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To increase university–industry collaboration and research commercialisation, the Australian government recently introduced the Intellectual Property (IP) Framework, a set of online standard contracts. This follows a predecessor standard contract initiative, the IP Toolkit, which has not previously been evaluated. This paper aims to examine standard contracting in the innovation sector, tracing the policymaking behind the IP Toolkit using the lens of Macneil’s relational contract theory, to assess prospects of success for the new IP Framework, and similar initiatives in other jurisdictions.

This is a disciplined-configurative case study, drawing on qualitative secondary data analysis and applying Macneil’s relational contracting theory to guide case construction and generate hypotheses around likely success of standard contracting initiatives (stakeholder sentiment, stakeholder adoption). Within-case analysis process-traces development of the IP Toolkit, to discover what the policymakers wanted, knew and computed – and to detail observable implications Macneil’s theory predicts. Its themes are triangulated with multiple sources.

The case study, via Macneil’s theory, confirms the first hypothesis (resistant stakeholder sentiment) and partly validates the second hypothesis (low levels of adoption), demonstrating limited suitability of standard contracting in the dynamic and highly uncertain space of university–industry collaboration.

The study provides insights into the limited role that standard contracts can play in improving national collaborative research and development performance.

This is a novel theory-driven case study triangulated with previously unpublished data on the IP Toolkit’s website usage, and data from recent consultations on the new IP Framework. It has broader implications for other jurisdictions considering adoption of the standard contract model.

Smart contracts using blockchain technology (BCT) is a tool that decentralizes authority and makes it easier to upgrade the contract administration process by providing an efficient system. Current literature provides a good overview of contracts in the construction industry; however, the specific details of BCT's smart contracts applications in the three categories have not been addressed adequately: (1) information quality, (2) enhancing project schedule and progress payment time and (3) reducing conflicts among project stakeholders. Thus, this study aims to analyze smart contracts using BCT by creating a computerized contract model, specifically evaluating its impact on the three identified categories.

In this paper BCT-SmContract was developed through an automated program that utilizes blockchain to define the contractual agreements between different parties in a construction project. BCT-SmContract model provides a new technique to overcome the current challenges associated with factors identified in this study, i.e. (1) information quality, (2) enhancing project schedule and progress payment time and (3) reducing conflicts among project stakeholders. Afterward, the model was tested to ensure validity and reliability through a construction project.

The findings indicated that BCT-SmContract was approximately 90% faster to execute the contract and 100% accurate in reflecting the correct information about the project status, resulting in reduced conflicts.

This study has contributed in upgrading the traditional contracting method in construction by developing an automated smart contract model to enhance the processes and achieve higher accuracy.

The number of construction dispute cases has maintained a high growth trend in recent years. The effective exploration and management of construction contract risk can directly promote the overall performance of the project life cycle. The miss of clauses may result in a failure to match with standard contracts. If the contract, modified by the owner, omits key clauses, potential disputes may lead to contractors paying substantial compensation. Therefore, the identification of construction project contract missing clauses has heavily relied on the manual review technique, which is inefficient and highly restricted by personnel experience. The existing intelligent means only work for the contract query and storage. It is urgent to raise the level of intelligence for contract clause management. Therefore, this paper aims to propose an intelligent method to detect construction project contract missing clauses based on Natural Language Processing (NLP) and deep learning technology.

A complete classification scheme of contract clauses is designed based on NLP. First, construction contract texts are pre-processed and converted from unstructured natural language into structured digital vector form. Following the initial categorization, a multi-label classification of long text construction contract clauses is designed to preliminary identify whether the clause labels are missing. After the multi-label clause missing detection, the authors implement a clause similarity algorithm by creatively integrating the image detection thought, MatchPyramid model, with BERT to identify missing substantial content in the contract clauses.

1,322 construction project contracts were tested. Results showed that the accuracy of multi-label classification could reach 93%, the accuracy of similarity matching can reach 83%, and the recall rate and F1 mean of both can reach more than 0.7. The experimental results verify the feasibility of intelligently detecting contract risk through the NLP-based method to some extent.

NLP is adept at recognizing textual content and has shown promising results in some contract processing applications. However, the mostly used approaches of its utilization for risk detection in construction contract clauses predominantly are rule-based, which encounter challenges when handling intricate and lengthy engineering contracts. This paper introduces an NLP technique based on deep learning which reduces manual intervention and can autonomously identify and tag types of contractual deficiencies, aligning with the evolving complexities anticipated in future construction contracts. Moreover, this method achieves the recognition of extended contract clause texts. Ultimately, this approach boasts versatility; users simply need to adjust parameters such as segmentation based on language categories to detect omissions in contract clauses of diverse languages.

This study aims to analyze how startups organize their purchasing activities to improve operative excellence and become attractive customers.

