Editorial

Citation

Thomson, D. (2015), "Editorial", Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, Vol. 22 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/ECAM-03-2015-0036

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, Volume 22, Issue 3

In this issue we tackle two thematic areas, presenting insights into organisational issues and new perspectives on risk. In the former, we first examine the role of trust in employee commitment to Hong Kong quantity surveying organisations. We then focus on Australian SMEs to consider how they implement corporate social responsibility (CSR) before, in a separate contribution, exploring how these organisations help their workers find an appropriate work-life balance. In the latter theme we consider risk in two papers examining practice in Singapore. The first explores sources of delay risk in green buildings in Singapore, while the second studies the Enterprise Risk Management practices of Chinese firms operating in that region.

Commencing the first theme of this issue, the presence of trust and organisational commitment among quantity surveyors in Hong Kong is explored by Chiu and Ng. They find that surveyors’ propensity to trust those they work with and with whom they have the “best” working relationship is positive correlated with normative commitment to the employing organisation. However, they otherwise find little evidence of a connection between employees’ propensity to trust and their organisational commitment. This interesting contribution is at odds with past studies, causing Chiu and Ng to infer that propensity to trust peers is driven by personal relationships rather than any commitment to the employing organisation.

Moving our attention to Australian SMEs, Yung and Bevan explore the proposition that these organisations do not fully understand CSR, anticipating that its introduction would raise their costs to an uncompetitive level. They discover that none of the 28 responding SMEs have a formal CSR policy and that 12 of them have no plan to develop one. At first sight, this may appear a remarkable finding, but Bevan and Yung go on to suggest that CSR is present in some forms in these forms, but it is not recognised by them as such.

Continuing the exploration of Australian SMEs, Lingard, Turner and Charlesworth consider the influence of construction firm size on workers’ work-life balance. They find a complex interaction, with the smallest firms intruding the least into workers’ personal life and firms of between 16 and 99 employees imposing the most. They observe a reduction in intrusion in large firms of up to 499 employees before above-average intrusion re-emerges in very large firms. Their follow-up investigation determines that informal, personal relationships help employers understand employees’ non-work needs and, thus, accommodate them. Having established this complex interaction, Lingard, Turner and Charlesworth suggest that it be clarified by longitudinal study of the change in intrusion across periods of firm growth.

In commencing the second theme of this issue, Zhao, Hwang and Tan consider delay risk in Singapore with reference to “green” buildings: both new build and retrofits. Adopting a traditional set of delay factors, they find that firms constructing such buildings consider consultant-derived factors (such as involvement and cooperation) and external factors (such as bad weather) to be the largest causes of delay. These causes are also found to exert the greatest influence on retrofitting projects with consultant-related factors and external factors exerting the greatest mean influence. They conclude their contribution with the recommendation that benchmarking data be generated for green building schedule performance and that the issue be examined beyond Singapore.

Turning our attention to Chinese construction firms operating in Singapore, Zhao and Hwang return, this time with Low, to explore how such firms have implemented Enterprise Risk Management (ERM). They contribute the discovery that large firms have been stimulated to develop ERM by external demand for compliance and that neither large nor small firms have considered ERM an appropriate response to non-mandatory compliance requirements. By studying the enablers of ERM, Zhao, Hwang and Low found their influence to be higher in large firms than in small ones. Lack of perceived benefit, limited resource availability and perceived administrative burden were all influential barriers to ERM, with the overall lack of a clear business case supporting the investment a significantly larger barrier for small firms than for large ones. They conclude with a call for further work to explore how the enablers and barriers they have established as influential interact with each other.

Derek Thomson