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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the applicability of Shewhart methodology and other quality management principles to gain a deeper understanding of the observed volatility in stock returns and its impact on market performance.

The validity of quality management philosophy in the context of financial market behaviour is discussed. The technique of rational subgrouping is used to identify the observable variations in stock returns as either common or special cause variation. The usefulness of the proposed methodology is investigated through empirical data. The risk/return and skewness/kurtosis trade-offs of S&P 500 stocks are examined. The consistency of this approach is reviewed by relating the separated variability to “efficient market” and “behavioural finance” theories.

Significant positive and negative risk/return trade-offs were found after partitioning the returns series into common and special cause periods, respectively, while total data did not exhibit a significant risk/return trade-off at all. A highly negative skewness/kurtosis trade-off was found in total and special cause periods as compared to the common cause periods. These results are broadly consistent with the theoretical concepts of finance and other empirical findings.

The quality management principles-based approach to analysing financial data avoids the complexities commonly found in stochastic-volatility forecasting models.

The results provide new insights into the impact of volatility in stock returns. They should have direct implications for financial market participants.

The authors explore the relevance of Shewhart methodology in analysing variability in stock returns through reviewing financial market behaviour.

Business cycle theory is normally described as having evolved out of a previous tradition of writers focusing exclusively on crises. In this account, the turning point is seen as residing in Clément Juglar's contribution on commercial crises and their periodicity. It is well known that the champion of this view is Schumpeter, who propagated it on several occasions. The same author, however, pointed to a number of other writers who, before and at the same time as Juglar, stressed one or another of the aspects for which Juglar is credited primacy, including the recognition of periodicity and the identification of endogenous elements enabling the recognition of crises as a self-generating phenomenon. There is indeed a vast literature, both primary and secondary, relating to the debates on crises and fluctuations around the middle of the nineteenth century, from which it is apparent that Juglar's book Des Crises Commerciales et de leur Retour Périodique en France, en Angleterre et aux États-Unis (originally published in 1862 and very much revised and enlarged in 1889) did not come out of the blue but was one of the products of an intellectual climate inducing the thinking of crises not as unrelated events but as part of a more complex phenomenon consisting of recurring crises related to the development of the commercial world – an interpretation corroborated by the almost regular occurrence of crises at about 10-year intervals.

The successive Malaysian government aims to provide housing to households earning the median income and below. However, there has been continuous criticism and complaints from the media and literature on the magnitude of the defects in affordable housing. Therefore, this research has investigated the defects in affordable housing for the users’/occupants' perspectives.

With a response rate of 69%, the research developed a questionnaire instrument that included twenty-one defects in buildings based on literature and observation. These were scored on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from very common to least common. Twelve causes of defects measured on a five-point scale were included in the survey. Thirteen additional items that had to do with remedial actions to reduce defects were included. These were scored on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from strongly agree to least agree. The survey forms were administered to all the 152 home occupants in a Program Perumahan Rakyat (PPR) housing estate through hand delivery in a northern state in Malaysia.

The data revealed that broken doors, damaged roofs, damp walls and broken tiles in rooms were the most common defects in the housing development. It was found that defects in the buildings were caused by poor workmanship, defective materials, poor designs and bad weather. Additionally, to rectify the defects, adequate supervision is required during maintenance, the repairs must be conducted on time and there is a need to have competent maintenance organisations. Through factor analysis, the 21 defects were structured into six factors, the 12 causes were grouped into 5 factors and the 13 remedial actions were grouped into 6 factors.

The information on the nature, degree and kinds of defects from the users' perspectives will dictate when repair work is to be undertaken and allow future work to be programmed and financed as part of a maintenance rolling programme.

This research focused specifically on “Program Perumahan Rakyat” housing development. Furthermore, none of the previous research on defects conducted attempted to categorise the defects in the buildings. The categorisation is very important for systemic decision-making because there are continuous interactions amongst the defects, causes and remedial actions.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the common themes leading or contributing to clinical incidents in a UK teaching hospital.

A root‐cause analysis was conducted on patient safety incidents. Commonly occurring root causes and contributing factors were collected and correlated with incident timing and severity.

In total, 65 root‐cause analyses were reviewed, highlighting 202 factors implicated in the clinical incidents and 69 categories were identified. The 14 most commonly occurring causes (encountered in four incidents or more) were examined as a key‐root or contributory cause. Incident timing was also analysed; common factors were encountered more frequently during out‐hours – occurring as contributory rather than a key‐root cause.

In total, 14 commonly occurring factors were identified to direct interventions that could prevent many clinical incidents. From these, an “Organisational Safety Checklist” was developed to involve departmental level clinicians to monitor practice.

