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Micro, small and medium-sized enterprises are the live wire of construction industry in developing countries. These classes of establishments are most affected by economic contraction and turmoil, thus affecting their performance and survivability. Hence, the purpose of this study is to investigate and prioritize the survival determinants of construction consulting organization during economic contraction in Nigeria using quantity surveying firms as a focal point.

The study adopted the descriptive-survey design and quantitative data were collected through questionnaire purposely administered to quantity surveying firms in the Southwestern part of Nigeria. The data obtained from 99 quantity surveying firms on survival determinants were analysed using various statistical analysis such as mean score, standard deviation, Mann–Whitney U test, Kruskal–Wallis H test, and so on. Principal component analysis was used to identify the principal components of survival determinants, while the factors were prioritized using fuzzy synthetic evaluation (FSE).

The result of the analysis reveals eight factors that significantly determines the survival of firms during the period of economic contraction. Furthermore, the eight grouped factors were prioritized accordingly namely firm's innovation and diversification, ownership structure and networking, education level and management skills, and so on.

This study investigated the survival determinants of quantity surveying firms and prioritized it with the opinions of principal partners in quantity surveying establishments. As against obtaining large survey responses from all quantity surveyors in the study area that may not have practical experience of managing firms, the limited responses received provide valid basis to broaden the horizon of professionals and other stakeholders on the key determinants for firms to survive economic turmoil.

This study contributes to the body of knowledge by providing information on prioritized factors that must be considered in an appropriate order by quantity surveying firms to survive economic contraction.

This paper aims to examine the causation linking financial technology to economic growth in the East African Community states from 1997 to 2019.

Autoregressive distributed lag is used. Gross domestic product per capita proxies economic growth, automated teller machines, point of sale, debit card ownership and mobile banking measure financial technology.

The results unveil a significant relationship between financial technology and economic growth. The findings show bidirectional causality between automated teller machine and economic growth, with unidirectional causation from economic growth to point of sales and internet banking, mobile banking and government effectiveness to economic growth. The error correction term is negatively significant, demonstrating a long-term convergence between Fintech measures and economic growth.

The governments should effectively enact and implement policies that protect investments in financial technologies to boost economic growth in the East African Community countries. The government should reduce taxes on financial technology equipment and related services. The use of automated teller machine, debit card ownership and internet banking should be encouraged through cashless transactions. Financial institutions should adopt cashless operation policies to encourage the use of financial technologies.

Research results on the bond between financial technology and economic growth are not conclusive. These studies demonstrate that technological innovations are double edged-swords, with both positive and negative sides. The results are conflicting; some reveal positive relationships, while others show negative links. Hence, research is required to fill the lacuna.

This study’s goal was to identify how several markets have developed over time and what determinants have influenced this process, based on adaptive markets hypothesis (AMH). In this regard, the authors consider that agents are driven by the seeking for abnormal returns to stay “alive” and their environment could somehow modify their decision-making processes, as well as influence the degree of efficiency of the market.

The authors collected the daily closing-of-the-market index from 50 countries, between 1990 and 2022. The sample includes emerging countries, developed countries and frontier markets. Then, the authors ran multilevel modeling using Hurst exponent as an informational efficiency metric estimated by two different moving windows: 500 and 1,250 observations (approximately 2 and 5 years).

The results indicate that the efficiency of the markets is not constant over time. The authors also have identified that markets follow a cyclical pattern of efficiency/inefficiency, and they are currently in a period of convergence to efficiency, possibly explained by the increase in computational capacity and speed of the available information to agents. In addition, this study identified that country characteristics are associated with market efficiency, considering institutional factors.

Studies of this nature contribute to the literature, considering the importance of better comprehension of market efficiency dynamics and their determinants, specially observing other theories on the relationship between information and markets (like AMH), which work with other investor assumptions than those used by efficient market hypothesis.

This study aims to identify the most significant barriers and the stationary barrier to modular construction (MC) implementation and promote MC widespread use. By doing so, the construction industry can leverage the benefits of MC, such as faster construction times, improved quality control, reduced waste and increased sustainability.

