Drivers, Motivations and Barriers for Being a Socially
Responsible Firm in Construction: a Critical Review
Q Zhang
*
, B T H Lim and B L Oo
Faculty of Built Environment, UNSW, Sydney, NSW 2052
Abstrac t. W ith the rapid changes in societal and environmental expectations, the concept of
corporate social responsibility (CSR) has increasingly gaining its popularity among academic
and practitioners within the construction industry. CSR research in construction is moving
forwa rd on a wide range of fronts but it is also fragmented as to how researchers
operationalized motivators, drivers and barriers towards CSR imp le mentation. In addressing
this, this paper attempts to map out the key d rivers, motivations and barriers to implementing
CSR in the construction industry by undertaking a review of 69 relevant published articles.
The findings have been classified into three categories of drivers, nine categories of
motivations and five perspectives of barriers. The overall results reveal that the most cited
drivers and motivations of construction firms are market pressure and branding, reputation
and image, respectively, wh ile the significant aspects of barriers mainly co me from the
business entity itself (e.g., lack of resource and capability). In conclusion, the findings offer a
current state of art on the operationalization of key drivers, mot ivators and barriers to CSR
implementation in construction and recommend some research directions . Future works
should consider: (1) conduct empirical studies to test the effectiveness of the identified factors;
(2) explore the relat ionship between key stakeholders and CSR performance; and (3) propose
effective management mechanism to facilitate commun ication, cooperation and collaboration
among stakeholders of construction firms.
1. Introduction
Over the past two decades, the discourse of the construction industry has been replete with
recommendations for the industry to reduce its waste generation and energy consumption, and
operational impact on the local and wider communities [1]. All these progressively and collectively
lead to the uptake of voluntary enforcement of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the
construction industry. In general, CSR is conceptualized around the dimensions of social,
environment and economics, emphasizing the overall contribution of businesses to sustainable
development and improved human well-being [2].
In construction, a considerable amount of research has documented the good and bad sides of
CSR, and trends of CSR research in construction. For example, Lin et al.’s [3] recent critique of
studies on CSR have shown that the transitions of research perspectives and focuses have been
explored as a major research theme. Shi et al., [4] reviewed and analyzed basis thoughts and
evaluation ways of the construction enterprises’ CSR practices for the development of CSR
assessment model in China. Also, Ali et al. ’s [5] comparative analyses CSR disclosures of
568
Zhang, Q., Lim, B. and Oo, B.
Drivers, Motivations and Barriers for Being a Socially Responsible Firm in Construction: a Critical Review.
In Proceedings of the International Workshop on Environmental Management, Science and Engineering (IWEMSE 2018), pages 568-575
ISBN: 978-989-758-344-5
Copyright © 2018 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved

construction organizations in developed and developing countries have shown that the influence of
key stakeholders on CSR practices are the key driver for CSR implementation in both developed and
developing countries. Despite all these, it appears that little has been done to identify the key drivers,
motivations and barriers for the implementation of construction firms’ CSR.
In addressing the gaps above, this research aims to map out the key drivers, motivations and
barriers to implementing CSR in construction by undertaking a review of published articles. The
findings will not only provide implications for organization to propose effective strategies for better
fulfilment of CSR practices; but also inform relevant government agencies about the key drivers,
motivators and barriers that could enable them to formulate better-targeted policies and initiatives to
promote the uptake and implementation of CSR effectively; and reveal potential new CSR research
directions in construction.
2. Research methods
This study adopted a literature survey approach, in which peer-reviewed research articles in CSR
within the construction domain were reviewed. This tends to support Lu et al.’s [6] and Mok et al.’s
[7] arguments that critical review of academic journals and conference papers, with research citation
impacts such as SCImago Journal Rank and H-index, could offer a more reliable and robust current
state-of-arts of the topic being studied. The authors further suggested that it is helpful to investigate
retrieved articles with an identical analytical construct regarding research aims and objectives. This
follows that editorial notes and book reviews had been excluded in this study.
