The assessment of organizational effectiveness represents a crucial step in the improvement process of the firm. Most existing methods of assessing organizational effectiveness in the context of the construction firm tend to be organization-specific. Most utilize a project-dependent approach.;Using the level of productivity by the construction firm as a common criteria of effectiveness suffers from many theoretical and methodological deficiencies. Both project indicators and productivity-based methods use indirect assessment. This yields very little information about the levels of important organizational characteristics that actually influence organizational effectiveness in the construction firm. An approach that incorporates the assessment of the important organizational attributes in the domain of effectiveness, based on and linked to an appropriate theoretical model, would give the construction firm a valuable and practical tool for monitoring its level of effectiveness.;A configurational perspective of organizational analysis and the competing values approach toward studying and modeling effectiveness criteria are identified in this research as most appropriate to be used to develop a valid assessment methodology for the construction firm. Important criteria are grouped into four general categories of organizational characteristics: structural context of the firm; organizational flexibility, rules and regulations; person-oriented processes in the firm; and organizational strategy means and ends used by the firm. Based on these categories, fourteen organizational variables are identified to form a basis on which a project-independent method of assessing effectiveness is developed. It is the hypothesis of this research that measurement of the level of these variables in the construction firm can yield a valid prediction of its level of organizational effectiveness.;A field survey based on self-administered questionnaires was carried out to collect data from firms operating in the institutional, commercial, and industrial (ICI) construction sectors of the industry in Saudi Arabia. Using the level of past project performance of the construction firm as a referent measure of organizational effectiveness and data pertaining to the fourteen variables, led to the development of a predictive multivariate linear model with five significant variables: organizational attitude toward change, level of multiple project handling ability, strength of organizational culture, level of workers' participation in decision making, and level of planning by the construction firm. Based on the findings of the study, a number of recommendations are made regarding assessment of organizational effectiveness and the natural shift in levels and types of effectiveness criteria that are possibly pursued by the firm during its life cycle as it changes from one configuration to another. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).
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