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The construction industry has a poor safety record. There is a common perception that this is because it is an inherently dangerous industry. It is suggested that the industry would be better characterized as one with a poor safety culture and that attempts to improve the safety record will not be fully effective until the safety culture is improved. The relationship between unsafe behaviour and safety culture is discussed together with the difficulties of assessing and managing safety culture. Some of the influences on safety culture in construction are described. The initiative to develop an improvement in the safety culture of construction needs to come from within the industry through a genuine commitment to safety.

The review of literature found that there is a significant correlation between a construction company’s organisational culture and the company quality performance. The purpose of this paper is to assess the organisational culture profiles of Indonesian construction companies, and to examine the influence of the companies’ organisational culture profiles on their quality management systems (based on QMS-ISO 9001:2008) implementation. Prior to conducting the examination, there are examinations of the relationships among the quality management system (QMS) variables.

The methodology employed a survey questionnaire of construction industry practitioners who have experience in building and civil engineering works. The Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument was selected due to its suitability in assessing organisation’s underlying culture.

Within the examination among the QMS variables, it was found that problematic issues associated with the implementation of QMS-ISO 9001:2008 in Indonesian construction companies can affect the implementation of the QMS and contribute to the lower level of companies’ business performance. It was also found that there is no significant relationship between the QMS implementation and the companies’ business performance. By using the Competing Values Framework diagram, it was found that most of the construction companies’ organisational culture is characterised by a Clan type which is reflected in how employees are managed, how the organisation is held together, and how the organisation’s success is defined; the leadership style is Hierarchy-focused, while the organisation’s strategy is Market type. It was also found that different culture profiles have different influences on the QMS implementation.

A strong mixed Hierarchy and Market culture needs to be developed within the construction companies in Indonesia, as the driver to support proper and successful implementation of their QMS in order to enhance business performance in a quality performance-oriented Indonesian construction industry.

The construction industry has struggled with efficiency issues for decades. Organizational culture is identified as one of the biggest hindrances for the enhancement of efficiency in a highly labor-intensive sector such as construction. Based on recent academic studies, Finnish construction industry professionals would embrace clan and adhocracy culture features to achieve a better level of construction efficiency. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the promoters and the barriers for making the desired culture change happen in the case company.

The paper presents a semi-structured theme interview case study, including 12 in-depth interviews. The interviews were recorded, and later, transcribed into text, which forms the empirical data of this paper.

The Finnish construction industry must adopt a holistic approach to enhance its prevailing level of efficiency through the culture change. Basic learning and knowledge management processes seem to be missing from the industry and organizational levels. Better knowledge management in the case company would be the first step to start fixing this problem.

Because of the nature of a case study, the research results can be generalized only with caution in the Finnish construction industry. Generalizing the findings in another country would require further studies in a different cultural environment, e.g. in another European country.

The paper includes implications for the development of the organizational culture on the Finnish construction industry level and on an organizational level.

The found influencers are discussed through Engeström’s activity model for the first time in the construction culture context.

As a transitional country and the newest EU Member State, Croatia is facing a more turbulent business environment, which imposes a need for change of companies seeking to achieve a competitive advantage. Being a labour-intensive business, adaptation of construction companies’ strategy strongly depends on the underlying values of their employees. The purpose of this paper is to determine cultural profiles within the construction industry in Croatia.

The research has been conducted using inferential analysis based on primary and secondary data sources. After an extensive literature review, the empirical research was conducted based on a national sample. In all, 108 managers working in construction companies were surveyed using the Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument. Reliability of variables was tested by calculating Cronbach α reliability coefficients. Differences among identified mean scores were examined by ANOVA analysis.

The results were analysed in respect of the size, core business, regional orientation and ownership of the respondents’ employing companies. The findings show that, on average, construction companies in Croatia currently function with domination of the hierarchy type of organizational culture, which insufficiently responds to the increasingly competitive environment. Additionally, the study identified the clan as the preferred culture type in Croatian construction companies.

The paper offers insights into the organizational culture of Croatian construction companies, which has not been studied before. The value of the paper is the novelty of findings regarding existing and preferred cultural profiles, which have the potential to improve team cohesiveness, team leading, communication among the main stakeholders and efficiency of performance in this transitional country’s construction industry.

