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The purpose of this paper is to highlight the importance of performance measurement (PM) within construction research and development (R&D) activities to enhance its efficiency and effectiveness.

A comprehensive literature review is used as the methodology of this paper where it will look into two main areas. First, the paper discusses R&D work in construction industry with particular reference to its role, main contributors, and the issues which hinders its successfulness. From this section the paper arrives at a definition for construction R&D and the scope of the study. The second section of the paper defines PM and identifies the importance of it in general. Finally, the paper justifies how the issues within construction R&D could be minimised by implementing PM system.

The paper justifies the implementation of PM within construction R&D and identifies how PM could enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of construction R&D through: identifying requirements of the parties involved within the research process; defining clear aims and objectives; evaluation of the successfulness of activates/confirmation of milestones; providing information for the research funders regarding the utilisation of resources; improving the communication and coordination of the parties involved; and providing feedback for future improvements of the research work.

The paper reveals the impact and influence of PM towards the construction R&D activities.

The purpose of this paper is to study the attributes that influence perceptions of customer service in the retail banking setting from a non‐customer perspective.

This research employs a mystery shopping approach to identify and measure key service attributes that predict the likelihood of an individual's choosing a banking location.

The measures employed accurately predicted positive and negative outcomes based on respondent choices. The data suggest that personal elements of service may be of critical importance in cultivating new customer relationships.

Existing research related to bank service primarily focuses on customers in the context of their existing institutional relationship. This study examines a largely unexplored area of service, specifically, the issues most important to prospective customers with regard to banking choices.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between off-balance-sheet (OBS) operating leases and long-term debt by analyzing firms’ debt risk profiles measured by the constraints on firms in the financial ratios in their debt covenants.

This study determines debt risk profiles using three measures: the ex ante probability of covenant violation (Demerjian and Owens, 2016), firms in violation of debt covenants and firms close to covenant violations.

High-risk firms according to all three measures, on average, have a significantly lower level of operating leases, indicating that these firms use OBS leases as a substitute for long-term debt. Interestingly, for firms operating in industries in which leases are widely available, firms with a high probability of covenant violation have a significantly higher level of operating leases, indicating that these firms use OBS leases as a complement to long-term debt. Further analysis indicates that lease financing is less costly than debt financing for these firms.

Overall, evidence of this study indicates that firms facing financial constraints may attempt to lease more of their assets, but the availability of leasing is constrained by their debt covenant obligations and the strength of the leasing market in its industry.

This study identifies states in which risky firms may treat leases as either complements or substitutes for long-term debt, implying that the leasing decision relates to the availability of an active leasing market for a firm’s assets and the firm’s financial constraints. The findings of this study support recent research showing that debt and leases are complementary in the presence of counterparty risk providing insight into the paradoxical relationship identified in prior research between leases and long-term debt.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the association between the purpose of a loan and the type of debt covenants, separated into balance sheet-based and income statement-based covenants.

Using private loan deal observations obtained from the DealScan database over the period between 1996 and 2013, the authors classify the sample loan deals into three categories based on the purpose of borrowing, namely, borrowings for corporate daily operating purposes, financing purposes and acquisition and investing purposes. The authors conduct multinomial logistic regression analysis to test the relationship between the choice of financial ratios in a debt covenant and the purpose of a loan, controlling for financing constraints and other factors that have been identified as important to debt covenant analysis in prior studies.

The results provide evidence that the purpose of the loan is significantly associated with the type of debt covenants, suggesting that the lender and the borrower have considered the loan purpose when structuring their debt agreements. More specifically, the results indicate that the loans borrowed to fund acquisitions or long-term investment projects are more likely to have income statement-based covenants and less likely to have balance sheet-based covenants. In contrast, the loans borrowed for corporate daily operating purposes or financing purposes are more likely to contain balance sheet-based covenants relative to income statement-based covenants.

The authors show that loan purpose is significantly associated with the choice between income statement-based and balance sheet-based covenants. This result further illustrates ways in which accounting information improves contracting efficiency. The results are limited to the US market with its institutional structure. In future studies, it would be interesting to perform similar investigations on firms in other countries.

The findings contain important and economically significant implications indicating that loan lenders and borrowers agree to include different types of accounting information (that is, income statement- versus balance sheet-based financial ratios) in their loan covenants for different purpose loans.

Overall, the results provide important evidence regarding the connection between debt covenant structure and loan purpose. In doing so, it contributes to the literature on debt contract design (Dichev and Skinner 2002; Chava and Roberts 2008; Demerjian 2011; Christensen and Nikolaev 2012). Despite much interest in debt contract design, Skinner (2011) argues that there still exists incomplete knowledge of the economic factors that structure debt contracts. Income statement-based covenants depend on measures of profitability and efficiency and act as trip wires that transfer control rights to lenders when borrowing firms’ performance deteriorates. On the other hand, balance sheet-based covenants rely on information about sources and uses of capital and align interests between borrowing firms and lenders by restricting the borrower’s capital structure. The authors show that loan purpose is significantly associated with the choice between income statement-based and balance sheet-based covenants. This result further illustrates ways in which accounting information improves contracting efficiency.

This study is the first to identify differences in trends over time for the use of income statement- and balance sheet-based covenants as it relates to different loan purposes. The authors build on prior research to examine the degree to which loan purpose is associated with the choice between income statement-based and balance sheet-based covenants.

Testing technologies for policing is costly and laborious. Previous research found that police can be reticent about technology adoption. The purpose of this paper is to examine law enforcement adoption of programmatic innovations focused on particular crime types (radiological and nuclear threats).

