Moral leadership education in construction

Construction is largely viewed as a fragmented industry due to its project based nature. Majority of construction projects involve one-off client and are non-recurrent. Such fragmentation is due to the various cultural values, processes and interests of diverse participating organisations in project delivery. The industry is further viewed as being of low trust with competitive and adversarial relationships as the dominant strand of its culture. There is mounting pressure for construction to change. The discourse of change towards collaboration and authentic and moral leadership espouses an improvement in contracts, communications and management. The recommended change remains an aspiration of the policy makers as well as academicians. The premise of this paper is to give a fresh perspective for Higher Education and its role in developing the moral leaders of tomorrow’s construction industry. The focus within construction is mainly on management functionality ignoring the psychological and sociological aspects of leadership. Higher Education in construction has a pivotal role developing moral leaders of tomorrow's construction. It is argued that an integrated education module of culture, ethics, values and moral leadership in construction will be beneficial for future leaders of the industry.