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The circular economy (CE) represents an industry-wide transition from linear to circular processes. There has been a proliferation of literature on CE in the last decade. However, the existing studies on the adaption of CE in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are scarce. This study aims to develop a research agenda and the way forward for future researchers focusing on the adoption of CE.

This article analyses the CE concepts through a Systematic Literature Review (SLR). Coding and content analysis are performed to generate emergent themes with the help of “Atlas.ti” software.

The authors uncovered the contemporary significance of adopting CE and the state-of-the-art literature on CE. The study's findings fall into four broad themes: Technical know-how, resource and process optimization, reverse practices and technology and innovation. Ten thought-provoking questions were identified in the four themes that researchers can explore further in embracing CE to achieve sustainability in SMEs.

The study has highlighted the importance of CE adoption and CE's benefits to stakeholders across all three dimensions, i.e. social, economic and ecological. Practitioners can use the agenda in four themes to strengthen the practitioners' existing practices in SMEs to promote CE.

The study's uniqueness is the supply of current knowledge from diverse literature and practical consequences for SMEs. This study opens new lines of inquiry to adopt CE in SMEs, streamlining the existing literature into four themes to focus future research.

In New Zealand, building information modelling (BIM) prevalence is still in its early stages and faces many challenges. This research aims to develop a BIM adoption framework to determine the key factors affecting the success of a BIM project.

Both primary and secondary data were employed in this research, including 21 semi-structured interviews and industry guidelines from the three most well-known global building excellence models (BEMs). The data were analysed through content analysis due to its recognised benefits as a transparent and reliable approach.

Leadership, clients and other stakeholders, strategic planning, people, resources, process and results were identified as seven main categories along with 39 indicators in the BIM adoption framework. Based on the interviewees' perspectives, leadership is considered the most significant category, impacting all of the remaining categories.

Using the developed framework will enhance comprehension of BIM, offering directives for those embracing BIM. This will aid construction stakeholders in being better equipped for BIM projects. Having a skilled BIM manager can lead to the success of construction projects.

This research contributed to the existing body of knowledge by providing the categories with specific factors that assist BIM practitioners in assessing their BIM performance for further BIM practice improvement.

Considering the financial service providers’ (FSPs) information asymmetry in evaluating the supplier and their distinct quit probabilities, we want to examine the supplier’s preference of the financing schemes if both the bank and the online platform exist and how the buyer sets the contract terms in the two financing schemes.

We establish a Stackelberg game model to capture the interactions among three parties, i.e. a supplier, a capital-sufficient buyer and an FSP (either a bank or an online platform), within a first-time contract.

In the non-FSPs’ quit case, the buyer’s profit is higher under the bank loan scenario, while the supplier’s profit performs adversely. The supply chain’s profit is heavily dependent on the buyer’s profit difference between the two financing schemes. Moreover, we find that the supplier borrows the money to exactly cover the production cost. The equilibrium solutions of the FSPs’ quit case and of the capital-sufficient supplier’s case are also derived.

First, we assign different risk profiles to different FSPs in our setting so that modeling a previously ignored but practically significant problem. Second, we innovatively take the FSP’s quit probability into account in our model. Third, we elucidate how these factors can influence the relative efficiency of the two types of financing schemes and the settings of the contract, which further complements and extends the current SCF research.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the technology-focused and technology-supported dilemmas that firms have encountered and their digital orientation from a nuanced perspective to answer the following research questions: What digital orientations do companies take in launching digital initiatives? How does the choice between a proactive digital orientation (Pro-DO) and a reactive digital orientation (Rea-DO) influence firm value?

The authors adopted machine learning and a quantitative research approach using observations from China’s listed companies from 2010 to 2020 and applied statistical techniques and regression analysis to examine the effect of digital orientation alternatives on firm value.

The findings of this study indicate that firms with a Pro-DO exhibit a positive effect on firm value. In contrast, firms with a Rea-DO do not demonstrate the same positive relationship with firm value. Additionally, this study reveals that firms with better corporate governance practices and lower financing constraints are more responsive to the positive effects of Pro-DO on firm value.