This study uses a Gini’s mean analysis approach to identify the stationary barriers hindering the MC adoption in residential projects. The research focuses on the Egyptian context and uses a questionnaire survey to gather data from professionals in the construction industry.

According to the survey findings, the top five significant MC barriers are inability to modify the design; contractors asking for high bidding prices (higher initial cost); scepticism, conservation and resistance of clients to innovation and change; transportation restrictions; and lack of a one-size-fits-all tool for the design. In addition, Gini’s mean of dispersion demonstrated that the stationary barrier that faces MC adoption is the apprehension that architectural creativity will suffer because of MC.

The identified obstacles could be useful for decision makers in countries that have not yet adopted MC and may aid in the planning process to manage the risks associated with MC projects. The paper stresses the significance of devising techniques to overcome these barriers and proposes several methods to tackle these challenges.

This study fills the knowledge gap by identifying the stationary barrier and emphasising the potential risks associated with MC barriers. Furthermore, it suggests several strategies for overcoming and reducing these barriers in developing countries residential projects.

Public–private partnership (PPP) projects play a pivotal role in fostering infrastructure development in developing countries. This study aims to identify major barriers and critical success factors (CSFs) for PPP projects in Vietnam.

The study initially conducted an extensive literature review and interviewed industry experts to compile a comprehensive list of barriers and success factors. Subsequently, a survey involving 250 construction professionals was conducted to assess these identified factors. The research used both ANOVA test and hierarchical regression analysis to explore the relationship between participants’ characteristics and assessments.

The results could provide a valuable reference for practitioners by assessing barriers and CSFs in PPP projects. Specifically, the ANOVA analysis indicated a positive correlation between barrier assessment and participants’ experience, while the influence of participants’ sector on the evaluation was minor. Furthermore, the hierarchical regression analysis demonstrated that participants’ sector did not moderate the relationship between barrier assessment and industry experience.

This research contributes to the existing literature by offering empirical insights into barriers and CSFs specific to PPP projects in a developing country context. The findings highlight the crucial role of experienced professionals in ensuring PPP project success. Moreover, the study provides construction practitioners with a better understanding of the essential factors and supports the development of effective management strategies for future PPP projects.

This article aims to reveal the factors influencing the sustainable development of mobile e-commerce from both user and operational perspectives. It fills the gap in qualitative research on the sustainable development of artificial intelligence (AI) technology in mobile e-commerce based on the grounded theory. This study provides valuable insights and inspiration for sustainable development in this field and lays the theoretical foundation and research reference for future studies.

Based on the grounded theory (GT), interview method was used to conduct the study.

The impact of AI applications on mobile e-commerce is mainly reflected in three stages of the customer shopping process. They are pre-shopping, mid-shopping and after-shopping AI services and each of the three stages has its own separate dimensions that need attention. The study and its persistence aspects are discussed.

The results of this study can provide forward-looking suggestions and paths for the construction and optimization of future e-commerce platforms, contribute to the sustainable development of e-commerce and contribute to the sustainable and healthy growth of the social economy.

This study proposes sustainable development measures for the application of AI in mobile e-commerce, from operation to supervision, which is an important reference for promoting coordinated and rapid socio-economic development.

Owing to dual constraints including liability of foreignness and liability of origin when emerging multinationals internationalize, they inevitably face the challenge of overseas legitimation. However, few studies have explored how latecomers cross the threshold of legitimacy in the dynamic context of transnational operation. The purpose of this paper is to unravel the evolution process, triggers and specific strategies of overseas legitimacy threshold crossing of emerging multinationals.

Through the longitudinal case study of Haier Group and Goldwind Sci & Tech Co., Ltd, this study investigates the periodical characteristics of overseas legitimacy threshold crossings and the co-evolution among critical factors influencing the legitimation process in the host country.

First, it summarizes that the legitimacy threshold in the host country experiences a sequential process from pragmatic legitimacy to normative legitimacy, and finally cognitive legitimacy. It is an inevitable choice for emerging multinational enterprises to realize and sustain legitimation from passive adaptation to active creation. Second, it reveals that the triggers for crossing the threshold of overseas legitimacy include periodically dynamic factors – international network linkage and resource system reconfiguration, as well as cross-stage spiral interaction effects. Third, it determines the specific strategies for crossing the threshold of overseas legitimacy, namely, replacement, upgrading and reconstruction of organizational identity, and reveals the important role of insisting on the country-of-origin Facebook in promoting the legitimation.