Electronic searches of relevant publications on CSR were conducted in 20th November 2017 in
the Web of Science and Scopus databases. The scope of this research mainly focusses on CSR of
construction enterprises in the industry, while CSR of general organizations is beyond our scope.
With the assistance of the appropriate Boolean operator, a total of 349 articles were identified based
on the search keywords (e.g., CSR, drivers, motivations, barriers and construction). This research
attempted to distinguish the concepts of drivers and motivations. The term driver refers to the factors
that ‘mandate’ corporations in implementing CSR initiatives and practices. This tends to support
Okereke’s [8] arguments that drivers relate to the compelling factors that arise from wider societal
pressure and environmental concerns while motivations are factors that relate to the innate concern of
business for profit and comparative advantage. Motivational factors on their own are capable of
inciting firms to fulfill CSR practices even in the absence of any form of direct external (regulatory
and public) pressure [8]. These publications were thereafter exported into Endnote X8 for a two-
pronged filtering process [9]. First, the titles and abstracts of publications were examined for
inclusion of relevant search keywords whereby 142 of the 340 publications were found to contain at
least one of search keywords. Thereafter, the contents of those 142 articles were examined following
the suggestions proposed by Weber [10]. Overall, only 69 publications which focus on CSR in the
construction industry were found relevant for subsequent content analysis. Figure 1 presents the
distributions of articles from 2006 to 2018 (including one article which will be published in 2018).
The interest of CSR fluctuates but increasing especially in recent three years.
Figure 1. Distribution of retrieved articles from 2006 to 2008.
2 2
3
5
2
9
5
4
5
11
10 10
1
0
10
20
2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 2018 2020
Number of published papers
Drivers, Motivations and Barriers for Being a Socially Responsible Firm in Construction: a Critical Review
569

For this study, the purpose of content analysis, as suggested by Stemler [11], is to enable the
researchers to contextualize and identify the categorization of drivers, motivations and barriers
influencing CSR implementation in the construction industry. The analytical process started with the
manual decoding of relevant contents (i.e., keywords or sentences) regarding the drivers, motivators
and barriers into an Excel spreadsheet. After that, following the procedure proposed by Hsieh and
Shannon [12], those excerpts were further classified into the categories/sub-themes under the three
main themes.
3. Findings
3.1. Drivers
According to Okereke [8], the main sources of external pressures are usually governmental policies
and both market pressure and innovation and technology development. Table 1 illustrates the drivers
of implementing CSR in the construction industry. The results show that there are three main
categories of drivers to CSR implementation in construction.
Table 1. Drivers of CSR implementation.
Drivers
Frequency
(F)
Attributes
Market pressure
22
Critical stakeholders’ (e.g., clients, investor, shareholders customers,
end-users, joint venture) demand or pressure, market shift
Competitor pressure (e.g., competitors’ CSR strategies)
Policy pressure
18
Mandatory policies, regulations, guidance, requirements or initiatives
Innovation and technology
development
4
Innovations and technology development (e.g., new tools, new
technologies, new method of construction)
It is notable that most of the studies cited market pressure (F=22) as the key driver out of the three
being identified. These may be due to: (1) the changing expectation of stakeholders such as clients,
end-users and competitors [13]; (2) intense rivalry among construction companies for competitive
advantages [14]. The findings also reveal that construction companies are largely under
governmental policy pressure (e.g., regulations, guidance and initiatives) (F=17) to implement CSR
practices [15-17]. This further adds weights to the conclusion of Bevan and Yung ’s [16] and
Loosemore and Lim’s [18] research that CSR in construction is largely compliance driven. Lastly,
the results are in line to those of Okereke, Shen et al., Wang et al. [8, 19, 20], pointing to the
importance of innovation and technology (e.g., BIM technology, new green materials) (F=4) in
driving CSR implementation in construction. It is believed that innovation and technology
development in CSR strategy has the potential to result in massive cost reductions and competitive
advantage [19]. For this reason, construction companies know the consequences if they allow their
competitors to get ahead in innovation and technology development and therefore, they are more
proactive to take CSR practices [13].
