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The strategic management literature emphasizes the concept of business intelligence (BI) as an essential competitive tool. Yet the sustainability of the firms’ competitive advantage provided by BI capability is not well researched. To fill this gap, this study attempts to develop a model for successful BI deployment and empirically examines the association between BI deployment and sustainable competitive advantage. Taking the telecommunications industry in Malaysia as a case example, the research particularly focuses on the influencing perceptions held by telecommunications decision makers and executives on factors that impact successful BI deployment. The research further investigates the relationship between successful BI deployment and sustainable competitive advantage of the telecommunications organizations. Another important aim of this study is to determine the effect of moderating factors such as organization culture, business strategy, and use of BI tools on BI deployment and the sustainability of firm’s competitive advantage.

This research uses combination of resource-based theory and diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory to examine BI success and its relationship with firm’s sustainability. The research adopts the positivist paradigm and a two-phase sequential mixed method consisting of qualitative and quantitative approaches are employed. A tentative research model is developed first based on extensive literature review. The chapter presents a qualitative field study to fine tune the initial research model. Findings from the qualitative method are also used to develop measures and instruments for the next phase of quantitative method. The study includes a survey study with sample of business analysts and decision makers in telecommunications firms and is analyzed by partial least square-based structural equation modeling.

The findings reveal that some internal resources of the organizations such as BI governance and the perceptions of BI’s characteristics influence the successful deployment of BI. Organizations that practice good BI governance with strong moral and financial support from upper management have an opportunity to realize the dream of having successful BI initiatives in place. The scope of BI governance includes providing sufficient support and commitment in BI funding and implementation, laying out proper BI infrastructure and staffing and establishing a corporate-wide policy and procedures regarding BI. The perceptions about the characteristics of BI such as its relative advantage, complexity, compatibility, and observability are also significant in ensuring BI success. The most important results of this study indicated that with BI successfully deployed, executives would use the knowledge provided for their necessary actions in sustaining the organizations’ competitive advantage in terms of economics, social, and environmental issues.

This study contributes significantly to the existing literature that will assist future BI researchers especially in achieving sustainable competitive advantage. In particular, the model will help practitioners to consider the resources that they are likely to consider when deploying BI. Finally, the applications of this study can be extended through further adaptation in other industries and various geographic contexts.

An increase in outsourcing of consultancy services has been observed during procurement and delivery of public-sector infrastructure projects. However, the incidence of project failure has continued unabated despite this shift by public-sector entities. Also, there appears to be limited literature focussed on seeking to provide the rationale governing the decision to outsource or insource consultancy services by public-sector organisations. The purpose of this study was to appraise the performance of public-sector projects in which consultancy services have been outsourced or insourced. These are the gaps which this study was undertaken to fill.

A grounded theory methodology (GTM) research design was adopted based on the nature of evidence sought and gathered from a Provincial Department of Public Works and Infrastructure (PDPWI) in South Africa. Data was obtained from a mixture of semi-structured interviews and project-specific documents spanning a five-year period and was analysed according to the procedures associated with GTM. Accordingly, open coding, axial coding and pattern matching were carried out at several intervals to develop categories and themes.

The findings of the study showed the absence of a structured approach within the PDPWI for facilitating decisions pertaining to outsourcing or insourcing consultancy services within construction projects. Furthermore, the study established that both approaches yielded similar results across all performance facets of cost, time and quality. In addition, a detailed insight into the steps required for the successful application of GTM in built environment research has been provided in the study.

Limited studies have been undertaken to compare the impact of either outsourced or insourced services on the organisational and project performance. This was the gap to which the study reported in this paper was undertaken to contribute.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the dimensionality of the environmental concern scale (NEP) and to understand the environmental worldviews of Malaysian project managers.

A cross-sectional survey was conducted among developer organisations registered with Real Estate and Housing Developers’ Association Malaysia in Klang Valley. Response was obtained from project managers and the final sample collected was 87 cases, representing a response rate of 24.5 per cent. Principal component analysis with varimax rotation was conducted to investigate the underlying structure of the NEP items while frequency distribution for the data set was used to gauge the environmental worldviews of the respondents. In addition, face-to-face interviews were carried out to gather more information to complements the findings of quantitative analyses.

Five factors were extracted but due to heavy cross-loadings, two items from the original scale were dropped, reducing it to be a 13-item scale. The four factors retained explained 61.6 per cent of the variance and were duly named Human over nature, ecocrisis, rights of nature and limits of growth. High scores on both pro-NEP and pro-dominant social paradigm items revealed the co-existence of both ecological and utilitarian view of the environment among project managers. Similar outcome was obtained from interviews with project managers where they indicated efforts in finding compatibility between protecting the environment and exploiting natural resources for development.

