Cultural transformation in construction partnering projects

In recent years there has been a growing interest in the use of partnering in construction. Since partnering is seen as changing behaviours and attitudes, cultural transformation cannot be forgotten in the process. Much of the literature tends to presume that cultural alignment is a prerequisite for partnering. Furthermore, the existing research fails to adequately address the complex relationship between individual or group behaviour and organisational culture which, nevertheless, lies at the heart of many prescriptions for improving collaboration within the industry. This paper initially reviews the major cultural and behavioural challenges and their root causes in construction partnering projects. Many commentators place considerable emphasis upon the importance of changing attitudes and cultural transformation to address various challenges in construction partnering. As the first step, this paper proposes a cultural web to understand organisational culture and to identify a substantial range of the elements which must be managed if a strategic and cultural change is to be successful

Leadership in construction partnering projects: Research methodological perspective

In recent years there has been a growing interest in the use of partnering in construction. Central to any successful partnering arrangement is the change in cultural and behavioural characteristics towards mutual trust and understanding. According to Schein, cultural and behavioural characteristics can be shaped and reflected by proper leadership. This research probes leadership as the response to address complex relationships of behaviour and culture in large scale partnering projects. This involves understanding, interpreting, explaining and mapping complex human behaviour. Therefore it is very important to comprehend and implement a suitable research methodology to carefully extract appropriate information. This paper justifies the social constructionism stance and case study approach for the leadership study as the response to address complex relationships challenges of behaviour and culture in construction partnering projects. For this purpose, the nested approach is used, highlighting the main facets of the arguments to justify the selection of appropriate research philosophy and research approach

Empowerment revisited: will it address marginalised positions of women in post disasters?

World is faced with frequent natural disasters and the magnitude of impact that they cause lead to major concerns in many fields. The need to focus on community engagement and enhancement of society‟s capacity to withstand disasters in order to reduce damage to both human and material resources has been highly emphasised. Recent studies have reflected the need for gender consideration in disaster management, and emphasised its importance in building disaster resilient communities. Within the post disaster stage, the impact of natural disasters and the consequent partial reconstruction efforts have presented many challenges to women. Hence, there is a need to enhance women‟s position within post disaster context. Further, many studies have acknowledged that although women are disproportionately affected by these disasters, their role in preventing and mitigating the effects of natural disasters is not well explored. Within this context, the main research investigates into empowerment of women during post disaster reconstruction in Sri Lanka. Since disasters affect women and men differently and in practice a larger share of benefits of disaster management goes to men, women continue to remain marginalised. Post disaster reconstruction which is, the reconstruction process after a disaster, can provide windows of opportunity for development not only to reconstruct the impacted areas, but also to improve these conditions of the affected population. Although earlier studies have recognised the importance of the concept of empowerment in marginalised conditions literature related to post disaster barely identifies the linkage between the concept and its suitability. Hence this paper seeks to explore these marginalised positions of women in post disasters, examines the concept of empowerment and explores its suitability to address the difficulties of women by bringing forward the evidences from other fields of study. This study has been based on a theoretical as well as practical ideas obtained through a comprehensive literature review and interviews carried out among experts within the practice in Sri Lanka