents (74.9 per cent 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 evade 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 promise Architectural Firm age (years) ,15 16-25 .25 Size of rms (number of full-time employees) Small Medium Large Characteristics of the respondents (N 826) Number of respondents Contracting Architectural 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 51-150 as medium (28 per cent), and those with more than 150 as large (25 per cent). The contracting rms in the survey 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 sise different questions which are relevant to the key dimensions of organizational culture (1) paramount characteristics (2) organizational leadership (3) management of employees (4) organizational glue (5) strategic emphases and (6) criteria for success. distributively 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 (completely true, mostly true, partly true, meagrely true, never true) a score of 1-5 was delegate, 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 equal 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 fairness 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 indication of the cultural orientation of sampled rms based on the four cultura l types. The average scores for all the participating rms are shown in Table II. As is seen from the table, the dominant 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 described as being high on the collectivism and power distance value dimensions. This suggests that organizational cultures in Turkish rms are characterized by both unequal (or hierarchical) and harmonious, family-like (clan) relationships.