Abstract:
Contractor is considered as a dominant construction project participant, contributing to the construction
project culture. Identifying the basic assumptions of contractor’s professional sub-culture at project level
could be worthwhile for better management of construction projects since, cultural differences among
project participants could create risks of conflicts and dissatisfactions owing to underperformance of
construction projects. Thus, this research aims to derive basic assumptions of contractor’s sub culture in
public sector building construction projects in Sri Lanka. The aim was approached through an exploratory
case study research design. Three public sector building construction projects were selected as the cases
using construction project culture as the unit of analysis. Cases were restricted to traditional method
contracts and team setting to public sector clients and consultants and private sector contractors. Nine
semi-structured interviews, observation of two progress review meetings and documentation review per
case were used as the data collection techniques. Solutions for internal integration and external adaptation
problems of each project team was questioned during data collection. Code based content analysis was
used in data analysis. Findings revealed the existence of dominant professional sub-cultural groups of
client, contractor and consultant within construction projects. Group boundaries were indicated by each
party trying to defend themselves as a group and having matters which they thought not suitable disclosing
to other parties. The basic assumptions of the contractor’s sub culture were identified with regard to the
eleven cultural dimensions of; nature of human relationships, nature of human nature, nature of reality and
truth, nature of human activity, nature of time, acceptance on homogeneity or diversity, unknowable and
uncontrollable, gender, motive for behaving, state-individual relationship and, organization's relationship
to its environment. These findings are important for project managers for better understanding of the unique
cultural behaviours of contractors to avoid any interpersonal conflicts among contractor’s personnel and
other team members.
