The effects of organizational culture on firm performance in construction and building materials industry in Vietnam

Abstract

Along with the strong development of science and technology, companies need to create their own competitive advantages and effective business strategies to make differences and succeed in today's tough market. To achieve such results, the core values and the factors affecting firm performance have always been an unsolved problem for companies and businesses; especially firms in Vietnam, a developing country with many potential opportunities for not only domestic businesses and investors but also foreign ones. Recently, construction and building materials market in Vietnam is more volatile. The companies in this industry are competing fiercely each other to get some achievements. In addition to these market factors, organizations or firms also need to build and invest for themselves a team of quality staffs and a dynamic and professional workplace which can be called "organizational/corporate culture". Therefore, the aim of this research is to understand the effects of organizational culture on firm performance in Construction and Building Materials Industry in Vietnam. By applying the Denison model with data collected from 284 respondents working in construction and building materials firms in Vietnam and one in-depth interview, the research sought out that Creating Change and Agreements are the most popular factors applied. Besides, organizational cultural traits influence on performance through overall performance, market share, profitability, sales growth and employee satisfaction aspects. Despite of some limitation, this study somehow brings to construction and building materials companies in Vietnam the findings and results about the effects of organizational culture on firm performance. From that, each firm can formulate strategies to build and invest to create effective corporate culture and professional working environment in order to enhance firm performance which is also considered as an important competitive advantage comparing to other construction and building materials firms in Vietnam nowadays.