Importance and trends of organizational culture in construction in eastern Croatia

Abstract

Organizational culture in the construction industry has not yet been fully investigated. Therefore, this paper examines the importance of organizational culture and its trends in the construction industry. The importance of organizational culture was analyzed in the first part of the paper using an extensive review of the relevant international and domestic literature. The remainder of this paper presents the results of an empirical study the authors have conducted in 2013 using the OCAI questionnaire among university students in the second year of graduate study at the Civil Engineering Faculty in Osijek. The aim of the study was to prove the importance of organizational culture in construction and to determine the organizational culture trends in the construction industry in eastern Croatia by identifying organizational culture that different groups of students are considering desirable for a company in which they would work after their studies. The results show that an absolutely dominant desired type of organizational culture is clan (38.9%). After clan, an equally represented preference is towards innovative (adhocracy) and hierarchy organizational cultures since approximately a quarter of the students show a tendency towards these cultures. The least preferred is a market organizational culture (13.23%). In addition, the research has shown extremely high sample homogeneity in all categories examined. In future studies it would be useful to conduct a similar analysis at other civil engineering faculties in Croatia, in order to perceive the organizational culture trend in whole Croatia