Engendering Cohesion among Construction Project Team Members (CPTMs): Factors to Consider

Abstract

Background: Despite the importance of cohesion in all human endeavours and especially among CPTMs, the specific factors that will engender cohesion among CPTM have rarely been researched. Objectives: This study seeks to identify factors that engender cohesion among construction project team members (CPTMs) to improve on construction project performance and contribute to the construction performance literature. Methods: The study adopted an online survey by the use of a questionnaire to elicit information from construction professionals involved in construction projects in the six geopolitical zones of Nigeria. The importance of the factors identified in the study was analysed using the Relative Importance Index (RII). Likewise, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was used to group the 28 identified factors into parsimonious groups for decision-making. Results: The results of the RII show that for the cohesion of CPTMs in Nigeria, the top-ranking factors are: commitment to the project objectives by team-members, team members; competence; project leadership; clarity of project goal; and objectives and adherence to professional ethics by team members with RII values of 0.91, 0.91, 0.91, 0.90 and 0.90, respectively. The conducted EFA reduced the 28 factors into six components, namely: shared identity', 'roles and responsibility of team members', 'social entity', 'respect and trust', 'team chemistry' and 'team size'. This study empirically identified and classified factors that engender cohesion among CPTMs which will be of significance to the construction industry practitioners and help improve construction project performance. The study is crucial as it collates analyses and compares the factors that engender cohesion among CPTMs from professionals practicing in four different construction professional firms, thereby providing a more reliable conjecture of opinions. Conclusions: The findings will assist in significantly improving the performance of construction projects globally if the identified factors are carefully considered.

Keywords: Cohesion, CPTMs, performance improvement, teamwork, Nigeria