Paper Title
Breaking Contractors’ Socio-Cultural Barriers Inhibiting Adaptation to Environmentally Sustainable Construction

Abstract
Several barriers militate againstadaptation toenvironmentally sustainable construction (ESC). Most of these barriers assume global significance. However, socio-cultural barriers averting the practicing of ESC differ from culture to culture.Thus, the approach for countering the action of such barriers cannot be universalin nature. The aim of this paper is to identify apeculiar approach for disabling socio-cultural barriers that act against contractor’sadaptation to environmentally sustainable construction in an Africansetting.Taking a social constructivism ontological stance, qualitative strategy was adopted to identify the socio-cultural barriers through interviews of twenty-four built environment professionals in large construction companies in Ghana.Resilience Theory, Social Network theory, and Hofstede’s Power Distance constructapproachwere used to develop a system fordisabling theaction ofidentified socio-cultural barriers against efforts of contractors to adapt to ESC. The findings of this study enrich the knowledge of internationalcontractors insocio-cultural barriersthat act againstthe practice of ESCin an African setting. The findings also strengthen the organizational strategies of such contractors to overpowersuch socio-cultural barriers. Keywords - Contractors, environmentally sustainable construction, qualitative strategy, socio-cultural barriers, sub-Saharan region.