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Construction management is ameliorated by the lean construction concept in many direct and indirect ways to reduce waste of construction process and improve the value. The purpose of this paper is to identify the challenges of the implementation of lean construction in the Bangladeshi construction industry and to prioritize these factors that constitute these challenges.

A comprehensive literature review was used for shorting the global challenges of implementing lean construction. Subsequently, these challenges were incorporated into a structured questionnaire for survey. A total of 164 valid responses were collected from Bangladeshi construction practitioners involved in different types of construction organizations. The results were analyzed using the Relative Important Index (RII) and Mann–Whitney U test.

The findings revealed 41 challenges of lean construction implementation in the Bangladeshi construction industry. The highest ranking challenges are the lack of awareness about lean construction, lack of skills, training and lean techniques, unwillingness to change the existing culture, lack of management commitment, fragmented and cyclic nature of the construction project and unavailing communication between all project participants. The study also discusses some universally applicable solutions to overcome these challenges.

By the findings of this study, the Bangladeshi construction industry could get a new insight into the challenges of implementing lean construction. It could play a very important part in the body of knowledge, as it reveals the challenges of implementing lean construction for the first time with the socio-economic context of Bangladesh. Exploring the findings, the study could help the stakeholders, companies, academician, researchers and government to focus their effort and resources on the significantly appropriate issues. Furthermore, this study may beneficial to those developing countries especially in South Asia, who have shared the same socio-economic status with Bangladesh.

This paper surveys corporate officers responsible for greenhouse gas (GHG) reporting and assurance to determine the attributes that influence their choice between an accounting and a non-accounting GHG assurance provider. Differences in the relative importance of these attributes between those selecting accounting and non-accounting assurers are also explored.

A survey questionnaire was completed by 25 corporate officers responsible for reporting and voluntarily assurance of GHG emissions in Australia. The questionnaire asked the respondents to indicate the relative importance of 41 company and assurer attributes in influencing their assurance provider choice.

Results indicate that attributes related to the assurance provider, such as team and team leader assurance knowledge, reputation, objectivity and independence, are more influential than attributes related to the nature of the company or the nature of the GHG emissions. Attributes such as geographical dispersion of operations were found to be differently important to this decision between companies purchasing assurance from accounting and non-accounting firms.

The study’s main limitation is the small number of participants. Future research may extend this study by exploring the conditions under which companies voluntarily assure GHG emissions as well the motivations of responsible officers in their assurer choice.

This paper provides valuable insights to GHG assurers to assist their understanding of the attributes that are important to potential GHG assurance clients.

The study makes unique contributions to the assurer choice literature by not only addressing this issue in the context of the dichotomous GHG assurance market but also by addressing it from the perspective of the assurance purchaser.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on how to automatically generate the individualized patterns for women’s suits based on the 3D body point-cloud images.

With the software Imageware, the point-cloud data of the female body were measured according to the female body feature to obtain the heights, widths, depths and girths at various landmarks. Then the relationship between the height of each landmark and the body height was analyzed to build the height calculation rules by software SPSS, and the prediction models of body girths were established from the body widths and depths using regression analysis for pattern generation.

The pattern generation rules were built with the relationships between a human body and the garment patterns using the graphic flattening method. Based on the above rules, the final patterns were drafted automatically by using these dimensions to fit the subjects. The try-on experiment also showed that the individualized suits could fit the subjects’ body well at some feature landmarks.

In order to realize tailor-made and meet the consumers’ demands for individualized clothes, the development of garment CAD system has become inevitable in the garment industry. This paper could provide the foundation for automatic pattern generation, and technical support for tailor-made.

This chapter advocates a teaching approach for the statement of cash flows (SCF) that includes introduction of the SCF early in the curriculum using the accounting equation format, which helps students visualize the cash and accrual activities. We then adapt this accounting equation format to a worksheet model that can be used later in the curriculum with more complex data sets. This approach provides several advantages: (1) it maintains a consistent, accounting equation approach throughout; (2) it can be used for both the direct and the indirect report format; (3) when used with Excel, the format is easier to explain, easier to use, and less prone to mechanical error than the worksheet approaches used in most textbooks; and (4) it is used by many professional accountants.

