Improving construction industry's contributions to society: a view on culture's role

Now that the global economic crisis has had an enormous effect on construction industry in for example the European construction market, one can see still some signs of partial recovery. But on average there is also still a strong need for the -economic- recovery of the industry. However, to play again a significant role in society as being one of 'the' drivers to build new or restructure existing facilities, there emerges quite a strong challenge for construction industry to reposition themselves again properly: For example, during the recent past, several countries had scandals within their construction industry as being influenced by collusion, bad-quality, high-pricing, non-communication etc. In short: a 'disaster' for clients Nevertheless, since the fact that during crisis-times several governments use the anticyclic approach of increasing their investments in construction projects (for example in infrastructure-works, because it serves the society three times, that is: Constructionprices are lowered, it helps to reduce unemployment, and it brings new/improved infrastructure), these increased activity at one hand is accompanied by a production decrease on the other hand. So how to balance the construction industry's interests properly? And how to use the momentum in a possible change -or even to make a transition- towards a more client-friendly culture? This paper describes and analyses literature related to the above themes, being positioned as a view on culture's role in the nowadays improvement-activities for construction-industry's contributions to society. It concludes that if the conclusion from analysed literature is right that transition activities in general focus too much on technology-aspects alone, instead of the at least equally important behavioural aspects, this might indeed result into a stronger need for research into business-cultures in construction-industry (and the ways on how to understand and to improve them) to become a positive effect for construction-industry and it's contributions to society.