EFFECTS OF ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE ON THE PERFORMANCE OF QUANTITY SURVEYING FIRMS IN LAGOS STATE

Abstract

Quantity surveying service firms in contemporary times have evolved into structurally standard organisations where there’s the understanding of organisational culture as an essential management philosophy that drives performance. Using a survey design approach, this research examines the effect of organisational culture on the performance of quantity surveying firms. Ninety quantity surveyors from forty quantity surveying firms in Lagos completed the questionnaire used for this research. Psychometric test was also carried out on the questionnaires with average cronbach’s alpha (α) value of 0.87. The research instrument was also justified on face, content, construct and external validity. Mean score was used for ranking the types of organisational culture and the challenges to the formalisation of organisational culture while importance index was used to ascertain the level of importance attached to organisational culture. Spearman rank correlation was used to evaluate the inter-correlation among the types of organisational culture and the relationship between organisational culture and performance variables. Kruskal-Wallis H-test was used to test if there was any significant difference in the perceptions of the three hierarchies of quantity surveyors in quantity surveying firms on organisational culture while Stepwise regression was used to explain the effect of organisational culture on performance. The study revealed that quantity surveying firms are largely sole proprietorship and/or partnership business structure and operating multiple organisational cultures. The study also revealed positive significant correlation between the types of organisational culture and performance. Organisational culture was also found to influence the performance of quantity surveying firms with reward and stability cultures having the dominant influence. Organisational management structure, lack of resources and dearth of organisational culture study are the prevalent challenges to the formalisation of organisational culture while the challenges constituted by leadership and employees are least prevalent. The study concluded that causal relationships exist between organisational culture and performance in quantity surveying firms. The findings from this study implicate that there’s need for the management of quantity surveying firms to embrace organisational culture as strategy for driving performance and achieving corporate status.