Abstract:
The construction industry worldwide is widespread with unethical
behaviours. Professionals’ unethical behaviour is a significant factor that has
affected the performance and the success of the construction project. Those
common unethical behaviours include unfair conduct, fraud and bribery,
collusion, and conflict of interest occur in developing and developed
countries as well. This research paper assessed the application of ethical
conduct among industry professionals towardthe project success of the
construction industry. Accordingly, the study used a mixed approach having
qualitative and quantitative techniques and for the identification of factors,
are viewofthe literaturewas undergone.To identify the impact ofthe factors,
a web-based questionnaire was distributed among 40 professionals such as
quantity surveyors, civil engineers, architects, project managers and
contractors within the Sri Lankan construction industry. To identify the
mitigation approaches, interviews were conducted by selecting 10 industry
professionals with more than 10 years of experience as the sample. With the
analysed data, it was identified that the construction sector in Sri Lanka
experiences unethical practices dueto personal interest, lack of time, political
involvement, high competition to get a project, and lack of law enforceability.
Further, this study concluded that the necessity of existing an ethical code
which can be legally acted, a system to ensure that the construction
professionals are continual with the mandatory standard, duties and
behaviours, training and education in ethics suggested as approaches for
fighting against unethical behaviours.
