This research report was submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science (Building) in Project Management to the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, School of Construction Economics and Management at the University of the Witwatersrand , 2017 / Problem Statement: Organisational culture determines employee remuneration, opportunities for promotion, interaction between employees and their job in general. It has a potential to affect the degree to which employees are satisfied with their jobs. If the impact is negative, this will create a problem of low employee morale, reduced performance, and hence low production levels. If this effect is positive, this may boost the morale of employees and increase performance and production. It is, therefore, important to understand the relationship between organisational culture and employee job satisfaction to maximize the benefits and reduce the negative impact. Purpose: The aim of this research was to find out if the prevailing organisational culture has an influence on employee job satisfaction with specific reference to the Botswana construction industry. The objectives of the research were to establish the prevailing and preferred organisational cultures, establish employee job satisfaction, and determine the relationship between organisational culture and employee job satisfaction. Methodology: Focusing on the Botswana construction industry and using a cross sectional study, two concurrent surveys were conducted to collect quantitative data for organisational culture and employee job satisfaction from three construction organisations selected to represent small, medium, and large organisations. Findings: The prevailing organisational culture in all the three organisations was found to be the market culture. The clan culture was found to be the preferred organisational culture in two of the organisations (the medium and large). The hierarchy culture was found to be the preferred organisational culture in the small organisation. Despite employees preferring different cultures (clan and hierarchy) to the prevailing culture (market), employees were generally satisfied with their current jobs, suggesting that there might be no relationship between organisational culture and employee job satisfaction and pointing to the possible existence of a third variable. Implications: The market culture which was found to be prevailing in all the three organisations is characterised by aggressive competition and a focus on winning a share of the market. This indicated that the construction industry was reacting to the current harsh economic conditions by adopting an aggressive survival strategy. By rejecting the prevailing market culture, employees might have felt neglected since the market culture does not focus on employees. Employees remained satisfied with their current jobs despite rejecting the prevailing organisational culture and this might be an indication that jobs are not available leaving employees with no option but to like the only jobs which they have. / MT2018

This thesis explores variations and shifts in gender roles in housing delivery and the construction. Although presently excluded from construction activities, women have in the past constituted substantial proportions of builders in many countries worldwide. In parts of sub-Saharan Africa, for example, women have traditionally been responsible for building house. However, recent studies and reports indicate that women in Botswana and other countries in the region are grossly underrepresented in construction activities. The few women currently employed in the construction industry work mostly as labourers. Boserup and other scholars have attributed the gendered division of labour to economic development, technological changes, patriarchy, capitalism colonialism or modernisation Based on qualitative and quantitative studies undertaken in the township of Lobatse, Botswana, and adopting a pluralistic and holistic approach, I however posit that gender roles and relations are outcomes of negotiation and normalisation processes through which men and women (as individuals or in groups) use their power and positions in society to access and control resources and services. The outcomes and negotiation processes are themselves conditioned by a web of interacting and intersecting historical, social, economic, political and environmental factors. I further argue that in the context of Botswana, traditional gender roles were shaped by prevailing patriarchal ideologies and institutions, the country's fragile environment, subsistence modes of production, and frequent intertribal wars that characterised the region. However, men's takeover of housing and construction activities that emerged during the colonial period was due to the intersection of Western influences, men's temporary migrations to South Africa, commoditisation of labour and the introduction of the market economy. Women's exclusion from the construction industry has since been entrenched through the atrophication of women's traditional building skills caused by widespread preferences for exogenous building materials and Western style houses. Due to lack of non-traditional building skills, women have been forced to work as labourers in the waged construction industry or as unpaid managers, supervisors and caterers in self-help housing. Robbed of their ability to build houses, women have been obliged to negotiate new gender relationships and strategies for accessing and owning houses. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2005.