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Annual performance evaluations of faculty are a routine, yet essential, task in higher education. Creating (or revising) performance criteria presents an opportunity for leaders to work with their teams to co-create evaluation metrics that broaden participation and minimise inequity. The purpose of this study was to support organisational leaders in developing equitable performance criteria.

We adopted the “dual-agenda” dialogues training that draws on concepts of collective self-efficacy and intersectionality for department leaders to co-create annual review criteria with their faculty members at one university. We used qualitative and quantitative data to assess the training and conducted an equity audit of the resulting annual review criteria.

Survey results from faculty members and departmental leaders (n = 166) demonstrated general satisfaction with the process used to create new criteria, perceptions that their criteria were inclusive and optimism about future reviews. Those with greater familiarity with the dialogues process had more positive perceptions of the inclusivity of their department’s criteria and more positive expectations of future reviews. The examination of eight indicators of equity illustrated that the resultant criteria were transparent and holistic.

This study builds on the relatively little research on faculty members’ annual performance evaluations, focussing on inclusive dialogues that centre equity and diversity. Results highlight the value of providing department leaders with evidence-based tools to foster system-level change through equitable evaluation policies. A toolkit is available for adaptation of the “dual-agenda” leadership training to both co-create annual review criteria and improve equity and inclusion.

In the Global North, affordable housing has evolved and thrived, and it is now gaining traction in the Global South, where governments have been vocal supporters of the concept. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the important criteria for selecting affordable housing units in Ghana.

A quantitative research approach was used, and a survey was administered to the residents. The data was analysed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. The relative importance index technique was used to rank the important criteria, and the EFA technique was used to create a taxonomy system for the criteria.

The hierarchical ranking of the most significant criteria for selecting affordable housing includes community safety, waste management and access to good-quality education. Furthermore, the important criteria for selecting affordable housing are classified into two groups, namely, “sustainability criteria” and “housing demand and supply and social service provision”.

This study has implications for the real estate industry and construction stakeholders, as this will inform decision-making in terms of the design of affordable housing and the suitability of the location for the development.

These findings provide a baseline to support potential homeowners and tenants in their quest to select affordable housing. Furthermore, these findings will aid future longitudinal research into the indicators or criteria for selecting suitable locations for the development of low- and middle-income housing.

Societies depend on interconnected infrastructures that are becoming more complex over the years. Multi-disciplinary knowledge and skills are essential to develop modern infrastructures, requiring close collaboration of various infrastructure owners. To effectively manage and improve inter-organizational collaboration (IOC) in infrastructure construction projects, collaboration status should be assessed continually. This study identifies the assessment criteria, forming the foundation of a tool for assessing the status of IOC in interconnected infrastructure projects.

A systematic literature study and in-depth semi-structured interviews with practitioners in interconnected infrastructure construction projects in the Netherlands are performed to identify the criteria for assessing the status of IOC in infrastructure construction projects, based on which an assessment tool is developed.

The identified assessment criteria through the literature and the practitioner’s perspectives results in the designing and development of a collaboration assessment tool. The assessment tool consists of 12 criteria and 36 sub-criteria from three different categories of collaborative capacity: individual, relational, and organizational.

The assessment tool enables practitioners to monitor the status of IOC between infrastructure owners and assists them in making informed decisions to enhance collaboration. The assessment tool provides the opportunity to assess and analyze the status of collaboration based on three categories (i.e., individual, relational, and organizational).

The construction industry is facing an enormous number of challenges due to continuous advancements in construction technologies and techniques. Hence, construction management theories have to confront critical newly issues concerning market globalization and construction innovations. The key factor to address these challenges is to ameliorate the competitive abilities of the competing construction firms. In this context, measuring competitiveness of construction firms is an efficacious approach to amplify their competitive growth and profitability. To this end, the purpose of this research paper is to design a three-tier multi-criteria decision making model for competitiveness assessment and benchmarking of construction companies, meanwhile tackling a wide range of essential factors and attributes that covers broad aspects of the present competitive market.

In the first tier, four new pillars (4P) of competitiveness assessment are introduced for construction firms, namely, organization performance, project performance, environment and client and innovation and development. These pillars are able to aid in construction firms’ management on both long and short term basis. Hence, 21 key competitive factors and eighty key competitive criteria are identified, incorporated and analyzed in this research study. The second tier encapsulates carrying out a questionnaire survey in the Canadian and Vietnamese market to garner two main sets of information. The first set of information incorporates responses of the pairwise comparisons between competitiveness factors and criteria. The second set involves gathering utility scores pertinent to each competitiveness criteria. The developed model then leverages the use of analytical hierarchy process to scrutinize the relative importance priorities of competitiveness factors and criteria. The third tier of the developed model encompasses the use of multi-attribute utility theory to compute competitiveness scores for construction companies through blending criteria’ relative importance weights alongside their respective utility functions. In addition, the third tier comprises conducting a sensitivity analysis to derive the most important criteria influencing the overall competitiveness of construction companies. The developed model is tested and validated using three case studies; one construction company from Canada and two construction companies from Vietnam.

