Malaysian construction firms' social sustainability via organizational innovativeness and government support: The mediating role of market culture

The increasing demand by construction stakeholders for ecologically viable construction is pushing the construction firms to adopt social sustainability practices while executing construction projects. While there are several studies establishing how external factors and organizational innovativeness have been influencing social sustainability performance of construction firms, social sustainability performance of Malaysian construction firms is still relatively low. This study therefore proposed that market orientation culture is a significant mediator through which government support can favourably influence firm's social sustainability performance. Empirical support for the argument was derived from the data collected from 172 large construction firms in the Malaysian construction industry. The results suggest that construction firms require managerial initiatives to comply with government regulations and leverage it to facilitate market orientation cultures so as to improve their social sustainability performance.