4.6 Reliability of Results
4.8.3 Kruskal-Wallis Test
As shown in Table 4.7, there are statistically significant differences in the responses for all the eight variables. With a null hypothesis stating that there is no significant difference in terms of perceptions of respondents across different organisation groups, the null hypothesis is rejected in all the eight variables. This implies that the perceptions of respondents from different organisation groups differ significantly.
According to Ameh and Odusami (2010), contractor tempts to bribe consultants with the intention to compromise with the quality of works, or to overstate the value of interim valuation. This is supported by Shah and Alotaibi (2018), which stated that contractors tend to involve in bribery in the awarding process prior to award of project. Ameh and Odusami (2010) added that consultants who hold junior to middle level managerial positions are more susceptible to bribery. Among all the professions, quantity surveyors are particularly more susceptible to bribery, whereas project managers face the greatest pressure to engage in bribery (Ameh and Odusami, 2010). This is reflected in the research result, which consultants rank bribery at 2nd. The result also demonstrates that bribery is placed 4th in the category of government agency. It is suggested that civil servant will rarely accept financial bribe due to security reason, however, non-financial bribes are more common among civil servant (Ameh and Odusami, 2010).
Contractor, government agency, consultants and developers rank conflict of interest at 1st, 2nd, 4th and 6th respectively. Bowen, Edwards and Cattell (2015) opined that conflict of interest in construction industry can attribute to the multiple roles of professional members in a project team. For instance, architects are expected to take the roles in negotiating, designing, supervising, inspecting, administrating, and sometimes as arbitrator for construction disputes. Due to the multitasking nature, it is therefore not
surprising to see consultants rank conflict of interest at 4th among the eight variables. On the other hand, government agency ranks it at 2nd place. This is consistent with the findings of Bowen, Edwards and Cattell (2015), which revealed that government officials are most associated with conflict of interest, and it is more likely to happen when government acts as the client in a project.
Collusion is not uncommon in the construction industry. Prior to the award of contract, consultant can modify project information in order to put certain tenderer at advantage (Chan and Owusu, 2017). The tenderers might involve in bid-rigging, to collude among themselves in the tendering process (Brown and Loosemore, 2015). For instance, back in 2014, Brazilian Federal Police had been carried out investigation on the allegations of corruption.
Based on the investigation, it is evident that 16 construction firms had involved in collusive behaviour through overpricing in infrastructure contracts (Signor, et al., 2017). In the same vein, it is reported that construction managers are tempted to involve in tender rigging and collusion in order to win the tenders (Bowen, Edwards and Cattell, 2015). On the other hand, consultants might also involve in bid rigging, by intentionally allow insufficient time for tender preparation in order to put certain bidders at an advantage (Brown and Loosemore, 2015). It is therefore reflected in the result, which consultant and contractor similarly rank collusion at 5th place.
Past studies uncovered that professional negligence in the construction industry is generally in the forms of poor documentation, poor supervision of works, poor quality of work, inadequate information flow among parties, and inadequate compliance to safety requirements at the site (Ho, 2011; Ho, 2013).
It is understandable that contractor rank professional negligence at 3rd among all the variables, as contractors could be blamed for negligence for building failure. To cite an example, in the case of the collapse of the second Penang Bridge ramp, it is found out that the structural failure appears to stem from negligence by contractor (Ji, 2013).
According to Table 4.7, the four organisation groups have statistically significant differences in terms of their opinions on occurrence of fraud in construction industry. Contractor tends to have higher mean score in comparison to government agency and developer. It is evident that contractors
often involve in fraudulent behaviour for time extension, preparation of daily report, and financial anomalies (Shah and Alotaibi, 2018). Past study conducted by Fauzi, Asat and Ahmad (2019) highlighted that the spending power of power managers and field supervisors can be one of the contributors to fraudulent behaviour. From another point of view, Cartlidge (2011) believed that consultants such as quantity surveyors might involve in conducting fraud by signing off overpayments in return for kickbacks. Gunduz and Önder (2013) added that fraudulent behaviour can also exist in other forms such as inflated invoices or use fictitious materials to claim for work done.
Vee and Skitmore (2003) in a past study pointed out that unfairness can be conducted in the forms of biased tendering evaluation and re-tendering process. In this regard, consultants, as the main party involving in tendering evaluation, rank unfair conduct at third place. Developers, who often act as the client in a construction project, are deemed to be the party that is most prone to unfair conducts (Bowen, et al., 2007). The unfairness of client can be in the forms of forcing consultants to make unfair decisions and unreasonable fee negotiation. On top of that, Bowen, Edwards and Cattell (2012) suggested that consultants are susceptible to unfair conducts due to client refuses or fails to pay the outstanding balance of consultants’ professional fees based on the provisions of client agreement. In view of this, developers rank unfair conduct at 2nd place among the eight variables.
Construction projects are prone to the issue of inadequate health and safety provisions after award of contract. In this phase, it might involve lower level of consideration for people and environment (Shah and Alotaibi, 2018).
