IMPACT OF ETHICAL BEHAVIOUR OF PROFESSIONALS ON THE PROJECT SUCCESS IN THE SRI LANKAN CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY

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.