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This article aims to describe the development of industrialised house-building (IHB) to increase the understanding of the field.

The study is based on an extensive literature study and a case study with three companies, studied between 2005 and 2013 which enabled an in-depth knowledge about the companies’ development within IHB. Interviews, observations and document studies are the main sources of information in the case studies.

IHB is a complex field, consisting of several constructs that need to be integrated and continuously developed. Development of structured technical building systems has been central to the development of IHB along with developed production methods and processes. The interest in organisational fit or adaptation to industrialisation and strategy concerning business, production and products is increasing. This implies that IHB needs to be managed strategically and not on a building project level.

The article gives an orientation on how leading companies have structured and organised their work within industrialisation, giving valuable advice to practitioners with interest in the field.

This article describes the development of IHB based on studies of literature and three Swedish IHB companies’ development. This provides an aggregated view of the field’s emergence and unique information about the studied companies’ development.

Analyzing different scenarios at the design stage of construction projects has always been a challenging task. One of the main parameters that helps owners in making better decisions in designing their buildings is to look after the cost perspective on different design scenarios. Thus, this study aims to propose a semi-automated BIM-based cost estimation approach that enables practitioners to estimate the cost of projects based on different design scenarios by an accurate and agile system.

This study proposes an integrated framework, through which the cost estimation standard of Iran (FehrestBaha) is linked to the materials quantity take-offs (QTO) from BIM models. The performance of the system is based on connecting the classification standards of UniFormat and MasterFormat to the cost estimation standard of FehrestBaha. A BIM-based extension in the Revit environment is developed to automate the cost estimation process.

To evaluate the efficiency of the proposed approach in cost estimation, it is implemented to estimate the cost of the architectural discipline in a real construction project. The results indicate that the proposed BIM-based approach estimated the cost of the architectural discipline with an acceptable level of accuracy.

The proposed approach could be used by practitioners to have an agile and accurate BIM-based cost estimation of different scenarios during design process. The semi-automated system considerably reduces the time of cost estimation in comparison to the traditional manual approaches, particularly in complex structures. Owners are able to easily trace changes in project cost according to any changes in components and materials of the BIM model. Furthermore, the proposed approach provides a practical roadmap for BIM-based cost estimation based on cost estimation standards in different countries.

Unlike the traditional manual cost estimation approaches, the proposed BIM-based approach is not highly dependent on the knowledge of experienced estimators, which therefore facilitates its implementation. Furthermore, automating both QTO process and the required calculations in this approach increases the accuracy of cost estimation while decreasing the probability of human errors or omission occurrence.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

The construction industry has been criticized for not keeping up with other production industries in terms of cost efficiency, innovation, and production methods. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the knowledge about what hampers efficiency in supplying engineer‐to‐order (ETO) joinery‐products to the construction process. The objective is to identify the main contributors to inefficiency and to define areas for innovation in improving this industry.

Case studies of the supply chain of a Swedish ETO joinery‐products supplier are carried out, and observations, semi‐structured interviews, and documents from these cases are analysed from an efficiency improvement perspective.

From a lean thinking and information modelling perspective, longer‐term procurement relations and efficient communication of information are the main areas of innovation for enhancing the efficiency of supplying ETO joinery‐products. It seems to be possible to make improvements in planning and coordination, assembly information, and spatial measuring through information modelling and spatial scanning technology. This is likely to result in an increased level of prefabrication, decreased assembly time, and increased predictability of on‐site work.

The role of supplying ETO joinery‐products is a novel research area in construction. There is a need to develop each segment of the manufacturing industry supplying construction and this paper contributes to the collective knowledge in this area. The focus is on the possibilities for innovation in the ETO joinery‐products industry and on its improved integration in the construction industry value chain in general.

In their endless quest for self-devotion, the elite, the powerful, often seek to appropriate the most beautiful and impressive things. As Thorstein Veblen (1899, p. 36) put it: “In order to gain and to hold the esteem of men it is not sufficient to merely possess wealth or power. The wealth or power must be put in evidence, for esteem is awarded only on evidence.” Looking at it in these terms, pomp and prestige prove to be necessary elements for “upholding one’s rank.” Many authors have acknowledged that Veblen was the first to give a systematic sociological interpretation of “conspicuous behaviour.” However he has often been criticized for taking on a rather puritan and incriminating tone. For his part, Norbert Elias (1974, pp. 48–49) reproaches Veblen for not managing to understand the behavioural logics and the mentalities of societies different from the (American-bourgeois) one he was analysing. Moreover, Elias quite rightly points out that in industrialized societies, one is able to preserve great prestige without providing public proof for it through costly display. Social pressure for prestigious consumption would no longer have the unavoidable character it used to have (particularly within court society) and would take on a much more private one (Elias, 1974, pp. 54–55). Even if this statement often proves to be true, it is also an over-generalization.

Humanity and all life depend on the natural environment of Planet Earth, and that environment is in acute crisis across land, sea and air. One of a set of commentaries on how service can address the UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs), the authors focus on environmental goals SDG 13 (climate action), SDG 14 (life below water) and SDG 15 (life on land). This paper aims to propose a conceptual framework that incorporates the natural environment into transformative services.

The authors trace the evolution of service thinking about the natural environment, from a stewardship perspective of the environment as a set of resources to be managed, through an acknowledgement of nonhuman organisms as actors that can participate in service exchange, towards an emergent concept of ecosystems as integrating human social actors and other biological actors who engage fully in value co-creation.

The authors derive a framework integrating human and other life forms as co-creating actors, drawing on shared natural resources to achieve mutualism, where each actor can have a net benefit from the relationship. Future research questions are posited that may help services research address SDGs 13–15.

The framework integrates ideas from environmental ecosystem literature to inform the nature of ecosystems. By integrating environmental actors and ecological insights into the understanding of service ecosystems, service scholars are well placed to make unique contributions to the global challenge of creating a sustainable future.