A Critical Realist Perspective on Construction Project Culture

Culture research within the field of the construction industry is dominated by an integration perspective, in which the organisation is treated as a closed system whereby the reality outside and its influence on the organisation is ignored. This is despite that the construction industry is characterised by complex project organisations in highly dynamic environments. This study argues that understanding culture from a critical realist perspective using Archer’s cultural levels, the Cultural System (CS) and Socio-Cultural (S-C) interaction, to understand the mechanisms activating behavioural patterns in construction projects, will contribute with important insight in the social complexity of construction projects. In this study, the project organisation of a large EUR 200 million housing association renovation project is used as case, and different realities present in the project organisation are explored empirically through participant observation. The data is analysed using Gareth Morgan's metaphor theory to gain an in-depth understanding of different realities present on the S-C level, through which mechanisms in the CS are explored. Based on the data findings, focus is on the metaphors of change, learning and political systems respectively and their interrelatedness in the project organisation in question, and it is demonstrated how the combination of metaphors, and an open system ontology can provide new and important insights in construction project culture.