The menace of unethical practices within construction organisations is a significant concern, prompting discussions among scholars, practitioners and anti-graft agencies. While the punitive measures against unethical behaviour in construction have been severe, their effectiveness remains questionable. This study advocates a shift towards an ethical leadership framework, specifically an Integrity-Based Approach to Ethics Management (IBAEM), which has seen successful adoption in Europe, North America and Hong Kong but has rarely been embraced in developing nations. This study, therefore, investigated the barriers to adopting an IBAEM in Nigerian construction organisations through a survey of construction professionals, namely architects, builders, engineers and quantity surveyors.
The 149 data collected were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics including the Shapiro-Wilk test, Mann-Whitney U test, factor analysis and partial least square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM).
Sixteen critical barriers to IBAEM adoption were identified and categorised into ethics knowledge-related, organisation-related, and stakeholder-related. The results of the PLS-SEM indicated that: (1) stakeholder-related barriers were found to significant interact with ethics knowledge-related barriers (β = 0.440), (2) organisation-related barriers significantly associate with ethics knowledge-related barriers (β = 0.378) while (3) organisation-related barriers significantly link with stakeholder-related barriers (β = 0.567). Interestingly, the 16 critical barriers were found to explain 98.7% of the barriers to IBAEM adoption in the Nigerian construction industry.
This research enriches the existing literature by revealing the potential of IBAEM and providing practical implications to improve ethical standards in the construction sector. The ethics management from an integrity lens, which was investigated in this study, provides findings for better ethics management in construction organisations and judicious use of construction resources.