Contractor, as the main party that takes part in the construction work after the award of contract, could be viewed as the party that is most susceptible to this conduct. In view of this, it is not surprised to see contractors rank inadequate health and safety provisions at 2nd among the eight unethical conducts. Besides, inadequate health and safety provisions has ranked at 1st place in the category of consultant, indicating that consultants view safety as a serious unethical conduct in the construction industry. A comparable finding is reported by Funmilola, et al. (2013) which revealed that architects and quantity surveyors perceived that level of compliance of professionals to safety issues is low.
Dishonesty behaviour is one of the unethical professional practices happening in the construction industry. Bowen, et al. (2007) revealed that contractors tend to act dishonest during interim valuation as they tend to over- claim. Besides, contractors are also perceived to act dishonest when fulfilling the contractual specifications. This is therefore reflected in the result, which contractors rank dishonesty behaviour at 4th place among the eight variables.
Similarly, respondents from government agency rank dishonesty behaviour at 3rd place. Bowen, et al. (2007) uncovered that the dishonesty conducts of government agency often involve awarding contract to specific contractors, acting bias on selection of consultants, and unfair work allocation. Bowen, Edwards and Cattell (2012) added that public servants allegedly manipulate the tender process in a project for the sake of individual reward and political gain. On the other hand, despite dishonesty behaviour only ranked 5th among the consultants, they are the party that has been perceived to involve in dishonesty behaviour. Purposely not recommending the payments, biasing to certain tenderers in the tendering process, and increasing contractor cash flow on purpose after receiving bribery are among the common dishonesty behaviours conducted by the consultants (Bowen, et al., 2007; Le, et al., 2014b).
In overall, it is worth noting that the government agency has a relatively low mean value for all the eight variables. This is however in contrast with the current situation in Malaysia. Based on the records from Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC), among the 5652 arrests made between 2015 and 2020, nearly half of individuals involved government officials. Whereas in 2020, 467 civil servants had been arrested by MACC, including 8 from top management, 109 in management, and 350 support staff (Nik Anis, 2021). The data indicates that unethical conducts are not uncommon in the government agency, which is in contradict with the result in this research. The result is however not entirely unexpected, as the civil servants tend to rate lower than the actual situation due to social desirability and concern on the image of government, coupled with the fear of being reported. On the other hand, as presented in Table 4.7, contractors have a generally higher mean score compared with other groups. This is parallel with
the findings of Bowen, Edwards and Cattell (2015), which revealed that contractors are more susceptible to unethical conducts, due to the fact that they are involving directly in building contracts. Furthermore, contractors are arguably the construction party with the least education ethical training, hence they are prone to unethical conducts.
Table 4.7: Mean and Ranking of General Forms of Unethical Professional Practices
Ref General Forms
Total (N=206) Developer (N=44) Consultant (N=54) Contractor (N=60) Government Agency (N=48)
Chi- Square
Asymp.
Sig.
Mean SD Rank Mean SD Rank Mean SD Rank Mean SD Rank Mean SD Rank
A7 Inadequate Health and Safety Provisions
3.112 1.140 1 3.432 0.998 1 3.204 1.139 1 3.117 1.195 2 2.708 1.110 1 10.378 0.016*
A6 Unfair
Conduct 2.854 1.099 2 2.955 1.056 2 3.000 1.289 3 3.017 0.948 7 2.396 0.984 5 12.194 0.007**
A2 Conflict of
Interest 2.830 1.080 3 2.432 0.950 6 2.981 1.173 4 3.217 0.993 1 2.542 1.010 2 19.699 0.000**
A1 Bribery 2.820 1.041 4 2.727 0.872 3 3.037 1.115 2 3.033 0.938 6 2.396 1.106 4 14.806 0.002**
A8 Dishonesty
Behaviour 2.791 1.143 5 2.523 1.000 5 2.981 1.189 5 3.067 1.118 4 2.479 1.148 3 11.799 0.008**
A3 Collusion 2.757 1.082 6 2.705 0.978 4 2.981 1.173 5 3.050 1.048 5 2.188 0.891 8 20.802 0.000**
A4 Professional
Negligence 2.587 1.082 7 2.159 0.888 7 2.685 1.130 7 3.067 1.056 3 2.271 0.984 6 22.309 0.000**
A5 Fraud 2.262 1.100 8 1.705 0.978 8 2.333 1.182 8 2.667 0.986 8 2.188 1.045 7 24.003 0.000**
Note: **.The mean difference is significant at the 0.01 level of significance.
*. The mean difference is significant at the 0.05 level of significance.
Table 4.8: Comparison of Unethical Professional Practices with Previous Studies
Countries Authors
Top Four Unethical Professional Practices Identified in the Current Research Inadequate Health and
Safety Provisions Unfair Conduct Conflict of
Interest Bribery
Saudi Arabia Shah and Alotaibi (2018)
Zambia Zulu and Muleya (2018)
Ghana Ameyaw, et al. (2017)
Kuoribo, et al. (2021)
South Africa Oke, Aigbavboa and Mangena (2017)
Bowen, Edwards and Cattell (2015)
Bowen, Edwards and Cattell (2012)
Malaysia Adnan, et al. (2012)
Total 1 4 3 8
4.9 Influential Factors of Unethical Professional Practices 4.9.1 Mean Ranking
Table 4.9 summarises the means and standard deviations of the influential factors of unethical professional practices existing in Malaysian construction industry. Respondents are asked to rate the level of agreement on the influential factors of the unethical professional practices, with 1 indicates
‘strongly disagree’ and 5 indicates ‘strongly agree’. It appears that all of the variables have a mean score of 3.0 and above, exceeding the cut-off point of the research, implying that all the ten influential factors are considered notable.
