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When Ernie DePropso and I were research assistants at the Institute of Public Administration at Penn State in the early 1960s, we experienced two technological miracles (or so it seemed). The first was the Thermofax copier, and the second was a Monroe calculator with a memory key that could hold one constant. The Monroe cost $1,500 at the time—today a calculator superior to the Monroe can be had for less than $5.

Total risk score (TRS) is considered one of the main indicators for risk evaluation. Several studies attempted to employ different types of risk indices for the evaluation of cost overrun causes. Hence, this study aims at performing a comparative analysis to evaluate the efficiency of three different approaches for TRS calculation.

Thirty-eight unique causes of cost overrun in urban-related construction projects were identified and a survey was conducted among construction professionals in Iran. The TRS for each cost overrun cause is calculated using single-attribute (SA), double-attribute (DA), and multiple-attribute (MA) approaches, and eventually, causes were ranked. Furthermore, principal component analysis (PCA), logistic regression analysis (LRA), and K-means clustering are utilized to compare the differences in the generated TRS using different approaches.

The results revealed that the TRS generated through the MA approach demonstrated the highest efficiency in terms of generating correlation between causes and their identified latent constructs, prediction capability, and classification of the influential causes in the same group.

The originality of this study primarily stems from the adoption of statistical approaches in the evaluation of the recently introduced TRS calculation approach in comparison to traditional ones. Additionally, this study proposed a modified application of the relative importance index (RII) for risk prioritization. The results from this study are expected to fulfill the gap in previous literature toward exploring the most efficient TRS calculation approach for those researchers and practitioners who seek to utilize them as a measure to identify the influential cost overrun causes.

The purpose of this paper is to adopt fuzzy interpretive structural modeling (ISM) to develop a precise evaluation framework and provide a theoretical basis for enhancing the understanding of responsible consumption and production (RCP) in academic and industrial fields.

An integration of fuzzy set theory and ISM is proposed to maintain a higher level of consistency and reduce the uncertainty inherent in expert responses.

RCP can be categorized into seven levels, which represent the driving power from higher to lower. The top aspect is management style; the remaining aspects are stakeholder management, regulation compliance, efficiency improvement, sustainable awareness, sustainable production and social responsibility.

This study attempts to integrate the triple bottom line (TBL) concept and corporate sustainability to develop a significant framework for evaluating RCP. Although the proposed aspects and criteria can be used to evaluate the Chinese construction industry, these may be insufficient for other industries. In addition, further discussion regarding important aspects and criteria is required to complete the theoretical basis.

The results indicate that the top two criteria are establishing transparent communication channels and promoting managerial attitudes and behavior, which are followed by technology capabilities, organizational culture and stakeholder engagement. These five criteria play important roles when implementing RCP practices among Chinese construction firms.

This study is the first to discuss RCP via an integration of the TBL concept and corporate sustainability. The framework developed herein provides a precise guideline for Chinese construction firms to improve their performance, and it also promotes the efficient use of resources via sustainable practices.

Oil is crucial for industrial development. This paper investigates the impacts of oil price changes on China's industrial growth and examines whether the impacts are asymmetric. The estimations can help determine how oil price shocks are transmitted throughout the economy.

This paper adopts West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil price and industrial sector output and uses monthly data. The recently developed nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) model is employed to illustrate the effects in both the short term and long term. Importantly, under NARDL framework, this paper examines whether the impacts are asymmetric by decomposing oil price shocks into their positive and negative partial sums.

The empirical results prove clear evidence of asymmetries in the short term, long term or both terms. Specifically, some sectors benefit from, rather than suffer from higher oil prices, even some energy-intensive sectors, i.e. C31 (Smelting and Pressing of Ferrous Metals) and C32 (Smelting and Pressing of Non-ferrous Metals). However, the effects on some other energy-intensive sectors appear insignificant. Additionally, the results prove significantly negative responses in some sectors in the long term, and most of these sectors are in the top half of the ranking by energy consumptions.

This paper studies the economic responses at a disaggregated level by employing industry-level data. NARDL method is used to decompose oil price changes into their increases and decreases and investigate the asymmetries in the impacts of oil price changes.

Additive manufacturing (AM) has the potential to transform the organisation of all the activities carried out by firms. The growing diffusion of these technologies is increasingly challenging multinational enterprises to reinvent their businesses. Accordingly, many scholars argue that AM may reduce countries’ participation in global value chains (GVCs) or, at least, affect GVCs’ geography, length and further developments. However, so far, the lack of available data on the real worldwide diffusion of these technologies has precluded the possibility to study this phenomenon from an empirical standpoint.

This study investigates AM technologies, with a particular focus on their possible impact on GVCs, in the framework of the current debate in international business. In order to examine this relationship and overcome the lack of adoption data, the authors identify a potential proxy of AM diffusion – that is, patenting activity. Coherently, the authors employ this proxy and a country-level measure of GVC participation (i.e., the Share of Re-Exported Inputs on Total Imported Inputs) to empirically investigate the role of AM in influencing countries’ participation to GVCs. This country-level analysis is focussed on three specific industries and the aggregate economy in 58 countries for the period 2000–2014.

