Current Practices of Human Resource Management (HRM) in Thai Construction Industry: A Risk and Opportunity Perspective

Construction industry accounts for a significant portion of world economic activities, especially in emerging economies where infrastructure developments are much needed. Construction industry is typically characterized as a labor-intensive and low-tech sector. Meanwhile, it is also the sector consistently found the least productive. Commonly cited reasons for such poor performance in this sector are fragmentation, project-based culture, and temporary teams. These factors have something in common; they pointed to the difficulty in managing human resources. Therefore, one way to increase the performance of this sector is to leverage more on human capital through the use of human resource management (HRM). In this paper, we provide an overview of previous research on HRM, especially in construction industry. We also investigate into the effect of HR policies and practices on three critical success factors of a construction project: time, cost, and quality. To this end, we develop a model comparing and contrasting the current HR practices (1) between construction industry and other industries and (2) between companies in construction sector and those in other sectors in Thailand. Finally, we provide the critical analysis of the risks and opportunities of the current HRM practices adopted by Thai construction companies in domestic and international markets.