This paper critically reviews and analyzes the trends in waqf studies within the Islamic economics literature. It analyzes the recent developments and debates in waqf reform and advances the argument for prioritizing research on waqf economics; the waqf dimension that is concerned with modelling how to utilize it to enhance productivity, consumption, redistribution, investment and saving, and generally contribute sustainably towards poverty reduction, economic empowerment and development.

The paper is conceptual in nature, focusing on a systematic historical analytical review of waqf studies in Islamic economics literature.

Despite the documented historic role of waqf in constructing the Muslim socio-economic architecture as the third economic sector and a mechanism for civilizational development and renewal, it received little attention in the early writings on modern Islamic economics. While the past one decade has witnessed a renewed interest in waqf research, most studies focus on its legal, juristic and administrative aspects in addition to the nostalgic reflections on its past glories. Little attention is comparatively given to the socio-economic aspect, which represents the actual raison d’être for its institutionalization.

An important task ahead of the current generation of Islamic economists is to formulate waqf-based development models that are rooted in proper diagnosis and deep understanding of the current socio-economic realities of the OIC member countries for the purpose of uplifting living standards and stimulating sustainable socio-economic development.

The paper contributes to the debate on priorities in waqf studies and practice and can trigger further discourses and research on the future of research in waqf economics.

Spiegel Online (www.spiegel.de) is the leading news Web site in Germany. The site was first designed to accompany Der Spiegel, one of Europe's largest and Germany's most influential weekly magazine, which has a weekly circulation of around one million. The site's content is produced by a team of more than fifty journalists writing in several categories: politics, business, networld, panorama, arts and entertainment, science, university, school, sports, travel, weather, and automobiles. The original content is complemented by articles purchased from news agencies and selected articles from the print edition. Spiegel-Verlag is a major contributor to the Hamburg Media School, which offers professional master's degree programs in Media Management (MBA), film, and journalism. In their second year, MBA students typically engage in consulting projects with major media companies. In a recent assignment, Spiegel Online posed two questions to the MBA team: are there any chances for an economically successful entry into the market for interactive classifieds? And if so, what should the business model look like in detail? A student team analyzed markets for classified ads and found one market segment that appeared to be particularly promising: the market for art objects. During the development of a business plan for a new venture in this market it became apparent that there is much uncertainty about the key input parameters to the business plan. As a result, it is very difficult to assess the viability of the business idea. How can the team properly account for the uncertain input parameters? What is the impact of this uncertainty on the bottom line? Will a Web site for art objects earn or lose money? How can the team communicate this uncertainty to a group of high-level decision makers who want a simple “go or no-go” recommendation?

The objective is to make students aware of the applicability of Monte Carlo simulation to the analysis of complex business plans. Students should learn how to explicitly account for uncertain inputs in a business plan, how to assess the impact of uncertainty on the bottom line via Monte Carlo simulation, and how to communicate the results of their analysis to high-level decision makers.

The purpose of this paper is to present research on motivated bias and self-deception in ethical decision-making in public relations. Self-deception might explain how professionals evade mental stress in conflicting situations and manage to be persuasive even when they have to act contrary to their own morals or to public interests. Since self-deception impedes moral reasoning, the research purpose is to gain insights on its origins so that effective counter-measures can be developed.

First, the state of research on moral dilemmas in public relations and on self-deception in psychology is outlined. Second, four professionals are interviewed to explore typical conflicts of interest and to develop a realistic scenario that gives rise to a moral dilemma. Third, a small sample of professionals (n=9) is confronted with the developed scenario in a qualitative online questionnaire to analyze their reasoning.

Results indicate that self-deception in response to moral dilemmas exists in public relations practice. Typical conflicts of interest, boundary conditions for motivated bias and counter-measures are identified. Experienced professionals in leading positions seem to have the confidence to reject mandates they perceive as immoral. Counter-measures against self-deception should therefore address young professionals and practitioners with low advisory influence.

While public relations research mostly presumes professionals as rational actors, this study sheds light on irrational practices. In contrast to common practice of expert interviews, an indirect and implicit methodological approach is applied to capture unconscious processes of motivated reasoning.

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