The motivation of quantity surveyors in the Malaysian construction industry for improved job performance
The construction industry is significantly influenced by the competitive environment, and due to this, economy and quality of life have been affected and inevitably, the way people work has also changed in order to sustain them. In the construction industry, the employees’ motivation is important, as it is the factor that contributes to the job performance, and this includes the quantity surveyors. Motivation is the key factor that influences people to do better by initiating action into achieving goal(s), resulting in higher performance. Meanwhile, performance of employees is the measure of the quality of an organisation. In construction, quantity surveyors contribute to the overall construction performance, mainly, by adding value to the contractual and financial management of projects starting from the pre-construction stage until post-construction stage. However, the way quantity surveyors carry out their work has changed in order to adapt to the challenging environment. Unfortunately, there is no available motivation framework regarding the quantity surveying profession that relates to motivation towards improvement of job performance. Therefore, this research is carried out focusing on the motivation factors of quantity surveyors from three types of organisations, namely: government agencies; private consultancy firms; and private contracting firms, and in the context of the Malaysian construction industry. This research adapts a mixed-methods research in order to achieve triangulation, where archival and document reviews; and questionnaire survey strategies were adopted. Two hundred questionnaire surveys were distributed using three mechanisms: web-based; email; and postal. Seventy one questionnaires were received and analysed statistically using the Kruskal-Wallis analysis and other related analysis using the SPSS software. To complement these findings, twenty two semi-structured interviews were carried out with individual quantity surveyors registered with the Board of Quantity Surveyors Malaysia. The interviews were analysed using content analysis through the Nvivo software after the transcription process was done. The result suggests that the motivation factors of quantity surveyors in the construction industry do not differ according to the different types of organisations; and hence, one conceptual framework for quantity surveyors, regardless of the types of organisations they work in/ with, is developed. The conceptual framework was developed and validated and will benefit the: individual quantity surveyors; construction organisations; professional bodies; and education institutions performance improvement when used correctly.
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