Bureaucratic Culture in Public and Private Construction Project Organisations

Abstract

Projects are commissioned by public and private client organisations, which have different organizational cultures and structures that dictate the rules and procedures to be followed in project procurement. It has long been perceived that public organisations are more bureaucratic than private organisations, yet empirical evidence is not entirely conclusive. The research objective in this study is to examine the extent of bureaucracy and red tape in construction project organisations in the public and private sectors. The methodology comprises two parts: the first part is a questionnaire survey of project participants’ perceived extent of bureaucracy and red tape in project organisations, and the second part is a comparative case study of a public and a private client project organisation. The long debated argument of “organisations in the public sector are generally more bureaucratic than those in the private sector” is supported. In addition, it is found that there is some correlation among bureaucratic features and between bureaucracy and red tape. The public organisation in the case study has set up more rules and procedures in both the control and operating systems, and has a greater demand on role delineation/specialisation.