We elucidate two primary perspectives of digital orientation: Pro-DO and Rea-DO. Additionally, we empirically showcase their nuanced influences on firm value, thereby enriching knowledge in the fields of strategic orientation and digital transformation. Moreover, our findings underscore the importance of corporate governance and financing constraints as moderators.

This study aims to conduct performance and clustering analyses with the help of Digital Government Reference Library (DGRL) v16.6 database examining the role of emerging technologies (ETs) in public services delivery.

VOSviewer and SciMAT techniques were used for clustering and mapping the use of ETs in the public services delivery. Collecting documents from the DGRL v16.6 database, the paper uses text mining analysis for identifying key terms and trends in e-Government research regarding ETs and public services.

The analysis indicates that all ETs are strongly linked to each other, except for blockchain technologies (due to its disruptive nature), which indicate that ETs can be, therefore, seen as accumulative knowledge. In addition, on the whole, findings identify four stages in the evolution of ETs and their application to public services: the “electronic administration” stage, the “technological baseline” stage, the “managerial” stage and the “disruptive technological” stage.

The output of the present research will help to orient policymakers in the implementation and use of ETs, evaluating the influence of these technologies on public services.

The research helps researchers to track research trends and uncover new paths on ETs and its implementation in public services.

Recent research has focused on the need of implementing ETs for improving public services, which could help cities to improve the citizens’ quality of life in urban areas. This paper contributes to expanding the knowledge about ETs and its implementation in public services, identifying trends and networks in the research about these issues.

This study investigates whether prolonged durations of work from home (WFH) leads to workplace ostracism (WO), and whether such relationship is moderated by perceived organizational support (POS). The context of this research is based on the post-COVID-19 pandemic period, when most organizations have either recalled their employees back to their physical workplaces, or in other cases employees are relegated to continued WFH or to a hybrid model that combines both in-office and remote work. The importance of this study is the spotlight it brings to employees who feel ostracized from their workplace due the continued practice of WFH.

A conceptual model is developed, by leveraging the conservation of resources (COR) theory. The hypotheses are tested by using cross-sectional survey data collected from 240 employees working in various organizations in the Sultanate of Oman from both public and private sectors. The data are analyzed using R Core Team software.

The findings of the study reveal that WFH does not have any direct impact on WO. However, when POS is applied as moderator, the results indicate that at low levels of POS, the relationship between WFH and WO becomes significant, but not at moderate to high levels of POS.

This study provides insights into how the phenomenon of WFH is likely to influence perceptions of employees in terms of feeling excluded from the organization by being asked to continue to work remotely, while many of their colleagues have returned to their prepandemic workplaces. The implications of the findings are relevant to the growing literature on employee experiences in the realm of emerging work models being introduced by organizations. Among the limitations of this study is the fact that there may be missing mediators that link WFH with WO, and the possibility that such a study if replicated in other cultural contexts may yield different results.

This study presents evidence to managers on leveraging the power of organizational support to ensure that negative emotions among employees such as WO are mitigated.

This appears to be among the first studies that attempts to provide insights into employee perceptions about WO in the postpandemic period, especially with regards to the emerging work arrangements that are primarily based on WFH that are being widely adopted by many organizations around the world. The results of this study provide useful information about how WFH and POS come together to influence emotions of individuals who have been longing to get back to their normal workplace once the social distancing guidelines of the pandemic were lifted.

This paper aims to investigate the multifaced aspects and consequences of the EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) from an Australia-China Relationship perspective.

This paper leverages the SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis to examine both the internal and external factors that affect Australia and China in the context of the CBAM. In addition, we employ the PEST (Political, Economic, Social and Technological) framework to identify effective strategies for Australia-China cooperation following the implementation of the CBAM.

Our analysis reveals numerous mutual interests and opportunities for bilateral collaboration, despite challenges and threats, positioning the CBAM as a potentially significant catalyst for joint initiatives.

This paper proposes 10 potential areas for Australia and China cooperation from the political economic social and technological PEST dimensions.

