Ethical Behaviour Of Nigerian Building Industry Professionals In The Procurement Of Building Projects

ABSTRACT

Following the growing consensus within and outside the building industry that corruption and other unethical practices are endemic in the building industry, coupled with scarce empirical academic research on professional ethics in the Nigerian building industry, there is need to examine the ethical behaviour and ideology of the professionals involved in the procurement chain. Consequently, the study sets out to unravel the ethical. behaviour of the Nigerian building industry professionals in the procurement of building projects as well as the nature and prevalence of the ethical impropriety obtainable at various stages in the building projects procurement chain. One hundred and ninety two professionals were sampled from 108 construction organisations comprising 55 consultancy organisations, 35 contracting organisations and 18 client organisations in selected Nigerian major citics. Survey and correlational research designs were employed. Descriptive statistics was used in analysing the data while the hypotheses were tested using one way analysis of variance, Chi-Square, Kruskal-Wallis tests and Mann-Whitney U test at 0.05 levels of significance. The results indicate that award of contracts by professionals based on social ties and personal interests top the list of twenty-two most prevalent ethical impropriety in the industry. Dominant ethical ideology of building industry professionals is situationism; Quantity Surveyors were perceived as the most susceptible to bribery; greed and inordinate desire for materialism top the list of eighteen factors identified as reasons for professional ethical impropriety. Finally and expectedly, ethical impropriety generally has no favourable impact on project performance.