Culture as a component of complexity in construction

Abstract

Both culture and construction have been suggested to be complex – culture as relating to, even governing, human behaviour and construction as a context in which human activities occur in the design, production, occupation, and use and disposal of major artefacts: buildings and infrastructure. Indeed, construction has been subject to various definitions and categorisations of complexity to assist analysis of the processes employed in the realisation and use of its outputs; including consideration of managerial and technical complexity. Historically, intuitive understanding of what constitute complex construction projects was supplemented with naïve objective measurements – such as the proportionate cost of building services. However, such approaches have failed to be very helpful in gaining understanding of the relationships between inputs to the realisations, the transformations within the processes and the resultant performance outputs. Following on from chaos theory, the emerging field of complexity theory, with its emphasis on linkages within systems and the ‘softer’ elements, has significant potential for providing insights. Hence, this paper examines culture in the context of and application to construction organisations and projects using the perspectives of complexity theory towards helping to determine a more detailed research agenda in the hope of gaining significantly greater understanding through this paradigm.