Training, Motivation And Leadership In Human Resource Development Practices: The Case Of Construction Firms Of Iran.

Sistem pembangunan sumber manusia yang mantap merupakan satu strategi yang kritis bagi syarikat pembinaan, kerana dalam tahun-tahun yang akan datang, modal insan memainkan peranan yang signifikan untuk sesebuah pertubuhan yang berjaya. A powerful human resource development system is a critical strategy for construction companies, as in the coming years, human capital plays a significant role in order to be a successful organization

A Study of the Renewal Cycle of Hotel Building Elements in Malaysia

Penang is the main tourism island which appeals an increasing number of travellers each year. Therefore, the hotels in Penang play a crucial role in the field of Penang tourism. However, recently some problems with the Penang hotels have been brought to light frequently by travellers including domestic and foreign tourists. The reason for this may be due to irregular maintenance as well as the fact that the renewal of the building elements may not have been duly carried out. In light of that, this research investigated the condition of the maintenance and renewal cycle of the building elements of the hotels in Penang. This study was conducted with a quantitative method, using a questionnaire to collect information regarding the condition of maintenance, evaluation of the condition of the building elements and the frequency of building elements renewal. The results revealed that each building element renewal cycle is differing according to the effects of maintenance and its lifespan. In terms of comparison with the renewals in Singapore hotels, there are shortcomings involved in the schedule of element renewals carried out in Penang

A special breed of transformational leadership? Integrating conflict management and ethnicity into team coordination in multicultural temporary environments

Conflict is common during group activities, and how leaders deal with team members and the conflicts that arise in a project team environment can significantly affect team coordination. This study explores how conflict is dealt with by providing empirical evidence of relationships between transformational leadership style, conflict management styles and the ethnicity of leaders in multicultural project environments in the construction industry. The research extends conflict management style into the transformational leadership behaviour of team leaders to identify their effects on team coordination. Moreover, it evaluates how the ethnicity of leaders can moderate the relationships. This contribution is exceptional for bringing three moderating ethnic groups while drawing on data from 126 teams in the construction industry, using PLS path modelling to test our hypotheses. The results demonstrate that cooperative and conflict-avoiding management styles are positively related to team coordination. The judicious and considered use of the conflict-avoiding management style, in particular, should be recognised as an appropriate solution in certain multi-cultural team contexts by transformational leaders. Teams also exhibited stronger coordination when the team leader was nominated from a specific ethnic group. Possible directions in which future research can be structured are also outlined

Earthquakes and project management utilization: a case of recent earthquakes of Iran

Iran is located in a very complex tectonic environment; it has experienced more than 25 strong earthquakes with a magnitude of 6 or more in this century. The huge earthquakes in the century have killed more than 170,000 lives, destroyed many towns and thousands of villages, and caused extensive economic damage. The research contrasts the fatalities and destruction of some of the greatest earthquakes of Iran and other countries from 1950. The results show the deaths and disasters of earthquakes in Iran are 23 times more than the theoretical expectation. On the other hand, comparison of recent records on the impact of earthquake hazards of similar magnitude in countries of varying levels of development and Iran make an astonishing result. Comparing California’s damages to construction after the past earthquakes with Iran’s disasters of earthquakes in same magnitude suggests that poor construction practice and lack of effective project management utilization played major roles in the vast destruction and high death toll and sorrowful tragedies within the cities of Iran. Despite the history of tragic earthquakes, and their continuing recurrence in Iran the study aims to make the government, companies and managers of disasters aware of the aftermath in different parts of Iran of low quality construction and lack of project management knowledge utilization; and make a consciousness for applying proper ways to prevent probable damages in future

Conflict Management, Team Coordination, and Performance Within Multicultural Temporary Projects: Evidence From the Construction Industry

The purpose of our study is to enhance the understanding of relationships between conflict management style, team coordination, and performance in multicultural project team contexts. We investigate how conflict management can contribute to team effectiveness through the mediation of the level of team coordination by collecting data from 126 team leaders and supervisors and 378 members nested in different multicultural projects in the construction industry. Our results show that, contrary to the findings from prior research in other team contexts, an avoiding style of conflict management can have a positive impact on the performance of multicultural project teams

Leaders, conflict, and team coordination: a relational leadership approach in temporary organizations