This study enriches the legitimacy threshold crossing literature from an evolutional perspective, especially the traditional static legitimacy research. This study also reveals the key impacting factors – international network linkage and resource system reconfiguration – and their evolution process interacted with the legitimation process.

The emerging multinationals should break the stereotypes from developed markets in that only creating new cognitive patterns through active legitimate strategies can they truly cross the legitimacy threshold in the host country. The emerging multinationals also need to retain their own home country legitimacy traits – Facebook and balance the relation between the image of the home country and the image of host country.

This paper investigates the process of overseas legitimacy threshold crossing for emerging multinationals in a dynamic context of transnational operation, particularly with respect to the evolutionary role played by international network linkage and resource system reconfiguration.

The deployment of solar photovoltaic (PV) in higher education institutions is beneficial and critical for attaining sustainable campus goals. However, various barriers hamper the adoption of the technology, and unless these challenges are identified, formulating tailor made solutions to boost deployment will be challenging. Thus, this study aimed to identify the barriers to the deployment of PV in the public university sector in South Africa.

A critical review of the literature was conducted to identify the factors that negatively impact PV deployment. By screening the barriers identified from the literature using a conceptual framework, the barriers that were considered relevant to deployment within a university context were selected. Thereafter, the selected barriers and additional barriers recommended by panellists were verified through a three-round Delphi survey. The factors were either accepted or rejected as barriers in the sector based on the factors' mean score and interquartile range values.

The study observed that 12 barriers hamper PV deployment in the public university sector. The findings indicated that the top five barriers were the lack of incentives, lack of green building targets, lack of financial resources, high initial cost, and lack of clear policy direction. However, the study found that deployment was not hindered because there was resistance to change or uncertainty of recouping investment costs. The deployment was also not hindered because there was a lack of demand from electricity end-users or a lack of suitable installation space.

Given the lack of empirical studies on the subject in the region, the present study contributes to the body of knowledge by identifying the significant barriers that impede PV deployment in the public university sector. Furthermore, insight is provided on measures that relevant stakeholders can take to motivate and support universities to deploy the technology further.

The main purpose of this paper is to explore whether the nature of innovation is accumulative or radical and to what extent past year accumulation of technology stock can predict future innovation. More importantly, the authors are concerned with whether a change of policy regime or a variance in the quality of technology will moderate the nature of innovation.

The authors examined a dataset of 3.6 million Chinese patents during 1985–2015 and constructed more than 5 million citation pairs across 8 sections and 128 classes to track knowledge spillover across technology fields. The authors used this citation dataset to calculate the technology innovation network. The authors constructed a measure of upstream invention, interacting the pre-existing technology innovation network with historical patent growth in each technology field, and estimated measure's impact on future innovation since 2005. The authors also constructed three sets of metrics – technology dependence, centrality and scientific value – to identify innovation quality and a policy dummy to consider the impact of policy on innovation.

Innovation growth is built upon past year accumulation and technology spillover. Innovation grows faster for technologies that are more central and grows more slowly for more valuable technologies. A pro-innovation and pro-intellectual property right (IPR) policy plays a positive and significant role in driving technical progress. The authors also found that for technologies that have faster access to new information or larger power to control knowledge flow, the upstream and downstream innovation linkage is stronger. However, this linkage is weaker for technologies that are more novel or general. On most occasions, the nature of innovation was less responsive to policy shock.

This paper contributes to the debate on the nature of innovation by determining whether upstream innovation has strong predictive power on future innovation. The authors develop the assumption used in the technology spillover literature by considering a time-variant, directional and asymmetric matrix to model technology diffusion. For the first time, the authors answer how the nature of innovation will vary depending on the technology network configurations and policy environment. In addition to contributing to the academic debate, the authors' study has important implications for economic growth and industrial or innovation management policies.