{"title":"Human management control systems on construction firms amidst COVID-19","authors":"Milton Soto-Ferrari, Odette Chams-Anturi","doi":"10.3233/hsm-230021","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic continues to endure in the construction industry. While many businesses worldwide have adapted to working from home or home-based offices, this is impractical in this sector as building activity is conducted on-site, which creates difficulties for employees in adapting to the post-pandemic setting. OBJECTIVE: This article analyzes how the pandemic has changed and affected construction firms’ human management control systems dimensions. We addressed, amidst the pandemic, how work is being performed and its effects on employees and businesses. METHODS: In this analytical research, we used chain referral sampling to perform an in-depth interview study with top administrators of different construction firms in Colombia, and we used inferential statistics for our data analysis. RESULTS: Results showed potential sources of low efficiency and minimal control of resources, including lack of communication with employees, lack of recognition systems, centralized decision-making, and disconnection between business objectives and financial requirements. CONCLUSIONS: Construction firms must ensure workers understand the project goals adequately and be empowered to make on-site decisions provided a training program is offered. Organizations ought to connect their strategic business goals with financial requirements; these must be regularly updated and modified as the economic and labor force scenario evolves.","PeriodicalId":13113,"journal":{"name":"Human systems management","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5000,"publicationDate":"2023-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Human systems management","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.3233/hsm-230021","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"MANAGEMENT","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic continues to endure in the construction industry. While many businesses worldwide have adapted to working from home or home-based offices, this is impractical in this sector as building activity is conducted on-site, which creates difficulties for employees in adapting to the post-pandemic setting. OBJECTIVE: This article analyzes how the pandemic has changed and affected construction firms’ human management control systems dimensions. We addressed, amidst the pandemic, how work is being performed and its effects on employees and businesses. METHODS: In this analytical research, we used chain referral sampling to perform an in-depth interview study with top administrators of different construction firms in Colombia, and we used inferential statistics for our data analysis. RESULTS: Results showed potential sources of low efficiency and minimal control of resources, including lack of communication with employees, lack of recognition systems, centralized decision-making, and disconnection between business objectives and financial requirements. CONCLUSIONS: Construction firms must ensure workers understand the project goals adequately and be empowered to make on-site decisions provided a training program is offered. Organizations ought to connect their strategic business goals with financial requirements; these must be regularly updated and modified as the economic and labor force scenario evolves.
期刊介绍:
Human Systems Management (HSM) is an interdisciplinary, international, refereed journal, offering applicable, scientific insight into reinventing business, civil-society and government organizations, through the sustainable development of high-technology processes and structures. Adhering to the highest civic, ethical and moral ideals, the journal promotes the emerging anthropocentric-sociocentric paradigm of societal human systems, rather than the pervasively mechanistic and organismic or medieval corporatism views of humankind’s recent past. Intentionality and scope Their management autonomy, capability, culture, mastery, processes, purposefulness, skills, structure and technology often determine which human organizations truly are societal systems, while others are not. HSM seeks to help transform human organizations into true societal systems, free of bureaucratic ills, along two essential, inseparable, yet complementary aspects of modern management: a) the management of societal human systems: the mastery, science and technology of management, including self management, striving for strategic, business and functional effectiveness, efficiency and productivity, through high quality and high technology, i.e., the capabilities and competences that only truly societal human systems create and use, and b) the societal human systems management: the enabling of human beings to form creative teams, communities and societies through autonomy, mastery and purposefulness, on both a personal and a collegial level, while catalyzing people’s creative, inventive and innovative potential, as people participate in corporate-, business- and functional-level decisions. Appreciably large is the gulf between the innovative ideas that world-class societal human systems create and use, and what some conventional business journals offer. The latter often pertain to already refuted practices, while outmoded business-school curricula reinforce this problematic situation.