Cultural differences cause conflicts amongst construction project participants, deterring the success of projects. Understanding such different cultural manifestations could help the removal of the misunderstandings amongst sub-cultural groups and removal of formal irrationalities deterring the progress of construction projects. The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of project cultures in the public sector construction projects.

An exploratory case study was selected as the research strategy to achieve the research aim. Three public sector building construction projects were used as case studies. Nine semi-structured interviews and observation of two progress review meetings per case were used for data collection.

As per the research findings, contractors believed that construction project culture emerged and transferred through continuous interactions and socialisations with time. Consultants believed that culture was emerged focusing on clearly defined project objectives. In addition, all members assumed that project members at high authority levels were contributing more for the emergence and transfer of cultural aspects. Levels of culture and power existed within the public sector project culture as clients with the highest power, consultants the next and contractors with the least power. Public sector project culture was not leader centred. Shared behavioural norms were not much popular in project culture. Highly differentiated behavioural norms, demonstrating clear professional sub-cultures for the client, contractor and consultant, were available.

The research findings are helpful to construction project managers to enhance the level of motivation, productivity, commitment, continuous interactions and socialisations of project participants and to avoid any negative outcomes in behaviours.

The purpose of this article is to determine safety culture indicators that can improve the health and safety performance of small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) contractors in Ghana.

A three-round Delphi method was used. The first round consisted of 31 experts out of which 18 of them rated their agreements with a set of 87 potential safety culture indicators using a 10-point Likert scale of importance (1 = important and 10 = very important) and the 16 experts who completed the final round were given the opportunity to suggest other indicators. The 87 indicators were categorised into 14 core health and safety elements. Indicators that attained a group median value of 5–10 for 50% or more expert ratings were accepted.

At the end of the third round, a consensus was reached on the indicators when they attracted median scores of 5–10 for at least 50% or more of the health and safety experts rated the indicators between 5 and 10. Out of a total of 87 indicators at the start of the Delphi process, the consensus was reached on 70 that were retained.

The health and safety experts were not given the opportunity to add new indicators to the structured questionnaire until the third round.

This is the first study, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, to have a consensus by health and safety experts on leading indicator metrics of positive culture of construction safety in Ghana for improved SME construction company’s health and safety performance in Ghana. If these indicators are adopted and used effectively in Ghana, they would ensure positive culture of construction safety and subsequently help to protect construction workers.

This study explores the role of organisational culture in promoting collective coping strategies in construction project teams in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Three collective coping strategies were examined, including problem-focused, relationship-focused and emotion-focused coping strategies.

O'Reilly et al.’s (1991) organisational culture profile (OCP) assessed organisational culture values. Data were collected through an online questionnaire from practitioners in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) construction organisations.

The findings show a high correlation between competitiveness culture values and problem-focused team coping strategy. Relationship-focused team coping strategy was found to have a high correlation with emphasis on rewards and performance orientation values. Conversely, an emotion-focused team coping strategy correlates highly with competitiveness, supportiveness and emphasis on rewards cultural values.

The cross-sectional design of the survey and the UAE context may present limits to the generalisability of findings.

Limited attempts have been made to study collective coping in construction project teams. The study paves the path for exploring emergent socio-psychological concepts in construction organisations, including the impact of organisational culture on team collective coping with adverse events.

Understanding the pivotal impact of culture on successful team coping provides managers with valuable insights into managing situational adversity in construction project teams.

The purpose of this paper is to address the primary research question, which is what is the relationship between the project manager’s (PM) possession of the Project Management Professional (PMP) certification and the level of the safety culture present in the construction project the PM manages.

The research was based on a survey of a purposive sample, 109 engineers and first-line supervisors worked in 23 construction projects of which ten were led by PMP-certified PMs and 13 were led by PMs lacking PMP certification. Each PM completed a demographic questionnaire for the predictor variables of PMP certification controlled for age and experience. To assess the criterion variable of safety culture total score, engineers and first-line supervisors working in the same project completed the questionnaire of safety culture values and practices.

