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The PMO is seen as an organisational entity entrusted to instil Project Management (PM) practices and culture within an organisation and is portrayed as the focal point of PM practices and the locus where an organisation’s knowledge management and PM practices intersect. Companies within a range of economic sectors are accommodating this entity in their organisation structures. Whilst the PMO may not appear to be prevalent in the AEC sector, many of the capabilities ascribed to it do exist either separately or in aggregate within AEC organisations. This paper presents the results of a survey, explored the adoption of the PMO concept within main contractors, project management practices, and developers in the German AEC sector. It discusses the roles that this entity can play in the organisations that are aspiring to achieve a higher level of PM competency and maturity. It also investigates the success factors associated with the successful implementation of the PMO construct and reports on some of the challenges faced in implementing the entity together with potential ways of alleviating these challenges. The research identified that there was a high level of awareness of the PMO concept and that there was a high level prevalence of many of capabilities ascribed to PMOs in the organisations sampled. Many of these organisations recognised that the PMO concept as contributing considerably to knowledge management in their organisation.

The interpretation and valuation of real options by means of options pricing theory can be regarded as a relatively new paradigm of investment theory. Option pricing theory based investment valuation represents a sound theoretical basis and offers principally a simple decision base. The approach recognises entrepreneurial flexibility and risk explicitly. It implies a positive correlation between flexibility respectively uncertainty and the value of options. Traditional deterministic‐dynamic standard methods of valuation are not able to value flexibility or risk effectively so that option values are adequately reflected. As property investors gradually embrace modern financial concepts it is clear that real estate valuation theory will have to change. One of the most promising areas that could have an important implication on the further development of valuation is the application of the real options paradigm. The author investigates the transfer of general real options theory through an examination of academic results in the field of real estate development. He comes to the conclusion that current research generates highly academic‐abstract results with limited practical value. So far a limited number of quantitative studies regarding the valuation real estate projects with the real options method have been conducted. Practical valuations have yet to be comprehensively carried out. For doing so, further research concerning the basic prerequisites of real options theory has to be undertaken.

In recent years, steadily rising and ever‐changing energy prices have required the development of sustainable strategies to reduce the energy consumption of buildings. Measures to improve the energy efficiency of detached houses have already been implemented. This new procedure addresses the energy efficient modernization to entire building stocks of public authorities and therefore targets to meet a key niche issue.

As result of literature research the demand for a strategic approach for energy efficient improvement was pointed out. The model framework refers to four main requirements for a new procedure within a comprehensive view of facilities management (FM), lifecycle orientation, efficient working processes, setting of objectives and monitoring of results. In addition the literature research recorded five main methods and tools which were utilized for the model development.

The new constructed facility‐energy‐efficiency model (FEE‐model) supports the decision process. The starting point is the selection of the buildings with the highest energy saving potential. The next step is a deeper analysis of the as‐is‐state in comparison with a defined target state. After that improvement areas were identified and finally a recommendation for the implementation is given. The model was tested within practical cases of which a municipal kindergarten is documented as example in this article.

The paper provides useful information on energy efficient improvement of entire building stocks.

The purpose of this study is twofold: first, to identify major project management (PM) complexities in principal construction contracting; and second, to study the contribution of project management offices (PMOs) to addressing such complexities.

A two-stage research design was adopted through a structured literature review (SLR) and a qualitative survey study.

The two-stage study resulted in mapping out the contribution of 10 functional areas to 15 complexity factors that were retrieved from the literature and categorized using the TOE (technical, organizational and environmental) framework. Six outcomes including (1) facilitated processes, (2) improved decisions, (3) improved coordination, (4) enhanced alignment, (5) addressed uncertainties and (6) integrated oversight were identified that describe how PMOs can contribute to tackling complexities.

Similar to other qualitative studies, this study has some limitations in terms of the replicability of results. Regarding the exploratory nature of this study to explain the contribution of PMO to complexity, further quantitative surveys can be conducted using a larger sample to statistically examine the significance of proposed relations between capabilities and complexity factors.

This study provides an understanding of the contribution of PMOs to tackling ever-increasing complexities embedded in construction contracting. The authors suggest requirements to be considered by professionals toward overcoming such complexities.

Although prior studies have separately investigated PMO functions and PM complexities, this study explores the link between these two spheres to discuss one important application of PMO in this context.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the prevalence of depression and to determine the association between social support and depression among transgender women in Bangkok, Thailand.

A cross-sectional study was conducted among 280 transgender women in Bangkok, Thailand between March 2019 and May 2019 using the snowball sampling method. Data were collected through a self-administered questionnaire. The questionnaire included demographic questions and measures of social support (MSPSS) and depression (CES-D). Multivariable logistic regression analysis was employed to explore the association between social support and depression.

