Isabelle Yee Shan Chan

Preventing construction worker injury incidents through the management of personal stress and organizational stressors

Construction workers (CWs) are positioned at the lowest level of an organization and thus have limited control over their work. For this reason, they are often deprived of their due rewards and training or sometimes are even compelled to focus on production at the expense of their own safety. These organizational stressors not only cause the CWs stress but also impair their safety behaviors. The impairment of safety behaviors is the major cause of CW injury incidents. Hence, to prevent injury incidents and enhance safety behaviors of CWs, the current study aimed to identify the impact of various organizational stressors and stress on CW safety behaviors and injury incidents. To achieve this aim, we surveyed 395 CWs. Using factor analysis, we identified five organizational stressors (unfair reward and treatment, inappropriate safety equipment, provision of training, lack of goal setting, and poor physical environment), two types of stress (emotional and physical), and safety behaviors. The results of correlation and regression analyses revealed the following: (1) injury incidents were minimized by safety behaviors but escalated by a lack of goal setting, (2) safety behaviors were maximized by moderate levels of emotional stress (i.e., an inverted U-shape relationship between these two variables) and increased in line with physical stress and inappropriate safety equipment, (3) emotional stress was positively predicted by the provision of training and inappropriate safety equipment, and (4) physical stress was predicted only by inappropriate safety equipment. Based on these results, we suggest various recommendations to construction stakeholders on how to prevent CW injury incidents.

Structural relationships between cultural values and coping behaviors of professionals in the stressful construction industry

Purpose – Coping behaviors are a popular area of research in relation to construction professionals, who are often compelled to face a great deal of stress while striving for good performance in a dynamic and demanding industry. The effectiveness of various coping behaviors on stress and performance of construction professionals have long been identified. However, factors associating with individual adoption of various coping behaviors are still uncertain. People from different cultural environments have different values and hence different preferences for coping strategies, which have different effects on construction professionals. Hence, the papers’ primary contribution to the overall body of knowledge is the establishment of statistical evidence that desired cultural values of construction professionals can influence their adoption of coping behaviors. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – A questionnaire survey was designed and conducted to investigate the relationship...

Antecedents of Innovation Climate in Construction Firms in Hong Kong

Abstract In view of the booming financial and technology development in the global construction market, construction firms nowadays face a great stress of being innovative. In fact, innovation is essential to the productivity, profitability and, more importantly, the competitiveness and sustainability of an organization. Previous studies tend to emphasize the exogenous and endogenous factors which enhance innovative working in organizations, while recent research emphasizes the importance of innovation climate. Climate is essential in fostering innovation in an organization. This study thus aims to investigate the antecedents of innovation climate in construction firms in Hong Kong. Group C contractor firms (i.e., large-size contractors which are eligible to carry out contracts with values exceeding HK

Fostering Value Co-creation in Construction: A Case Study of an Airport Project in India

75 million) were selected as the sample population in the current study, as they are considered a well-established group which make a significant contribution to economic growth and innovation lead to the industry. A questionnaire survey was designed and distributed to 300 construction professionals in Group C contractors in Hong Kong, of which ninety-nine valid data surveys were collected and used, representing a response rate of 33%. Based on the results of factor analysis, 3 factors were identified, including innovation climate, individual tolerance of difference and organizational support to innovation. The linear regression modelling found that organizational support to innovation associates positively with innovation climate. However, it is interesting to find that there is no significant association between individual tolerance of difference and innovation climate. Curvilinear regression modelling was thus further conducted, which reveals a bell-shaped relationship between individual tolerance of difference and innovation climate. Based on the study results, recommendations were made to construction stakeholders to enhance innovation of construction firms via fostering innovation climate.

Role of government funding in fostering collaboration between knowledge-based organizations: Evidence from the solar PV industry in China:

Infrastructure projects are often large in scale and have great impact on the public in terms of environment, finance, safety and international status. Research studies have been conducted extensively to investigate ways to enhance performance of construction projects, but little emphasis has been put on the importance of the value co-creation process. The airport project in this study adopts the collaboration and value co-creation process between the client and the contractor from the initial stage towards project completion. In the traditional value creation process, clients and construction firms have distinct roles of consumption (i.e., value receiver) and production (i.e., value creator), in which value is created by the design and development of construction products and the value is then exchanged in the markets, amongst consumers and producers. However, value created in this way is created independently of clients. The service-dominant logic, on which value co-creation is grounded, provides a new paradigm for re-examination of value provision through construction projects. The paper aims to explore the importance of value co-creation in the context of an airport project and, more importantly, how value co-creation can be fostered in the construction industry. The project case demonstrates the client and contractor as value co-producers. Dierent from the traditional procurement approaches which often lack comprehensive consideration of alternatives and /or common goals in the project inception stage, the client and contractor collaborated early in the alternative bidding process and in value management workshops conducted before the inception of construction. In the process of building the client-contractor relationship to achieve the above (value) outputs, two key features are (1) early contractor involvement in the contribution of constructability expertise and (2) the change in the clients attitudes to embrace value co-creation.

Attributes of Hong Kong Construction Engineering Student Learning Approaches: Investigation of Chinese and Western Personal Values

As a knowledge-based industry, the structure of the solar photovoltaic industry is influenced continuously by transformations which originate from technosciences. This paper adopts the notion of the ‘science’ community to include universities and research institutes to examine government funding impact on science–industry collaboration in the Chinese solar photovoltaic industry. The triple helix model of university–industry–government relations for explaining structural developments in knowledge-based economies is often used to depict integration among functions of knowledge creation, business production and governance control at the interfaces in these knowledge-based organizations. Through comparisons between subsidized and nonsubsidised R&D activities, based on 10,366 scientific publications derived from the databases of Web of Science during the period from 2003 to 2013, the impact of government funding on their research collaboration is examined in the solar photovoltaic industry take-off phase and acceleration phase. The findings show that the three helices interact to foster collaboration between the knowledge-based organizations where the government–science link and the government–industry link are fairly strong, but the science–industry link is relatively weak. In consequence, policy-makers should develop more effective mechanisms to foster knowledge diffusion between science and industry.

Stress management in the construction industry

AbstractMembers of the construction engineering profession require developing not only technical knowledge but also various personal attitudes and values to enable them to keep abreast of an ever-changing body of knowledge and solve construction dilemmas. However, construction engineering education in Hong Kong emphasizes students’ professional and technical training and pays less attention to their personal development, despite previous studies having identified that personal values have a significant effect on learning. Inappropriate personal values in education can result in students becoming surface learners whose only aim is to achieve a pass or a particular grade. A student’s learning approaches will not only affect his or her academic performance but also shape further personal and professional development when working in the construction industry after graduation. For these reasons, it is essential to investigate the complicated relationships between the personal values and learning approaches of ...