Construction managers’ cultural orientation in Lagos, Nigeria.

Clients' tastes, innovation and changes in the construction sector demand prompt and efficient means of executing project. In order to stay afloat, construction managers and CEOs need to look inwards. The values and practices prevalent in an organisation, that is the culture, has been researched into as as underlying factor of performance improvement. This study therefore, investigates the practices (cultural orientation) that are prevalent among construction managers and CEO in Nigeria. Using stratified sampling technique, questionnaires were administered by personal contact among managers and CEOs in 116 construction firms in Lagos and Abuja. The questionnaires were analyzed using mean, percentages, ANOVA and Kruskal Wallis test. The results show that there is a high level of use of the cultural orientation presented. The most prevalent cultural orientation is conflicts and dispute orientation, which is followed by client service orientation. The research also revealed ownership structure, aside firm size and firm location as organisational characteristics that have significant effect on the cultural orientation adopted. The study concludes that the 8 orientation (conflict and dispute: client service orientation. production orientation, task and goal accomplishment, information communication technology. external. innovation and knowledge management and workforce) are all important in a construction firm. Recommendations were made on the need to acquire the necessary orientation and be able to review and renew it for optimal project execution and best practice .