The sample was restricted to housing developers in Klang Valley, thus the findings cannot be generalised to all developer organisations or other construction occupational groups.

This research supported the multidimensionality claim of the environmental scale (NEP) where four distinctive dimensions were identified. The usage of individual subscales in understanding environmental beliefs may reveal interesting patterns in that each dimension could have positive and negative connotations on human behaviours. In addition, the co-existence of both an ecological and a utilitarian view of the environment revealed that these worldviews align well with sustainable development principles.

This study is one of the few local studies that attempt to understand the environmental worldviews of project managers.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the issues involved in understanding the buying behavior of Malaysian consumers, particularly in the online shopping context in relation to their lifestyles.

This paper provides a general review of the literature regarding the influence of lifestyles on consumer intentions to repurchase online.

The paper provides marketers with insights into how knowledge about lifestyle factors can be integrated into marketing and advertising strategies.

The results of this study will provide some ideas and practical suggestions which can be implemented particularly in online shopping in order to improve its continuance (i.e. customer retention strategies) as effective means of maintaining the subscriber base, market share and overall revenue of online businesses.

This paper delineates the importance of understanding consumer lifestyles and its effect on continuance intention that allows online marketers to predict prospective online shoppers' intention to repurchase more easily.

The purpose of this paper is to theoretically investigate the steady two‐dimensional boundary‐layer flow past a moving semi‐infinite flat plate in a water‐based nanofluid containing three different types of nanoparticles: copper (cuprum) Cu, alumina (aluminium oxide) Al₂O₃, and titania (titanium dioxide) TiO₂. The effects of moving parameter λ as well as solid volume fraction parameter φ on the flow and heat transfer characteristics are studied. Taking into account the rising demands of modern technology, including chemical production, power stations and microelectronics, there is a need to develop new types of fluids that will be more effective in terms of heat exchange performance.

A similarity transformation is used to reduce the governing partial differential equations to a set of nonlinear ordinary differential equations which are then solved numerically using Keller‐box method.

There is a region of unique solutions for λ>0, however, multiple (dual) solutions exist for λ_c<λ≤0 and no solutions for λ<λ_c<0. A reverse flow is formed when λ<0.

The solutions can be obtained up to a certain value of the moving parameter (critical value or turning point). The boundary layer separates from the plate beyond the turning point hence it is not possible to get the solution based on the boundary‐layer approximations after this point. To obtain further solutions, the full Navier‐Stokes equations have to be solved.

The present results are original and new for the boundary‐layer flow and heat transfer of a moving flat plate in a nanofluid. Therefore, this study would be important for the scientists and engineers in order to become familiar with the flow behaviour and properties of such nanofluids, and the way to predict the properties of this flow for the process equipments.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the barriers in public policy faced by the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in a creative economy at the local level.

This research uses a qualitative case study method, and the informants are selected with a purposive sampling technique. The researchers collected data through in-depth interviews of 15 informants. The informants include local government officials, SME actors and creative economy activists. Data are analyzed using thematic analysis in the qualitative method.

This study shows that the development of SMEs in the creative economy is constrained by the mindset and administrative behavior of the local policymakers who tend to be normative, routine-minded and inflexible. Consequently, the local government’s administrative capacity in the creative economy sector has not demonstrated significant support for efforts to increase the competitiveness of creative economies at the regional level.

Research implications suggest how the findings may be important for the policy and practice of SMEs’ development of a creative economy at the local level. The findings suggest that local government needs to engage with the actors and activists of SMEs in the strategic formulation for the development of a creative economy.

This study extends the theoretical and practical knowledge about policy implementation of SMEs’ development by a local government in the creative economy sector in Indonesia.

This paper aims to investigate the knowledge, attitude and behaviour of foundation chemistry learners concerning the sustainable development concept.

Qualitative and quantitative studies were conducted. Atlas.ti software was used to analyse the chemistry curriculum based on selected themes and sub-themes. A survey was carried out involving 132 chemistry learners. The chemistry learners were students from a foundation programme in a local university located in Selangor, Malaysia. The collected data were analysed using SPSS 21.0 involving descriptive and inferential statistics.

Document analysis on the chemistry curriculum shows that water is the theme most covered in the chemistry learners’ textbook, as compared to other themes. In general, the chemistry learners have good knowledge and attitude concerning the sustainable development concept. However, their knowledge and attitude do not reflect in their behaviour as an individual, as well as in the classroom. Moreover, their knowledge, attitude and behaviour focus more on environmental dimension, as compared to other sustainable development dimensions.

This paper is instrumental in assisting educators to assess how chemistry learners perceive sustainable development, and this may help to bring about changes to improve chemistry teaching and learning processes towards education for sustainable development.

This paper is an original and novel research paper which is first conducted on sustainable development concept in chemistry curriculum in Malaysia.