The five most critical influential factors of corruption are deliberated in the following discussion. The top five influential factors that scored the highest mean are:
(1) intense competition (mean = 3.835), (2) economic survival (mean = 3.782), (3) lack of supervision (mean = 3.757),
(4) individual financial pressure (mean = 3.738), and (5) social ties (mean = 3.602).
It comes as no surprise that intense competition to rank first in the research with a mean score of 3.835, due to the competitive nature of the construction industry coupling with tight profit margin (Abdul-Rahman, Hanid and Yap, 2014). The result validates the earlier study conducted by Yap, Lee and Skitmore (2020), which proved that intense competition in construction industry is a significant driver of unethical professional practices, wherein the intense competitive nature has ranked fourth among 18 causes of corruption identified in the study. To take it further, many past researches had identified the intense competition in tendering process as one of the main contributors to unethical conducts such as bribery and bid rigging (Gunduz and Önder, 2013;
Shan, et al., 2016; Zhang, et al., 2017). The competitiveness of the Malaysian local construction industry is highlighted by Rani, et al. (2021), which emphasised that the presence of foreign players in the local market gives rise
to increasingly competitive market condition. In this regard, the construction players can be tempted to conduct unethical behaviours.
Economic survival is ranked second in the overall ranking. The market condition can have a great impact on the occurrence of unethical conducts.
Particularly in economic setbacks, unethical practices can be the last measure for some firms to survive, hence, unethical conducts such as bribery acts are instigated (Le, et al., 2014b; Locatelli, et al., 2016; Chan and Owusu, 2017;
Zhang, et al., 2017). Additionally, the lack of public morality coupled with the absence of positive industry climate further stimulate the unethical behaviour in the industry (Le, et al., 2014a). Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2016) further discussed that the chances for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to engage in unethical conducts is higher due to the insufficient time and resources to obtain information regarding complex bureaucracy. Against this background, SMEs are forced to conduct corrupt practices such as bribery in order to secure their advantages. This is corroborated by Liu, Zhao and Li (2017), which stated that small and medium contractors often indulge in unethical conducts for the sake of economic survival and to maintain workload in the competitive industry.
Lack of supervision can encourage unethical professional practices and is ranked third. Lack of supervision can allegedly boost unethical conducts and have been corroborated in past studies (Li, et al., 2013; Owusu, Chan and Shan, 2019). Shah and Alotaibi (2018) added that lack of supervision on the consultants creates opportunity for them to carry out unethical conducts, such as purposely impose unfair and hefty fines on contractors as a means to request bribery indirectly. In the construction industry, there are various factors could lead to lack of supervision, for instance, when there is relationship between supervisors and the parties, or when the supervisors elected are lack in ethical perceptions (Le, et al., 2014a).
Financial pressure can be one of the main drivers of unethical conducts and is in fourth place. Gunduz and Önder (2013) discussed that construction parties tend to commit fraudulent behaviour if the salary is insufficient for one’s need. In Malaysia, minimum wage is RM 1200, however, the living cost for a single person in Kuala Lumpur is approximately RM 3262, which is
almost three times higher from the minimum wage (Azman, 2021). In fact, it is reported that around 2.2 million of Malaysian households are short of RM 1000 or above to reach a living wage, and the figure is anticipated to rise after the impose of Movement Control Order (MCO) in relation to Covid-19 (Suresh Ram, 2020). In this regard, this is to say that individual financial pressure is not an unfamiliar topic to Malaysians, and can hence boost the unethical conducts in the construction industry.
Social ties is in fifth place, indicating that relationship among parties in a project could bring impact to the project implementation as it might lead to unethical conducts. Maintaining good relationship with other parties is essential in construction project, especially for contractor, as they need to maintain good relationships with other project stakeholders such as clients, suppliers, governments and consultants (Liu, Zhao and Li, 2017). However, relationship between parties, whether a distant or close relationship, can be one of the main roots of discriminatory acts (Chan and Owusu, 2017). In this line of thought, Ling and Tran (2012) perceived over-close relationship significantly encourage unfair conducts. A comparable finding is reported in China, which revealed that the close relationship between contracting parties makes the public projects susceptible to corruption (Le, et al., 2014b). A similar case has been reported in India, where the social ties between top management and government officials are considered common for business to survive in competition (Collins, Uhlenbruck and Rodriguez, 2009). This is further justified by Yap, Lee and Skitmore (2020), who opined that not all parties will have fair and equal opportunity in tender award, as sometimes it is highly dependent on the quality of social ties involved.