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Purpose: Construction in Malta is generally characterised by small projects operated through fragmented contractual ties and limited technological advances. Through this study, the authors aim to examine the impact of changing client requirements on local construction, analyse the impact of these shifts on project expectations and explore how client requirements can be integrated into the ongoing design phases during the life cycle of the structure. Using a multi-million-euro, multi-phase residential, commercial, and redevelopment construction project as a case study, this paper presents an in-depth analysis of the short-term disruptions and long-term impacts while considering the implications for trade-offs.

Methodology: A mixed-methods approach was used to conduct the analysis. Qualitative data collected from semi-structured interviews showed that projects have different impacts on relationships even when the same organisations work on different trades within the same project. The quantitative data collected was used to analyse the variations caused by trade-offs from the original contracted work packages. The case study setting represents an example of a phenomenological methodology. It adapts existing theories to interpret what happens by examining an example of a phenomenon of interest. Although the conclusions cannot be generalised to the whole construction industry, its merit is that it addresses relationships and processes and is therefore ‘holistic’ rather than limited to isolated factors.

Findings: The findings, illustrate the effects or factors supported by the empirical data towards the main framework that supports the research study model for mapping trade-offs. The model is presented as a three-dimensional framework illustrating the dynamics of objectives, considerations, and time across project life cycles, and goes beyond the control parameters of the project management, cost, quality, and time triangle.

Conclusion: A set of recommendations are presented in relation to the drawing up of project briefs, procurement strategies, and the limitations and implications of embedding client changes.

The chapter studies the functioning of the so-called “voluntary” carbon offset market, a market in which moral controversies take place. The analysis dwells on the theoretical framework that enables us to study the functioning of a contested market through particular devices. The chapter seeks to contribute to the literature on moral struggles within markets by focusing the attention on one specific device: relational work, including several dimensions like meeting between seller and buyer, establishing contracts and maintaining the relationship with clients in the long run. By studying relational work, the authors highlight how this basic market activity is a crucial device that makes it possible for a contested market to continue to exist.

Map of this detour: This is one of a series of detours compelled by consideration of inheritance law as an aspect of cultural transmission. ¹ This course draws attention to three problematic time forms (temporalities) through which the “self” and its relations with history are often written and read. These implicit time forms are all too common and all too easily go unrecognized. Each involves the illusion of some kind of exalted and immediate convergence between the self (the subject) and an object of exaggerated importance to this self (the world, the universe, the metaphysical or artistic beyond, the origin, etc.). Three figures are explored here: that of Hercules in Hegel’s Aesthetics, and those of Adrian and Breisacher in Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus. Each of these invites attention to a different temporality through which an exalted convergence may be imagined: the first involves a fantasy of immediate belonging to the whole of history, the second, that of escape forward from history (toward a self-created “ultimate” object), and the third, that of return to fullness in origin (before history). This detour also suggests ways of reading history (including “reading for mana through glances,” which will be explained) that protect against the problems just described. The detour closes considering implications of all of the above for U.S. inheritance law. The tutor text for this last leg is François Mauriac’s Le noeud de vipères.

There are a number of conflicts today involving groups and individuals as regards nature in its various forms. The aim of this article is to examine how these give rise to changes in the forms of critique and justification that underpin them. Based on various points of disagreement as to how nature should be developed, three possibilities of change have been put forward for examination according to the importance of the transformations required: (a) integration of the model into existing orders of justification, (b) development of a new order based on the same model, (c) serious adjustment of the underlying common matrix of orders and the basis it offers for appreciating injustice.

To determine where, when, how, and wherefore European social theory hit upon the formula of “the True, the Good, and the Beautiful,” and how its structural position as a skeleton for the theory of action has changed.

Genealogy, library research, and unusually good fortune were used to trace back the origin of what was to become a ubiquitous phrase, and to reconstruct the debates that made deploying the term seem important to writers.

The triad, although sometimes used accidentally in the renaissance, assumed a key structural place with a rise of Neo-Platonism in the eighteenth century associated with a new interest in providing a serious analysis of taste. It was a focus on taste that allowed the Beautiful to assume a position that was structurally homologous to those of the True and the Good, long understood as potential parallels. Although the first efforts were ones that attempted to emphasize the unification of the human spirit, the triad, once formulated, was attractive to faculties theorists more interested in decomposing the soul. They seized upon the triad as corresponding to an emerging sense of a tripartition of the soul. Finally, the members of the triad became re-understood as values, now as orthogonal dimensions.

This seems to be the first time the story of the development of the triad – one of the most ubiquitous architectonics in social thought – has been told.

In his first two months at the immigration detention facility, euphemistically called a ‘shelter’, Deruba consumed his daily lessons of vocabulary and math. ‘Good morning. My name is Deruba. What is your name?’ he would chant. ‘I am from Guatemala. Where are you from?’ ‘Good afternoon. How are you? I am fine’. He had only attended school for four years in Guatemala before his parents died in a bus accident forcing him to support his younger sister, Isura. ‘It was not a good time. We did not have anybody. No aunts, no uncles to help us. My grandparents died long ago. I don't even remember them. It was just me and my little sister’.⁵ Deruba, 13 years old at the time, and Isura, then 11 years old, lived on the streets of Livingston, Guatemala for over 2 years. He worked as a boat hand on boats [lanchas] transporting tourists to Livingston, painting cars at a small auto body shop and selling marijuana to young German and American tourists coming to soak up Livingston's bohemian environs.⁶

The Pacific Island countries are culturally diverse, politically challenging, extremely vulnerable to climate change and natural disaster impacts, and financially heavily dependent on aid flows. This chapter examines barriers and opportunities for Green growth (GG) to flourish in a country with a practically non-existent real economy and which is currently under the threat of disappearance under water. It draws on a visiting experience and lessons from the literature and tries to investigate the role of innovation and entrepreneurship as poles of re-birth and local creativity. More particularly, I here discuss why a least developed country such as Kiribati might be the perfect location for dynamics of GG to get born and how, Kiribati, a country under threat and fear, can be transformed into a lighthouse of entrepreneurship which can give boost to the implementation of one of the most advanced energy technologies in the world. I also discuss how, ultimately, a “least developed economy” can secure scientific lessons, which are highly significant for the international knowledge society.

This chapter aims to shed light on the role that a sustainable orientation plays in strengthening the relationships between global consumers and online brands. Despite many previous studies about the importance of sustainability considerations for national consumers’ brand commitments and purchase intentions, there is a lack of empirical studies focussing on this relationship from a global consumer perspective. A pre-study (consisting of focus group discussions) and a widely distributed international survey with responses from 74 countries show mixed results. Whereas the results from the focus groups imply that a sustainable orientation influences both global consumers’ purchase intentions and brand commitments towards online brands, the survey results imply that global consumers’ sustainable orientations do not affect purchase intentions directly, even though they influence brand commitments. An implication of these results is that an international online brand’s possibility to portray a sustainable orientation plays an important role in strengthening the relationship with global consumers, especially regarding brand commitment.