Ethical perceptions and demographic factors: A comparative study between contractors and designers in the Malaysia construction industry

Corporate ethics together with Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is becoming a new requirement for a successful business in the 21 ^st century. This trend continues to be strengthened throughout the industry and the construction industry cannot be exceptional. However, for construction ethics management, different approaches are required from other industries due to the project based feature of the industry. In construction projects, designers and contractors are two main stakeholders in respect of the product. This paper investigates the ethical perceptions of designers and contractors in the Malaysian construction industry. 18- major ethical issues have been identified and used in the questionnaire survey. 8-construction companies (contractors) and 8-engineering consulting firms (designers) have been involved in the survey. The ethical issues are ranked based on 'frequency' and 'seriousness' for contractors and designers respectively. In addition the relationship between demographic factors and ethical issues, comparisons between the ethical perceptions of contractors and designers have been analysed through SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences). The outcome shows that there is no significant difference between contractors and designers in terms of 'seriousness'. For 'frequency' of ethical issues, there seems to be some differences between them. The result also indicates that demographic factors do not influence the ethical perceptions. Overall, contractors and designers in Malaysia have similar ethical perceptions despite the differences in their roles and responsibilities in construction projects. Future researches in other countries are recommended to establish a theoretical background of ethical perceptions of construction professionals.