Managerial Drivers of Chinese Labour Loyalty in International Construction Projects

Abstract

Organization performance is becoming ever more dependent on employee loyalty in the international construction projects. However, the improvement of construction labour loyalty on construction sites remains a largely neglected measure for reducing their turnover and improving their productivity. The purpose of this study was to quantitatively investigate the managerial drivers of labour loyalty, including macro-environment of the project host country, organizational living environment, job system, rewards, and communication, and to explore the significance of satisfaction as a mediating variable in the relationship between the managerial drivers and construction labour loyalty. First, hypotheses on the relationships between construction labour loyalty, satisfaction and the five managerial drivers were proposed. Second, structural equation modelling was adopted to test these hypotheses. Finally, the results demonstrated two types of influence paths: (1) macro-environment, job system and communication have significantly direct effects on construction labour loyalty, (2) mediated by satisfaction, organizational living environment and rewards offer positive indirect effects on construction labour loyalty. The first type of path serves as a long-term strategic orientation for improving labour loyalty. The second type of path is a tactic for short-term goals of labour loyalty enhancement. The research results can contribute to the body of knowledge of human resource management and the practice of enhancing labour productivity through improving construction labour loyalty in the context of international construction projects.

Towards Quality of Life in Construction Industry: Identification of employee turnover antecedents

“…One of the job-related factors that linked to turnover could be the workload. Employee loyalty can be from a reasonable workload distribution (Zhu, Zeng, Li, Zhu, & Zhang, 2017). Through an exciting job designed to reduce specific preferences that involve employee health issues such as exposure to mechanical settings (Jebens et al, 2014) and proper coordination of work to enhance motivation (Rojas, 2013) development of exciting job design strategy can succeed.…”

“…The findings concluded that communication could be treated differently among different occupational groups within the construction domain. In Zhu et al (2017) who explore the construction workers utilise communication to personal interest (i.e., organisation HRM practices), which may affect their loyalty in the long run. Communication has been confirmed to correlate with job satisfaction, which contributes to turnover intention negatively amidst a sample of managerial and technical staff (Du et al, 2006).…”

A Systematic Review of Employee Turnover Antecedents in the Construction Industry

“…Lingard et al, (2007) prescribed attaining a balance between the demand of work and life through alternative working hours; compressed work-week, which gained positive feedback from the sample Job Related -One job-related factor involved in turnover could be the workload. Job system that focuses on reasonable workload promotes loyalty (Zhu, Zeng, Li, Zhu, & Zhang, 2017). This notion is supported through the interesting job that is designed to reduce specific preferences, such as exposure to mechanical settings (Jebensa et al, 2014) and proper coordination of work to enhance motivation (Rojas, 2013).…”

“…The findings concluded that communication could be treated differently among different occupational groups within the construction domain. According to (Zhu et al, 2017), this factor contributes to only personal interests. Communication has been confirmed to have a correlation with job satisfaction, which contributes to turnover intention negatively amidst sample of managerial and technical staff (Du et al, 2006).…”

“…Recent studies have reported that external factors contribute to turnover issues through economic situation (Shikweni et al, 2016), an environment of project location, economic conditions, social security, medical services (Zhu et al, 2017), language barrier (Zhu et al, 2017), language barrier (Oswald, Sherratt, & Smith, 2015), regulatory (Adogbo, Ibrahim, & Ibrahim, 2015;Shikweni et al, 2016), labour market demand (Shikweni et al, 2016), alternative job/job offer (Jones et al, 2010), and networking (Morello et al, 2018).…”