The prevalence of depression among transgender women was 58.2%. Multivariable logistic regression analysis indicated that depression was significantly associated with perceived low social support (OR: 9.55, 95%CI: 2.10–43.39) and moderate social support (OR: 2.03, 95%CI: 1.19–3.46) after being adjusted for religion, sufficient income and alcohol drinking.

Transgender women were prone to experience a higher prevalence of depression than the general population. Social support would reduce the risk of depression among transgender women. Therefore, social support service systems for transgender women should be embedded into organizations concerned.

The growth of social media and the sharing economy is generating abundant unstructured image and video data. Computer vision techniques can derive rich insights from unstructured data and can inform recommendations for increasing profits and consumer utility – if only the model outputs are interpretable enough to earn the trust of consumers and buy-in from companies. To build a foundation for understanding the importance of model interpretation in image analytics, the first section of this article reviews the existing work along three dimensions: the data type (image data vs. video data), model structure (feature-level vs. pixel-level), and primary application (to increase company profits vs. to maximize consumer utility). The second section discusses how the “black box” of pixel-level models leads to legal and ethical problems, but interpretability can be improved with eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) methods. We classify and review XAI methods based on transparency, the scope of interpretability (global vs. local), and model specificity (model-specific vs. model-agnostic); in marketing research, transparent, local, and model-agnostic methods are most common. The third section proposes three promising future research directions related to model interpretability: the economic value of augmented reality in 3D product tracking and visualization, field experiments to compare human judgments with the outputs of machine vision systems, and XAI methods to test strategies for mitigating algorithmic bias.

Prejudice against Jews was part of the landscape in the Union of South Africa long before Nazism made inroads into the country during the 1930s, at which stage Jews constituted approximately 4.6% of the country’s white (or European) population. Aggressive Afrikaner nationalism was marked by fervent attempts to proscribe Jewish immigration. By 1939, Jewish immigration was included as an official plank in the political platform of the opposition Purified National Party led by Dr D.F. Malan, along with a ban on party membership for Jews residents in the Transvaal province. Racial discrimination, in a country with diversified ethnic elements and intense political complexities, was synonymous with life in the Union long before the Apartheid system, with its official policy of enforced legal, political and economic segregation, became law in May 1948 under Dr Malan’s prime ministership. Although the Jews, while maintaining their own subcultural identity, were classified within South Africa’s racial hierarchy as part of the privileged white minority, the emergence of recurrent anti-Jewish stereotypes and themes became manifest in a country permeated by the ideology of race and white superiority. This was exacerbated by the growth of a powerful Afrikaner nationalist movement, underpinned by conservative Calvinist theology. This chapter focusses on measures taken in South Africa by organisational structures within the political sphere to restrict Jewish immigration between 1930 and 1939 and to do so on ethnic grounds. These measures were underscored by radical Afrikaner nationalism, which flew in the face of the principles of ethics and moral judgement.

Planning the construction duration is an important consideration in any construction project. Indicators that permit an early forecast of the duration provide the basis for such planning. To date, such a basis has been lacking in the German‐speaking area. This paper aims to discuss this matter.

Indicators are identified that enable a forecast of the construction duration. In addition, a simple regression model is provided to assist in selecting construction speed indicators. This empirical analysis relies on the data, collected on a uniform basis, from 115 German residential buildings.

Project size (measured in m² gross external floor area) and project standard (measured in € building construction cost/m² gross external floor area) are found to be significant drivers of construction speed. It appears that project size, in contrast to the project standard, is positively correlated with construction speed.

An expansion of the data pool is required for more extensive study. On the one hand, this means including relevant drivers that have only been insufficiently considered to date, such as project complexity, project environment, management‐related attributes. On the other hand, the data pool must also be expanded to include other types of use.

The purpose of this study was to shed light on how effective environmental corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication can be achieved through persuasive communication strategies using message framing.

This study conducted an online experimental study with a 2 (narrative: narrative or non-narrative) × 2 (framing: gain or loss) between-subjects design.

The findings showed that environmental CSR communication using narrative framing messages is most effective in creating strong CSR associations between a company and the environmental CSR domain and sharing the company's CSR information on supportive communication and advocating for the environmental campaign.

This study highlights the importance of a company's environmental CSR communication efforts using the right message format (narrative style) to increase its persuasive sequence from CSR evaluation to supportive behaviors, contributing to theoretical development in the research of environmental CSR communication. This study suggests that environmental CSR campaign managers should first formalize the company's environmental responsiveness by clearly establishing policies and practicing CSR performance that could result in a strong CSR association before asking their target publics to engage in pro-environmental activities.