Results of this study indicated the level of safety culture was significantly different, and improved, for engineers and first-line supervisors who work under PMs with PMP certification compared to the level of safety culture in projects managed by PMs with no PMP certification. Although alignment of safety culture perceptions among different levels in the organization helps to achieve a positive safety culture, the role of the PM in transferring, implementing and maintaining the safety culture in the construction project is fundamental, particularly in small-to-medium sized enterprises (SMEs).

This study addressed the role of the PMs managerial skills in the safety performance of Saudi Arabian SMEs. The principal finding was that PMs with managerial skills perform better regarding safety performance in SME construction projects than PMs lacking managerial skills. The primary recommendation is that leaders in construction projects must carefully evaluate engineers’ managerial skills before hiring the individuals as PMs. A PM’s promotion model developed in this study provides a suitable framework and business process component for construction leaders seeking to maintain safety performance successfully.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the correction mechanism of resilient safety culture on new generation of construction workers (NGCWs)' unsafe behavior and test the multiple mediation effects of job crafting and perceived work meaningfulness based on the context of Chinese construction industry in order to find a new way to effectively correct the NGCWs' unsafe behavior.

A theoretical model of correction mechanism was established based on literature research and theoretical deduction. An empirical study was employed based on confirmatory factor analysis and regression analysis with a sample of 404 NGCWs in China.

The results indicated that resilient safety culture can effectively correct NGCWs' unsafe behavior through job crafting and perceived work meaningfulness. Job crafting and perceived work meaningfulness can play independent and serial mediating roles between resilient safety culture and unsafe behavior.

Research results only represent a short-term law about the correction mechanism of NGCWs' unsafe behavior based on a questionnaire study from China's construction industry. It is necessary to continue to implement a longitudinal study to test it in a relatively long period in future research. The findings also need to be verified based on the young construction workers in other countries.

This study provides a theoretical basis and feasible management reference for construction enterprises in China to correct NGCWs' unsafe behavior from the perspective of resilient safety culture. Furthermore, the construction of resilient safety culture in construction enterprises can help NGCWs better carry out job crafting and perceive the meaning of work.

This paper clarifies the correction mechanism of resilient safety culture on unsafe behavior of NGCWs, and further tests the independent mediating roles and a serial mediating role of job crafting and perceived work meaningfulness between resilient safety culture and unsafe behavior, which fills the research gap about the influence mechanism of resilient safety culture on young construction workers' unsafe behavior and enriches the theoretical system of unsafe behavior correction of construction workers.

Safety in construction projects is essential and requires more attention towards minimizing the accident rate. Problems concerning awareness of safety risks, procedures and practices still exist in the industry, which indicate a shortfall in diffusion of safety-related knowledge in construction industry. Also, there is dearth of studies on knowledge management strategies to prevent reoccurrence of accidents and thereby improve safety culture in construction industry. This study attempts to unveil aspects of knowledge management that are ignored in considering safety culture and discern the differences in the perception of key stakeholders of construction industry. Therefore, the objective of this study is to identify and measure knowledge-based safety culture elements.

In this paper, the focus is on the application of a reliable, valid and sensitive knowledge-based safety culture assessment tool on key stakeholders operational in construction industry. Research method adopted is a questionnaire-based survey to seek responses from industry professionals. A total of 199 responses were obtained from 106 different companies operational in Indian construction industry. Statistical analyses including ranking analysis, t-test, correlation analysis, and ANOVA test are utilized for comparing and identifying the differences in view of stakeholder's perceptions concerning workplace safety.

This study helps to identify and rank critical knowledge-based safety culture elements from the perspective of key stakeholders of construction industry. This contributes in identifying the most critical and neglected variables among the key stakeholders regarding aspects of safety culture. Also, the study shows the importance of knowledge dimension in developing overall safety culture in construction industry.

Results of this study offer valuable insight in enabling key stakeholders of construction industry to examine and enhance their safety performance. The implications of this study contribute new knowledge in assessing conditions that will improve worker safety in the construction industry. The paper should be of interest to researchers and practitioners in the area of occupational health and safety management.