Behaviour of quantity surveyors as organizational citizens

Abstract

Understanding the individual's collectivistic orientations toward group goals and task activities is critical for developing cooperative and productive teams. The complex environment of modern construction, where the emphasis shifts from individually oriented to team-based work, has led to many challenges. There are important issues of cooperative behaviours in a world of cultural pluralism in which interpersonal cooperation is juxtaposed with organizational citizenship behaviour. Behaviours of construction project participants are important manifestations of culture that are dependent upon norms, values and beliefs. Certain organizational cultures support individualistic behaviours while others emphasize the benefits to the collective whole. Collectivistic orientation is examined as the cultural dimension of individualism-collectivism (IC) and found to be related to organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB) where the correlations of IC and most OCB variables are significant for quantity surveyors in Hong Kong. Generally, the (more) individualistic persons are less likely to exhibit organizational citizenship behaviours.