Organisational efficacy and the role of management control systems on corporate sustainability of the construction industry / Nur Arfah Mustapha

This dissertation aims at providing a better understanding of corporate sustainability by firstly examining the relationship between Organisational Efficacy and Corporate Sustainability, secondly by examining the relationship between Organisational Efficacy and Management Control Systems, and lastly by examining the extent to which Management Control System dimensions mediate the relationship between Organisational Efficacy and Corporate Sustainability in the housing development construction industry context. The research model was grounded in the corporate sustainability model. In addition, two theoretical lenses were adapted for this study. Firstly, collective efficacy theory was adapted to explain the direct relationship of organisational efficacy with corporate sustainability, and levers of control theory was adapted to explain the mediating effects of management control system. The study was conducted among housing development contractors listed in the Real Estate and Housing Developer Association (REHDA) and Bursa Malaysia with 84 respondents from the Central and Southern region of Peninsular Malaysia. The empirical approaches that applied PLS-SEM were identified through a literature search. The results were evaluated by standard reliability and validity measures for PLS-SEM, and the structural equation model estimation produced reasonable results. The presence study showed that all hypotheses were supported. The empirical results of this study led to several significant findings, which show that organisational efficacy positively influences corporate sustainability. Further, management control system has positive significant mediation effect on corporate sustainability within the housing development construction industry. Theoretically, this study provides a theoretical model that explains the importance of corporate sustainability within a housing development construction industry context. The theoretical contribution of this work is that it extends the corporate sustainability framework. The construct (i.e., management control system) was demonstrated to mediate significantly the relationship between organisational efficacy and corporate sustainability. Further extension includes the demonstration of how collective efficacy and levers of control theory were used to predict the relationships in the model.