This paper makes a pioneering attempt to explore potential strategies, both individually, and together, that Australia and China can adopt to manage the impact and consequence of CBAM.

Managing weeds and pests in cropland is one of the major concerns in agriculture that greatly affects the quantity and quality of the produce. While the success of preventing potential weeds and pests is not guaranteed, early detection and diagnosis help manage them effectively to ensure crops’ growth and health

We propose a diagnostic framework for crop management with automatic weed and pest detection and identification in maize crops using residual neural networks. We train two models, one for weed detection with a labeled image dataset of maize and commonly occurring weed plants, and another for leaf disease detection using a labeled image dataset of healthy and infected maize leaves. The global and local explanations of image classification are obtained and presented

Weed and disease detection and identification can be accurately performed using deep-learning neural networks. Weed detection is accurate up to 97%, and disease detection up to 95% is made on average and the results are presented. Further, using this crop management system, we can detect the presence of weeds and pests in the maize crop early, and the annual yield of the maize crop can potentially increase by 90% theoretically with suitable control actions

The proposed diagnostic models can be further used on farms to monitor the health of maize crops. Images obtained from drones and robots can be fed to these models, which can then automatically detect and identify weed and disease attacks on maize farms. This offers early diagnosis, which enables necessary treatment and control of crops at the early stages without affecting the yield of the maize crop

The proposed crop management framework allows treatment and control of weeds and pests only in the affected regions of the farms and hence minimizes the use of harmful pesticides and herbicides and their related health effects on consumers and farmers.

This study presents an integrated weed and disease diagnostic framework, which is scarcely reported in the literature

Activity sampling is a technique to monitor onsite labourers' time utilisation, which can provide helpful information for the management level to implement suitable labour productivity improvement strategies continuously. However, there needs to be a review paper that compiles research on activity sampling studies to give readers a thorough grasp of the research trend. Hence, this paper aims to investigate the activity sampling techniques applied in earlier research from the angles of activity categories formation, data collection methods and data analysis.

The method used in this paper is a systematic review guided by the PRISMA framework. The search was conducted in Scopus and Web of Science. The inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied, selecting 70 articles published between 2011 and 2022 for data extraction and analysis. The analysis method involved a qualitative synthesis of the findings from the selected articles.

Activity sampling is broadly divided into four stages: targeting trade, determining activity categories, data collection and data analysis. This paper divides the activity categories into three levels and classifies the data collection methods into manual observation, sensor-based activity sampling and computer vision-based activity sampling. The previous studies applied activity sampling for two construction management purposes: labour productivity monitoring and ergonomic safety monitoring. This paper also further discusses the scientific research gaps and future research directions.

This review paper contributes to the body of knowledge in construction management by thoroughly understanding current state-of-the-art activity sampling techniques and research gaps.

This study aims to perform the surface treatment of synthetic α-Fe₂O₃ red iron oxide pigment with hydrolysate 3-aminopropyl silane (A) and colloidal silica (CS) and investigate the effects of surface-treated pigment on the styrene acrylic (SA) emulsion and polyurethane (PU) dispersion.

For this purpose, firstly red iron oxide particles were modified with A and CS separately in an aqueous medium. After isolation of the modified iron oxide were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive spectroscopy (SEM-EDS). Moreover, the degree of the dispersion stability of the modified pigment in coatings with SA emulsion and PU dispersion was investigated by using an oscillation rheometer. Loss (G''), storage (G') modulus, loss factor [tan(δ)] and yield stress (τ⁰) values were determined by performing amplitude and frequency sweep tests.

The τ⁰ in SA coatings decreases with the amount of used A and increases with the amount of used CS. The τ⁰ decreases as the amount of used A and CS in PU coatings increases. The use of CS on red iron oxide pigments causes storage modulus to increase in SA coatings at low angular frequencies, while it causes a decrease in PU coatings.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, for the first time, the suspended state of the iron oxide hybrid pigment formed with CS in the coating was investigated rheologically in this study.