Social value in Malaysian construction industry: A TMO perspective

• Published in: AIP Conference Proceedings
• Main Author: Alias Z.; Abd Rahman N.A.; Ahmad S.
• Format: Conference paper
• Language: English
• Published: American Institute of Physics Inc. 2023
• Online Access: https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85176754821&doi=10.1063%2f5.0169151&partnerID=40&md5=5e67e29a26d339ad91a1bd8d9ca18635

A decade ago, there were calls for various sectors, including the construction industry to deliver social value through their construction and infrastructure work activities. Social value is economic, social, and environmental impacts on local communities from a construction organisation through the execution of its business. In the built environment laws and regulations are now in place to encourage the construction sector to shift toward social value creation. The United Kingdom, for example, has the Public Services (SV) Act 2012; the European Union has the Sustainable Procurement Directive 2014; and Malaysia has the Social Impact Assessment Act A1522. Despite the Act and Regulations were established, the current understanding and conceptualisation of social value, particularly in the context of project delivery, remains ambiguous. The construction industry is known for having temporary project coalition consisting of diverse organisations from all industry disciplines known as temporary multi-organisations (TMO) that leads to different interpretations of social value. The purpose of this paper is to investigate TMO's social value by examining the differences in what social value means/perspectives and practices and the tensions of those differences. This study employs an interpretivist paradigm, an abductive approach, and a case study design methodology to accomplish this. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data from case studies involving 45 participants. The data was further analysed using thematic analysis. This study extends the body of knowledge by explaining different perspectives and practices of social value adoption within a TMO that holistically combines factors at the individual, organisation, and project levels through institutional logic and institutional work lens. This study contributes novel insights into the understanding of social value adoption in construction. © 2023 Author(s).