The authors use a two-phase exploratory approach with semistructured interviews and a World Café. In total, 20 startup purchasers and suppliers participated. It is an international study with participants from eight countries (Belgium, Brazil, France, Germany, Hungary, The Netherlands, the UK and the USA).

The authors find that startups organize the purchasing function in five ways: partial outsourcing, transactional-oriented, strategic only, outsourced purchasing and full department. Each type has advantages and disadvantages regarding operative excellence. The authors identify type-specific antecedents to operative excellence: forecasting, payment habits, ordering process, contact accessibility and quick decision-making.

The value of this paper is that it offers entrepreneurs a framework to organize startup purchasing activities, including outsourcing options. Furthermore, it provides theoretical contributions that expand the topic of purchasing and supply organization and operative excellence to the startup context.

The value of this paper is that, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first to explore purchasing organization and operative excellence in startups.

Offsite construction (OC) is an efficient method to reduce waste in the construction industry from a circular economy perspective. Yet, its uptake is subdued by the ambiguities around its supply chain. Hence, the purpose of this study is twofold: to identify the OC project delivery models, the limitations in their procurement approach to facilitate the resilience of the supply chain and interventions to promote supply chain resilience (SCR) and to identify the gaps in the existing procurement process and propose further research areas that implement strategies to improve SCR.

The study was conducted as a systematic literature review. In total, 41 peer-reviewed research papers published between 2013 and 2023 were shortlisted through the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analysis guidelines. A descriptive analysis was conducted, followed by a thematic analysis.

The descriptive analysis reveals that the emphasis on digitising OC has shifted to transforming the business model, procurement and supply chain with a human-centric view. In thematic analysis, the predictability of the SC partners and the probabilities of evaluating the prospects are revealed as arbitrary characteristics in the current procurement strategies. Rewarding collaborative relationships among SC partners and incorporating provisions to postpone the module delivery are some interventions to promote flexibility. Drafting comprehensive and effective contracts that address transparency issues and facilitating the need for continuous development of capabilities through procurement are among the further research avenues proposed.

This study is a precursor demonstrating the potential of the procurement process to implement the decrees of SCR for better goal congruence of the OC supply chain.

The purpose of this study is to develop and validate the business streamlining (BS) model proposed in 2017.

This study/paper develops and validates the qualitatively generated BS model, a conceptual model of service sourcing relationships, by testing it quantitatively. A survey was sent to chief exective officers, chief purchasing officers or facility managers in 764 private or public companies in Sweden with an annual turnover exceeding € 10m. The categories were tested and analyzed by means of factor analysis.

The BS model for managing service sourcing processes was confirmed to be significant overall, meaning that it is applicable irrespective of service sourcing context. The efficiency pursuing (EP) was found to have an interlinking role that calls for a revision of the BS model. Furthermore, the four categories tended to load pairwise.

Although this cross-sectional study confirms the relevance of the BS model for managing service-sourcing processes, further studies should examine both the relative significance of its categories in different service-sourcing contexts and why the four main categories tend to pair.

The results support that the model is flexible and adaptable to a wide range of service-sourcing circumstances. Irrespective of the relative complexity of facility management (FM) sourcing processes, the categories can be adapted to fit the service sourcing context. Thus, it can be used as a tool to analyze and facilitate strategic decision-making.

The paper validates that the BS model can represent the dynamics of different service-sourcing processes, regardless of the complexity of the context.

The purpose of this study is to develop a decision-support framework that can be used by decision-makers to suspend public infrastructure projects. Additionally, the study also investigates how to select the most convenient infrastructure project for suspension.

The proposed framework includes an extensive set of factors and a novel comparison mechanism that can reveal the most convenient infrastructure project to be suspended. A comprehensible literature review and focus group discussion (FGD) sessions were conducted to identify factors that should be considered for suspension. Then, the neutrosophic analytic hierarchy process (N-AHP) method was used to determine the relative importance of the factors. Finally, the proposed comparison mechanism was demonstrated through a hypothetical case study and Technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) analysis.

Results showed that suspension decisions cannot be made merely based on “financial” factors. Instead, the other aspects, namely “Technical and managerial” and “Social and Environmental”, should also be taken into consideration. Second, factors related to the initial investment, cost of refinancing, cash flow, permits and approvals, insufficiency of bidders, degradation of the components, reputation, impact on stakeholders and criticality of the infrastructure were particularly elaborated as the most significant, needing the utmost attention of the decision-makers. Lastly, the results demonstrated that the proposed comparison mechanism has considerable potential to identify the most convenient infrastructure project for suspension.