3.2. Motivations
Table 2 summarizes the motivations of implementing CSR. Overall, the identified motivations can be
operationalized and classified into: financial benefits; organization culture; business strategy;
branding, reputation and image; human resource benefits; supplier-induced benefits; persuasion and
inspiration; relationship building; and policy benefits.
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Table 2. Motivations of CSR implementation.
Motivations
Frequency(F)
Attributes
Branding,
reputation and
image
33
Branding, image management, public reputation
Public expectation/pressure, media pressure
Organization
culture
28
Organizational culture and awareness: core business value, personal values
of the founder or entrepreneur, ethical beliefs and consideration, doing the
right thing, business imperatives
Motivations
Frequency(F)
Attributes
Financial benefits
24
Improve profitability through reduced operational costs and increased
revenues, increased turnover, shareholder returns
Investment attraction, economic opportunities
Human resource
benefits
14
Better employee recruitment, development and retention, employee morale,
commitment and loyalty
Workforce productivity and efficiency
Relationship
building
11
Good relationship building, interpersonal harmony, communication purpose,
cooperation intentions, networking opportunities, trust increasing,
credibility gain
Persuasion and
inspiration
10
Globalization, national trends, national culture
Successful cases, best practices, past positive results
Supplier-induced
benefits
8
Reduction of supply risk of green materials
Provision of cost
Strategic business
direction
7
Business strategy (e.g., business transaction, globalization), corporate vision
and mission
Policy benefits
3
Incentive policies
Our findings reveal that branding, reputation and image (F=33) is the most commonly cited
motivation. Construction firms are motivated to commit CSR practices because of the desire to
maintain good brand and public reputation, manage their image under the supervision of public eyes
and media attention [21-23]. Apart from these, it is notable that companies are increasingly becoming
aware of the importance of CSR practices and address these in their organization culture (F=28).
These results tend to support Zhu and Zhang’s [24] argument about top management’s values and
ethical beliefs can determine the extent to which a company engages in CSR practices. Furthermore,
the results are in line with many CSR relationship researches in the construction (e.g., [3, 21, 22, 25]),
arguing that there are potential relationships between organizational financial benefits (F=24) (e.g.,
improved profitability and to attract investment or obtain economic opportunities) and CSR practices.
We also found firms can be motivated by human resource benefits (F=14) like better employee
recruitment and employee morale [14] and intention of good relationship build (F=11) [26]. The
results also shown the influence of persuasion and inspiration within the industry (F=10) (e.g.,
competitors successful cases)[1]; supplier-induced benefits (F=8) (e.g., construction suppliers’ green
material cost benefits)[6]; strategic business direction (F=7)(e.g., business transaction, extend
international construction business)[1]; and policy benefits (F=3) (e.g., tax deduction on charity
donation) [27].
3.3. Barriers
Table 3 summarizes the barriers to implementing CSR from perspectives of government policy,
business organization, attributes of CSR, stakeholders, real estate market and construction industry
[28].
Drivers, Motivations and Barriers for Being a Socially Responsible Firm in Construction: a Critical Review
571

Table 3. Barriers of CSR implementation.
