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This first chapter provides a general overview of the book. The chapter describes workforce management and the lack of adequate attention to this concept within construction organisations. In the fourth industrial revolution era, where emerging technologies have continued to change how business functions, the need for an effective approach towards managing the construction workforce becomes crucial. Having a construction workforce management practice model was deemed vital at this point, where technological advancement is rapidly changing the construction environment, and skill shortage is evident in the construction industry of most countries around the world. As such, this chapter establishes that the development of a construction workforce management model that will help improve the management of construction workers serves a critical value of the book.

This paper seeks to understand kaizen in practice as it travels through time and space in the organisational setting.

A qualitative case study was carried out at a multinational company using mainly interviews for the data collection that were analysed from an actor-network theory (ANT) perspective.

This paper finds that the company deals with a series of paradoxes while managing the kaizen process. Efficiency and quality paradoxes are the basis for starting kaizen projects. Furthermore, intrinsic, and extrinsic motivation, emerge in these processes, and paradoxes relate to how spontaneous ideas emerge in a deliberated context of cost-saving objectives. The supply chain finance team coordinates kaizen projects with the collaboration of plant managers, promoting the paradox of autonomy and control. In addition, as kaizen mobilises and enrols the actors, some trials of strength emerge, showing actors who oppose the kaizen network and create competing networks that mutually exist in the firm.

This study presents valuable insights for professionals to successfully implement kaizen methodologies that take advantage of developing a network for problem-solving in organizations.

This study highlights the supply chain finance team's role in enrolling the actors within a network built by practitioners engaged in kaizen projects. Usually, engineers, quality, or manufacturing teams lead kaizen projects, and only occasionally, accounting and financial teams participate, including multidisciplinary teams.

The purpose of this research is to examine the relationship between employer and employees in a public power sector undertaking through the validation of CODE (compensation, organizational justice, dispute resolution and employee empowerment) and PLE (workforce productivity, employee loyalty and employee engagement) model.

A hypothesized research model was developed and validated by using structural equation modeling (AMOS 20). In total, 303 responses were accumulated by administering a structured questionnaire among the employees of a state-owned power sector.

The results revealed that a harmonious climate of employee relations is prevailing in the public power utility. Additionally, the findings suggest that the CODE and PLE model of employee relations are found to be positive and significant by investigating the impact of compensation, organizational justice, dispute resolution and employee empowerment as the predictors; and workforce productivity, employee loyalty and employee engagement as the critical outcomes of employee relations.

The study recommends some plausible insights for practitioners, decision-makers and policy formulators to develop strategies and policies for nurturing congenial employee relations and also to cultivate a facilitative work environment for generating contented and competent manpower.

Validation of CODE and PLE model of employee relations in the new perspective of power sector undertaking is an epoch-making and novel contribution that offers significant empirical evidence to the extant literature. Moreover, the exploration of employer–employee relations in this context is a unique and innovative effort toward existing research.