Approaches to Organisational Effectiveness and Their Application to Construction Organisations

Organisational effectiveness (OE) in the construction industry is currently viewed and operationalised in relation to time and cost criteria. This is contrasted with work in the social sciences where different conceptualisation's of the meaning of an organisation have resulted in a variety of OE concepts and approaches, including: the goal-attainment approach; system resource approach; strategic constituencies approach; and competing values approach. From these, thirty criteria are identified, all purporting to measure OE. Few organisations, however, assess their effectiveness using multiple criteria, which suggests that, in practice, OE means different things to different people. To accommodate this, it is proposed that different organisational functions should be evaluated using different characteristics and the means by which such evaluations may be made are outlined