Perspectives
Frequency(F)
Berries
Business
organization
51
Lack of awareness, knowledge, and information within an organization
Lack of capacity and expertise
Lack of internal resources
Lack of strategic guidance and support from senior leaders or managers
within the organization
The negative attitude within the organization
Stakeholders
18
Lack of communication, coordination, and cooperation among stakeholders
Unclear stakeholder role and power
Stakeholder interest conflict
Lack of awareness and knowledge of clients
Perspectives
Frequency(F)
Berries
Government
policy
15
Lack of governmental support
Attributes of CSR
10
Lack of measurement of CSR benefits
Incremental time and cost
Lack of appropriate technology
Real estate
market
10
Lack of attractiveness of CSR to clients
Consider CSR in a generic way, not in a particular way
Construction
industry
10
Attitudes of society, cultures of the construction industry
Lack of authoritative evaluation tools, processes, and frameworks to assess
CSR
Lack of credibility of the disclosed information of CSR
Interestingly, we generally found that compared with other four perspectives, most of the studies
cited internal business organizational barriers (F=51) as the most significant barriers. Corresponding
to identified drivers, well awareness, better knowledge and information, and positive attitude of
CSR[24]; and clear strategic business direction [1] can lead to firms’ CSR practices. On the other
hand, however, our results showed that lack of these aspects may be hinder CSR implementations [1,
3, 29]. The second most cited groups of barriers are from the stakeholders’ perspective (F=18). This
is also a reflection of Lin et al. [3]’s conclusion, arguing that lack of communication, coordination
and cooperation among stakeholders; unclear stakeholder role and power; interests conflict may
hinder organization’s CSR commitment to some extent. From the government policy perspective,
corresponding to the findings of drivers, mandatory policies can drive the construction firms [15-17,
29], while, on the other hand, lack of government support may lead to negative CSR practices [6, 29].
Despite these, many studies pointed out that attributes of CSR [18] (F=10); real estate market (F=10)
and construction industry considerations [23] (F=10) may lead to construction firms’ hesitation in
taking CSR actions. These results tend to support Lim and Loosemore’s [18] analysis of Australia
and New Zealand construction firms’ CSR practices which shows that there CSR in construction is
largely informant and unsophisticated and in its early stages of development.
4. Conclusions and implications
In conclusion, this paper undertook a critical review of studies relating to drivers, motivations and
barriers of construction firms’ CSR implementation. The overall picture that emerged from here is
that the key categories of drivers, motivations and barriers could be operationalized into three, nine
and five sub-themes, respectively. We found that most studies cited market pressure (F=22);
branding, reputation and image (F=33); and business organizational perspective (F=51) as key factors
influencing construction firm’s CSR implementation. The findings of this review offer various
managerial and research implications.
Firstly , from the top management perspectives, firms should distinguish country-specific and
industry-specific CSR implementations. In order to match local prevailing conditions in economic,
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social and environmental manners, localizing CSR practices is suggested as an imperative strategy
especially in undertaking international construction businesses [23, 30]. When employing CSR
initiatives at a corporate level, it is critical for management to specialize and localize their CSR
activities to possibly reduce the cultural or institutional remoteness between home and host countries
[13].This further adds weights to Petrovic-Lazarevic’s [23, 26] conclusion that companies need to
contextualize and articulate their CSR disclosure to local clients’ and communities’ expectations.
Furthermore, good organizational governance is a prerequisite for effective CSR implementation
whereby companies should develop and commit to codes of business conduct and communicate them
to all stakeholders [30, 31]. More importantly , the management should perceive CSR as a strategic
vision [13, 32].
Secondly, this study provides implications for government agencies. As a significant provider of
policies which are considered as critical driver and motivation for CSR implementation, there is a
need for government agencies to develop better-targeted strategies to encourage companies to engage
in socially responsible behaviors. These further agree with Liao et al.’s [33] suggestion that
government should give mandatory requirements for CSR commitments by legislation and
regulations like adjusting policy to respond to environmental problems, especially for those
corporations in their early stages of CSR implementation [33].
Lastly, it is acknowledged that there are limitations in this research. The effectiveness of the
identified factors has not been empirically tested in this study. As such, future research could
examine how those key motivators, drivers and barriers vary across different country contexts and
types of construction companies. Also, the identified drivers, motivations and barriers are aimed at
construction firms’ CSR implementation, whether they are suitable for other generation organizations
can be discussed in the future research. Furthermore, it is not known who are the key stakeholders in
influencing firms’ CSR implementation and performance. Further studies could be done to classify
different key stakeholders and examine mechanisms for better communication, cooperation and
collaboration among diverse stakeholders of construction firms.
Acknowledgment
Qian Zhang gratefully acknowledges the funding and support provided by the University of New
South Wales-China Scholarship Council (UNSW-CSC) joint scholarship.
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