The results show that AM decreases a country’s participation in GVCs, both at the country level and, in particular, in the sectors which are more likely to be affected by AM technologies. This evidence suggests that this phenomenon might be induced by a decreasing reliance on intermediates processed abroad, hence an increasing importance of domestic goods, manufactured via AM.

Claims and disputes are often unavoidable in the construction industry due to its unique and complex characteristics involving the massive investment of capital, lengthy project duration, and multiple project stakeholders. This chapter intends to identify the critical construction claims attributes, compare the perceptions of major stakeholders on different claim attributes, and investigate the contrast of the top five claim attributes between this study and previous ones. The literature review resulted in 48 claim attributes responsible for the construction project schedule delays. These attributes were then presented to Vietnam construction industry (VCI) practitioners in the form of a questionnaire survey. Data analysis was done based on the collected 113 qualified samples. Relative importance index (RII) was applied to determine the ranking of claim attributes. The results were that the top five causes of claims, that is, payment delays, mistakes by contractor during construction stage, delays in work progress by the contractor, financial failure of the contractor, and frequently changing requirements by the owner, lead to the schedule delays in VCI. These findings can assist the local industry practitioners and foreign companies seeking a share in the VCI market in understanding the causes of construction claims comprehensively and formulating the countermeasures to minimise their impacts and hence reduce the unnecessary losses and raise the likelihood of success as well as maintain sustainable relationships among stakeholders.

This study aims to conduct the aircraft electrical wiring interconnection system (EWIS) safety risk assessment process abundantly and hierarchically and establish the assessment index system considering the weights and interrelationships of different levels of indices.

Due to the failure of EWIS being multifactorial, hidden and diverse, this paper divides the factors influencing the failure of EWIS into 3 primary indices, 13 secondary indices and 38 tertiary indices. Taking open circuit failure (OCF) and short circuit failure (SCF) as examples, calculate the weights of assessment indices based on the triangular fuzzy number analytic hierarchy process (TFNAHP) and triangular fuzzy number decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (TFNDEMATEL). The cloud model (CM) divides the risk levels and obtains the safety risk assessment results. The comparative analyses of different weight calculation methods, different failure modes and different aircraft EWIS zones verify the effectiveness and practicability of the proposed method.

The results show that the proposed method aligns more with the actual situation than other methods. Also, the results identify key focus objects in EWIS safety risk assessment, such as the surrounding environmental factors among the primary indices having the most significant influence on OCF and SCF, the risk level of SCF being higher than that of OCF, etc.

This paper proposes a safety risk assessment index system for aircraft EWIS based on the cable parameters, surrounding environmental factors, installation and protection methods. The weight assignment is added to the assessment index system, and the safety risk assessment model is constructed by combining TFNAHP, TFNDEMATEL and CM.

A new integrated method based on the means‐end chain (MEC) analysis and factor analysis is proposed for developing intangible product‐mix strategies for convenience store (CVS) chains. With variables obtained from a survey on CVS service items, both analyses were used to derive the hierarchical value factor map (HVFM). The new map can handle and develop strategies for product differentiation, advertising and market segmentation. The purpose of this article is two‐fold: to propose improvements for the traditional MEC method of constructing the service hierarchical value map (HVM) and to formulate effective intangible‐product strategies.

IN today's battle for greater productivity management is cast in a cardinal role. Like a military commander, it has first to recognize the nature and purpose of the opponent and then formulate the best strategy to encompass his defeat. One element in that is to know the strength and quality of the available resources, ways in which to improve both, and then deploy them to the best advantage.

This study aims to apply unit root test to investigate the behavior of Chinese firms toward their leverage policy. The study is based on two influential and competing theories of capital structure.

This study applies unit root test to investigate the behavior of Chinese firms toward their leverage policy. The study is based on two influential and competing theories of capital structure. Trade off theory advocates that firms have a target level of leverage ratio and that firms try to achieve that optimal leverage ratio, whereas pecking order theory argues that firms have no target level of leverage and that they follow a specific pattern of leverage. For this purpose, this study applies a Fisher type unit root test to 12,808 firm level observations. The data are unbalanced and cover a period from 1991 to 2014.

The results reveal the presence of a stationary behavior across short-term, long-term and total leverage policies. For short-term leverage policy, 21 per cent firms show stationary behavior, while for long-term, 20 per cent show a targeting behavior; for the total leverage policy 17 per cent of firms are found to follow a tradeoff model. To make the findings more interesting sample was further classified into profit and loss making firms. The study finds that loss making firms do not follow a target level of leverage in China. Furthermore, unit root is applied to all firms before and after crises-2008. It is revealed that stationary behavior is more prevalent before crises-2008.

This study is highly important from the point of view that it quantifies firms into distinct categories of following specific model of capital structure. To the best of the author’s knowledge, the findings of this study add to current research knowledge about Chinese firms with respect to adjustment behavior toward a target capital structure.