First, an expert police panel explored readiness to adopt an advanced technology (personal radiation detectors (PRDs)). A survey was then developed from the panel findings (n=101 sampled from East Coast metropolitan police).

Results indicated that on-duty device adoption was likely, but not off-duty. In addition, concerns about ease of carrying PRDs, personal health and security issues, and concerns about job performance were raised. Furthermore, findings suggest that police respond negatively to financial incentives, and focus instead on how innovations can contribute to their own safety and that of their immediate families. Additionally, results indicate that false positives are not a significant barrier to adoption, but device training is important.

This work gives insight how to engage officers more meaningfully in technology adoption for benefit of policing in the field.

This work expands previous police adoption literature and advances understanding of the increasing role officers are taking in counter-terrorism efforts in the USA with applications around the world.

The purpose of this study is to identify the prescribed formative elements of supply chain resilience (SCR) in literature, to compare them with the unique characteristics of high reliability organisations (HROs) and derive lessons useful for improving SCR.

Two systematic literature reviews are carried out as follows: one on SCR and the other on HRO, which identified 107 studies and 18 papers, respectively. The results from the review are presented, analysed and synthesised.

Findings suggest that despite significant similarities in some of the proposed formative elements for SCR and the characteristics of HROs, the strong managerial commitment exhibited in HROs is absent in SCR literature. More importantly, the most cited characteristic of HROs, which is their flexible decision making structure is pointed out as a prima lesson towards developing resilience in supply chains.

A decision making framework to facilitate flexible decision making for supply chains during crisis is presented. Further, practical lessons are pointed out from principles common to both streams of literature such as redundancy, human resource management, collaboration, agility, flexibility, culture and risk avoidance that can be implemented in supply chains.

This paper is the first study to systematically review HROs, adapt a HRO decision making framework and also apply the Cynefin framework to SCR. This, therefore, provides the basis to launch further research into the use of these theories and the role of decision-making in SCR creation.

The purpose of this study is to examine whether work-related technology use outside of work and around family members could produce technoference or phubbing, where time spent with family members is interrupted by or intruded upon by technology use. The authors also examined its impact on work-to-family spillover, feelings of overload, life satisfaction and job satisfaction for workers.

Via an online survey, the authors assessed the frequency of technoference due to work, work-to-family spillover, feelings of overload, life satisfaction and job satisfaction. The authors’ analytic sample included US parents (95 fathers and 88 mothers) who worked for pay and experienced technoference in their relationships, which was at least sometimes due to work.

Results reveal possible impacts of technoference related to work on employee feelings of work-to-family spillover, greater feelings of overload, lower life satisfaction and lower job satisfaction.

Data are from a cross-sectional online survey, and results are correlational. Although the authors have theoretical/conceptual evidence for the impacts of technoference, it is possible that the direction of effects could be reversed or even bidirectional. Experimental/intervention work could further examine whether changes in technology use at home due to work improve employee well-being.

The authors’ findings suggest that organizational policies which promote healthy boundaries and work-life balance are likely fundamental to employee well-being and that employers should be mindful of employees' work-related technology use at home.

This study examines technoference and phubbing due to work while at home, as opposed to focusing on the at-work context.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the extent to which firms manage earnings prior to private debt issuance.

This is an empirical archival research paper using financial statement data and data related to private debt issuance.

The results indicate that, on average, firms engage in income-increasing earnings management in the period prior to a new private debt issuance. In addition, it was found that this income-increasing earnings management is limited to firms which have engaged in income-increasing earnings management to a greater extent in prior years.

This paper provides insight into how managers’ balance competing incentives to use income-increasing earnings management to obtain more favorable lending terms, and to use income-decreasing earnings management to reduce the risk of a future debt covenant violation. The results indicate that firms’ incentive to use income-increasing earnings management dominates. However, reputational concerns significantly constrain firms’ earnings management decisions prior to private debt issuance.

The paper fills a notable void in the literature by investigating firms’ earnings management activity prior to private lending agreements, and thereby provides new insights into both the relation between private debt and accounting quality, and the literature investigating the use of earnings management to avoid debt covenant violations.

Service user involvement is called for at every level of NHS delivery in the United Kingdom (UK). This article describes a model of service user participation in the development of mental health nurse curricula in a UK university. Using a research model of participatory action research, the Participation In Nurse Education (PINE) project has now become mainstream in the mental health branches at the university. Service users led the design and implementation of the teaching sessions and led the data collection and analysis. Research participants were the service user trainers and the student nurses who were involved in being taught in the early stages of the project. The benefits of the work to both trainers and students are identified as well as some of the difficulties.

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the concept of multi-stakeholder partnerships in relation to the United Nations' sustainable development goals and propose a renewed multi-stakeholder partnerships framework that enables the implementation of the sustainable development goals.

This paper employs an integrative review methodology to assess, critique and synthesize the extant literature on the multi-stakeholder partnerships and sustainable development goals.

We propose a conceptual framework of multi-stakeholder partnerships to support the sustainable development goals implementation. Thus, this paper contributes to the conceptual understanding of the multi-stakeholder partnerships mechanism that enhances the sustainable development goals implementation.

We propose a conceptual framework of multi-stakeholder partnerships to support the sustainable development goals implementation. Thus, this paper contributes to the conceptual understanding of the multi-stakeholder partnerships mechanism that enhances the sustainable development goals implementation.

We contend that this is one of the few early papers that contributes to the conceptual development of a collaborative multi-stakeholder partnerships paradigm by which such partnerships are formed and institutionalized among multiple interacting sectors to achieve the sustainable development goals.