Public infrastructure projects are often under pressure due to the inflationary state and economic stagnation of countries after major crises. The suspension decision for infrastructure projects necessitates comprehensible assessments to consider all consequences. Studies have widely investigated the contractual and legal aspects of project suspension in light of existing literature. However, little effort has been devoted to identifying the factors that decision-makers should consider before suspending a particular infrastructure project. Furthermore, existing literature does not investigate how to select the most convenient infrastructure project for suspension either. Thus, by developing a specific suspension framework for infrastructure projects by considering various factors, this study is the earliest attempt to examine the contract suspension mechanism of public infrastructure projects. In this respect, the study significantly contributes to the theory of contract management domain and has important managerial implications.

Civil engineering projects around the world have been underperforming for a long time. While the complexity of these projects will continue to increase, there is an urgent need to perform better. Although the integrated design process is critical for project success, the literature lacks studies describing the link to project performance. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the dominant variables that affect the integrated design process and consequently project performance.

A multiple case study was conducted to determine the dominant variables that affect the integrated design process and project performance. The research included four projects. Semi-structured interviews were the main source of data.

The cases indicated that the extent to which an integrated approach is achieved in the design process is essential for project performance. This applies to the integration of stakeholders’ interests as well as the integration of disciplines. Above all, it was concluded that the project team participants’ competencies for integration are a dominant factor for project performance, as the integrated design process has changed from a technical challenge to an integrative one.

This study provides insights into the dominant variable of the integrated design process that affects project performance, which is underexposed in the literature. The study results reveal the importance of competencies related to integration and adoption of the design problem context, which are not yet included in civil engineering design methods. In this respect, empathy is introduced as a new and critical competence for the civil engineering industry, which needs further research.

This study aims to investigate how bricolage and improvisation increase the opportunities for supply chain integration of contract manufacturers. Connecting bricolage/improvisation with resource dependence theory offers an appropriate theoretical lens with which to understand the increasing focus on the view that bricolage and improvisation are feasible ways to create desired resources for contract manufacturers. Such resources can then enhance the autonomy of contract manufacturers in supply chain by building contract manufacturer–supply chain partner relationship interdependencies.

Given that the primary focus of the study was whether and how contract manufacturers respond to resource constraints, namely, bricolage and improvisation and environmental uncertainty as a moderating effect of fastener contract manufacturers' supplier/buyer integration, only firms that had contractual agreements involving manufacturing services for original equipment manufacturer and/or original design manufacture data were included in this population. This study selected a population from a list of 674 fastener firms provided by the Taiwan Industrial Fastener Institute in 2020 using a mailed survey to test the hypotheses. By the beginning of 2022, 165 completed questionnaires were returned, and the total useable sample was 158.

Hypotheses are tested using 158 contract manufacturers of the Taiwanese fastener industry. Results show that bricolage can lead contract manufacturers to initiate supplier and buyer integration. The moderating effect of environmental uncertainty further strengthens the above positive relationships. Without the moderating effect of the environmental uncertainty, improvisation leads contract manufacturers to initiate only supplier but not buyer integration. However, when the moderating effect of environmental uncertainty is included, improvisation leads contract manufacturers to initiate only buyer integration.

This finding highlights the importance of the environmental uncertainty when contract manufacturers adopt bricolage/improvisation to initiate supply chain integration.

With the continuous improvement of public–private partnership (PPP) projects, the participants' value creation goals are not only limited to achieving the basic performance objectives but also to realising value added. However, the effect of traditional contract management on realising the value creation objectives of PPP projects is limited. According to the view of multifunctional contract, joint-contract functions that integrate contract control and flexibility are likely to be effective in enhancing the value creation of PPP projects. This study aims to explore the effects of joint-contract functions on PPP project value creation and relevant influencing mechanism by investigating the mediating effect of in-role behaviour and extra-role behaviour.

After collecting 258 valid questionnaires from PPP professionals in China, this study used structural equation modelling to validate the hypotheses.

Contract control and flexibility can improve PPP project value creation. Specifically, contract control improves the achievement of the basic contract objectives of PPP projects, whereas contract flexibility enhances the achievement of the value-added of PPP projects. Moreover, only in-role behaviour mediates the effect of contract control on value creation. In addition, the mediating effect of extra-role behaviour on the impact of contract flexibility on value creation is stronger than that of in-role behaviour. The mediating effect of in- and extra-role behaviour is mainly reflected in the realisation of basic and value-added performance, respectively.

The findings of this study can help realise value creation in three ways. Firstly, new perspectives for PPP project value creation should be proposed by combining the improvement of contract objectives and the realisation of the participants' implicit demands. Secondly, the effects of different contract functions on value creation should be analysed instead of a single dimension of contractual governance. Thirdly, the mediating effects of different types of cooperation behaviour that may influence the relationship between contractual governance and value creation should be evaluated.

This study verifies the impacts of different contract functions on PPP project value creation. In addition, cooperative behaviour is embedded as a mediating variable, and the mediated transmission path from contract function to cooperative behaviour and further to PPP project value creation is systematically analysed.