The Impact of Professional Culture On Dispute Resolution

This research is aimed at investigating the professional cultures of the participants who come together in a construction project. The question posed was whether they shared a culture or had differences, and if differences existed whether these differences had an effect on the reactions of each of the groups to disputes and their resolution. A survey was carried out among professional groupsin Australia and Sri-Lanka and the survey data from both countries were analyzed using statistical tests. The results show that professional groups share similarities in professional culture as well as differences. It also showed that these cultural differences created an adversarial atmosphere among construction project participants. It was also found that introducing a party outside of the usual professional groups would be beneficial in the resolution process. Respondents were of the opinionthat the third party outside of the construction team could be a lawyer.This type of research is tillnew within the field of construction. The contributions of this work are to link professional culture and conflict and give some indication how such conflict could be addressed