This study explores how the level of relational leadership of team leaders influences team members’ conflict-handling style and team coordination in temporary organisations (TOs). Leaning upon Socio-Psychological and relational leadership theories, the research also evaluates how the cultural background of leaders moderates the nature of the association between relational leadership and project team performance. This contribution is unique by engaging with three moderating cultural groups while drawing on data from 126 teams in TOs using PLS path modelling. The results explain that relational leadership influences team members’ cooperative and conflict-avoiding styles, which are, in turn, positively associated with team coordination and team performance. The judicious and considered use of conflict-avoiding should be recognised as a thoughtful style in multicultural team contexts and as a consequence of relational leadership. Team coordination and performance, however, are related more to relational leadership with the sample of leaders from a specific within-nationality cultural background

Linking Team Condition and Team Performance: A Transformational Leadership Approach

Because project teams in the construction industry shape the primary focus of the industry's project life cycle, a high-performance construction workplace facilitates employees’ technical and innovation skills through team development. Drawing on the current research in general teamwork and leadership, this study, from a theoretical perspective, extends the team condition as a hierarchical construct, incorporating six associated components. This article argues that team building and team development can be studied as ongoing processes that are crucial to project success. In order to reduce the risk of common method variance, the research analysis was completed using 94 construction teams from three different sources, within which team members rated their leader's transformational leadership behavior. The team leaders evaluated the team's conditions, and, lastly, the supervisor of each team rated the team's performance. The model shows that the team condition, which is defined as the factors that contribute to making a great team, has significant direct and indirect impacts on team performance. Furthermore, the transformational leadership behavior of team leaders showed a mediating role between the team condition and the performance

Relationship between Quality of Building Maintenance Management Services for Indoor Environmental Quality and Occupant Satisfaction: Case Study of Bus Terminal Buildings in Penang

Maintenance is often defined as the series of activities undertaken to take care of the building structure and services to ensure the intended functions and optimal performance of a building life cycle. The management department of a building is usually responsible for the enhancement of the indoor environment quality by service delivery and for boosting occupant productivity and satisfaction. Thus, a salient point of this study is to determine the current level of the building’s maintenance management service for indoor environmental quality in Penang bus terminals, along with its occupant satisfaction with regards to the services provided in the building. The assessment of the indoor environmental quality includes the evaluation of thermal comfort, lighting condition, air quality and cleanliness. Apart from that, qualitative and quantitative methodologies were applied during the process of data collection and analysis. A questionnaire survey was distributed to 500 of the targeted population for each bus terminal, including passengers and the staff. In this study, the conclusion was drawn in which the maintenance management service level of the bus terminal was directly proportional to occupant satisfaction. However, the current quality of maintenance management services in the bus terminals are still not up to the level of the occupants’ satisfaction

A Three-step design science approach to develop a novel human resource-planning framework in projects : the cases of construction projects in USA, Europe, and Iran

Developing a comprehensive human resource (HR)-planning framework that corresponds to the variety of HR-related issues has seldom been observed in existing project management literature. The present study applies a three-step design science approach to introduce a holistic HR-planning framework. The rigor and relevance cycles in this approach address the HR-related issues in projects and the shortcomings of the literature associated with developing a thorough HR-planning framework. Subsequently, the proposed framework is being validated by an exploratory study undertaken at Parsons Brinckerhoff (USA) and BISOL Group (EU). Next, in line with the guidelines of the design cycle for justifying the use of the framework, a survey is conducted on the collected data from 110 Iranian experts in the construction industry. Using Partial Least Squares for analyzing the data, the outcomes indicate that 'Empowerment/Training' could significantly improve the performance of HRs in projects. The results also confirm the substantial impact of 'Quality Assessment' on the constructs included the HR-planning framework. Furthermore, 'Networking Management', 'Delegating', and 'Reward/Compensation' are prioritized as the subsequent influential constructs for effective HR management practices.16 page(s

Lean and seen behavioural aspects in management of projects in developing countries: a systemic approach

In the past years of turbulence, we are seeing a social-acceleration resulting in increasingly volatile, unstable, transient organisations (Rosa, 2009). In this unpredictable, ‘high-speed’ context, the project ‘format’ provides a seamless, temporal, fixed-time-boxed fast-way to ‘fit’ rapidly-changing organisation re-prioritised targets. The purpose of this paper is to understand and navigate complex aspects of projects by deploying a systemic approach based on socio-technical and social acceleration (SA) principles. We adopt systemic principles by encompassing three dimensions of analysis: macro, meso and micro. Here we propose and further enrich a framework by testing complexities PM face specifically in developing-economies