Management strategies to harness cultural diversity in Australian construction sites - a social identity perspective

Abstract

Construction sites around the world employ large numbers of people from diverse cultural backgrounds. The effective management of this cultural diversity has important implications for the productivity, safety, health and welfare of construction workers and for the performance and reputation of firms which employ them. The findings of a three year, multistaged study of cultural diversity management practices on construction sites are critiqued using social identity theory. This reveals that so called "best-practice" diversity management strategies may have an opposite effect to that intended. It is concluded that the management of diversity on construction projects would benefit from being informed by social identity research.

Organisational Culture Characterisation of Construction Firms in Nigeria

“…However, the factors that would have fostered a better team diversity and teamwork such as commitment, best practice, collaboration, free communication, loyalty are lacking resulting in low performance. This is in agreement with Ankrah (2007) who stated that there is a loose end in terms of collaboration among the workgroup within construction organisations, and Loosemore et al (2012) also stressed the importance of a wellstructured management approach to tighten the loose end to avoid the poor performance.…”

“…When a firm can actualise this, the firm is said to have a strong organisational culture (Agboola, 2011;Gibson et al, 2012). This is in line with Loosemore et al (2012) and Hitt et al (2010), who asserted that good management of cultural diversity is required if the organisation would succeed in businesses that involved diverse workers. In this case employees' culture is very close to their organisational culture values.…”

“…The reason being that the cultural diversities feature such as cognitive, education, gender, family, belief, the cultural background can cause conflicts within the teamwork as workers interact together. This is in line with Loosemore et al (2012), who opined that effective management of cultural diversity is needed to achieve a better working relationship and work success.…”

“…Therefore, construction work must be done to meet the highest standard of work (Ofori, 2015). This succinctly connotes that organisations have to invest in their workforce diversity to realise this high standard (Loosemore et al, 2012).…”

“…However, there is a high manifestation of social identity negative outcome among them compared with cluster one and cluster three. This is a situation many of the theorists such as Loosemore et al (2012), Olsen and Martins (2012) opined can be avoided with effective diversity management in place.…”