This study demonstrates that comprehensively investigating incidents highlights common factors that can be addressed at a local level. Resilience against clinical incidents is low during out‐of‐hours periods, where factors such as lower staffing levels and poor service provision allows problems to escalate and become clinical incidents, which adds to the literature regarding out‐of‐hours care provision and should prove useful to those organising hospital services at departmental and management levels.

It is necessary and useful to differentiate destructive from constructive conflict and avoidable from necessary claims; and also to minimize disputes arising from unresolved conflict and claims in construction projects. This paper analyses such needs and proposes means of meeting them through an appropriate classification of construction claims; an estimation of their relative significance in terms of magnitude and frequency; and an identification of the proximate and root causes of the significant claims. A hierarchy of such claims, proximate and root causes is presented, based mainly on data collected from 61 projects and on 46 responses to questionnaires in Hong Kong. Measures of the relative significance of the claims categories are also presented. The results are reinforced by observations from parallel studies in Hong Kong and elsewhere, as well as from the literature. Strategies are suggested to avoid the avoidable and mitigate the unavoidable or unavoided claims, through controlling the controllable causes. Management focus is also recommended on controlling the causes of those categories of claims and disputes that are seen to be significant in terms of higher impact and/or probability of occurrence.

This article presents four newly developed mathematical models representing non‐maintained parallel systems with hardware failures, common‐cause failures and human error. The Markov method was used to develop expressions for parallel system state probabilities, system reliability and mean time to failure (MTTF). System reliability and MTTF plots are shown. These plots clearly show the effect of common‐cause failures and human error on system reliability.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate various reliability metrics such as transition state probabilities, availability, reliability, mean time to failure and expected profit of two non-identical unit parallel system incorporating waiting time.

The present paper investigates the reliability of two non-identical unit parallel system with two types of failures: common cause failure and partial failure. Moreover, waiting time to repair, a significant aspect of reliability analysis, has also been incorporated. The considered system is assumed to function properly if at least one of the units is in operative mode. The present system is examined by using the supplementary variable technique and Laplace transformation.

Numerical calculation shows that the availability and the reliability of the system is minimum when the system is without partial failure and is maximum when the system is free from common cause failure. Finally, the cost analysis of the system reveals that the expected profit decreases with increase in service cost.

This paper presents a mathematical model of two dissimilar unit parallel system, through which the performance of the considered system can be improved.

The construction industry is complex, human-intensive and driven by monetary values. Hence, disputes are widespread. Initial conflicts among parties may develop into a disastrous dispute that costs the project success and good relationships and affects stakeholders' expectations. There has been a focus on causes of construction-related disputes, and studies over the past three decades have attempted to identify a more comprehensive list of reasons for disputes. Some of these studies' limitations were geographical, project delivery methods and project types. The purpose of this study is to identify the most recent and conclusive list of causes of disputes based on current literature by undertaking a systematic literature review (SLR).

Considering the large number of studies that focused on causes of disputes, this study aims to develop a comprehensive list of causes, using a SLR, as it ensures that all previous articles in multiple databases are reviewed to produce a comprehensive outcome. A six-stage SLR was followed from background study to analysis and reporting.

Not surprisingly, the number of publications has increased over time, most from the Middle East region. The interconnected nature of the causes was widely emphasised. The SLR has produced eight common core causes of disputes. They are: poor contractual arrangements, employer-initiated scope changes, unforeseen site changes, poor contract understanding and administration, contractor’s quality of works, the inability of the contractor to achieve time targets, non- or delayed payments and poor quality of design. The majority of previous authors realised that disputes could be avoided by parties’ involvement during the early stages, avoiding being opportunistic and acting collaboratively.

Even though numerous studies have been carried out to identify the causes of disputes in the construction industry, none did a SLR. This study aggregates all the previous studies that focused on construction-related disputes systematically. Categorising causes based on the party primarily responsible help various stakeholders by providing a distinct list of factors to avoid that contribute to disputes.

Our Dublin correspondent telegraphed last night:

This study aims to determine whether partial least squares path modeling (PLS) is fit for purpose for scholars holding scientific realist views.

The authors present the philosophical foundations of scientific realism and constructivism and examine the extent to which PLS aligns with them.

PLS does not align with scientific realism but aligns well with constructivism.

Research is needed to assess PLS’s fit with instrumentalism and pragmatism.

PLS has no utility as a realist scientific tool but may be of interest to constructivists.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to assess PLS’s alignments and mismatches with constructivist and scientific realist perspectives.