New Zealand Construction Nga Roopu and Preferred Nga Tangata: Towards More Purpose-Fit Selection

It is a major concern that construction projects fail due to deadlines, budgets, and quality not being achieved. These failures that plague construction projects can be viewed as biased depending on whether they are undertaken by the client or those delivering and providing services. Without team synergy, construction organisations will not be competitive and will fall short of creating and maintaining high-performance teams. Adding a new team member can be a delicate balancing act. Personality clashes may disrupt the team and cause frustration within the project. Therefore, an exploratory study was undertaken to compare various New Zealand construction professions with different selected SAPI personality sub-descriptors to establish which are beneficial or disruptive for team members. The study further aimed to determine which professions are task or relationship-orientated. For example, the South African Personality Inventory (SAPI) descriptions within various main dimensions were used, in a Likert scale, for a recent New Zealand-based exploratory study to collect data from Site Safe members. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was used to look for highly correlated variables that seemed to cluster around a particular construct. Data analysis showed that two personality cluster scales were formed using Principal Component Analysis, viz. positive and disruptive characteristic scales. Other key findings suggested that it was possible to determine a social-orientated scale by comparing different professions to personality variables. White-collar staff are relationship-orientated, whereas owner/director/manager and blue-collar staff are more task-oriented. This exploratory research connecting construction professions and personalities has confirmed the importance of strong synergy between purpose-fit selected team members and that if balanced correctly, will positively contribute to a construction organisation's strength in the marketplace by being recognised as having a positive culture that leads to improved employee engagement and delivering increased productivity.