Results demonstrated that the developed model has a potential to render a synthesized and methodical performance evaluation for the competitive ability of a given construction company. Furthermore, it was found that Vietnamese companies are more considerate towards pillars pertaining to environment and client while Canadian companies are more attentive towards innovation and development. The outcome of sensitivity analysis revealed that effectiveness of cost management highly affects the competitive ability of Vietnamese companies while effectiveness of cost management exhibits the most significant influence on the competitive of Canadian companies.

The developed model can benefit construction companies to understand their competitiveness in their market and diagnose their strengths and weaknesses. It is also can be useful in efficient utilization of their limited resources and development of sustainable and long-term strategic plans strategic plans, which consequently leads to maintaining better position in their dynamic business markets.

Literature review manifests that reported competitiveness assessment models and practices are not able to address present challenges, technologies and developments in construction market.

This paper delves into a pivotal juncture within the co-production literature, intersecting with the ongoing debate about performance challenges in public sector accounting scholarship. It explores how public managers conceive and measure the performance of co-produced public services.

A case study is conducted on three instances of neighbourhood watching – that is, a type of collective co-production – in a homogeneous institutional setting. The analysis and interpretation of empirical data are guided by a systematic conceptual space delineating the qualities that performance criteria can take in contexts where public services are produced.

Findings reveal that when the co-production activation is driven by both state and lay actors, public managers tend to conceptualise and measure its performance in a way that contributes to building a more structured co-productive space, where the roles to play, how to interact and what to achieve are clearly defined.

This paper breaks new ground by scrutinising the conceptualisation of performance in settings where public services involve actors beyond traditional public administrations. By exploring the diverse “shapes” and meanings that performance can take in co-production arrangements, this paper enriches discussions on how public sector accounting can inform co-production literature.

Innovation in financing processes, enabled by the advent of new technologies, has supported the development of alternative finance funding tools. In this context, the study analyses the growing importance of alternative finance instruments (such as equity crowdfunding, peer-to-peer (P2P) lending, venture capital, and others) in addressing the small and medioum enterprises' (SMEs) financing needs beyond traditional bank and market-based funding channels. By providing more flexible terms and faster approval times, these instruments are gradually reshaping the traditional bank-firm relationship.

To comprehensively understand this innovation shift in funding processes, the study employs a novel approach that merges three MCDA methods: Spherical Fuzzy Entropy, ARAS and TOPSIS. These methodologies allow for handling ambiguity and subjectivity in financial decision-making processes, examining the effects of multiple criteria, including interest rate, flexibility, accessibility, support, riskiness, and approval time, on the appeal of various financial alternatives.

The study’s results have significant theoretical and practical implications, supporting SMEs in carefully evaluate financing alternatives and enables banks to better identify the main “competitors” according to the “financial need” of the firm. Moreover, the rise of alternative finance, notably P2P lending, indicates a shift towards more efficient capital access, suggesting banks must innovate their funding channels to remain competitive, especially in offering flexible solutions for restructuring and high-risk scenarios.

The study advises top management that SMEs prefer traditional loans for their reliability and accessibility, necessitating banks to enhance transparency, innovate, and adopt digital solutions to meet evolving financing needs and improve customer satisfaction.

The study introduces a novel integration of Spherical Fuzzy TOPSIS, Entropy, and ARAS methodologies to face the complexities of financial decision-making for SME financing, addressing ambiguity and multiple criteria like interest rates, flexibility, and riskiness. It emphasizes the importance of traditional loans, the rising significance of alternative financing such as P2P lending, and the necessity for banks to innovate, thereby enriching the literature on bank-firm relationships and SME funding strategies.

Traditional purchasing best practices primarily follow a commercial logic and may not necessarily be applicable for social enterprises (SEs) supplier selection. This study examines how SEs focused on poverty alleviation select suppliers amidst competing institutional logics to achieve both social impact and economic performance.

A grounded theory methodology is applied to guide semi-structured interviews with 18 fair trade verified SEs. Constant comparison methods aided in determining the point of data saturation was reached.

The results of this study indicate that SEs select marginalized suppliers based on implicit criteria that is initially based on social-welfare logic and then through a blend of commercial and social-welfare logic based on company structure.

This study is the first to reveal that SEs addressing social issues do not follow the traditional criteria for supplier selection but have their own unique selection criteria when selecting suppliers.

The presence of green spaces plays a vital role in promoting urban sustainability. Urban green parks (UGPs) help create sustainable cities while providing fundamental ecological functions. However, rapid urbanization has destroyed crucial green areas in Ranchi City, endangering inhabitants’ health. This study aims to locate current UGPs and predict future UGP sites in Ranchi City, Jharkhand.

It uses geographic information system (GIS) and analytical hierarchical process (AHP) to evaluate potential UGP sites. It involves the active participation of urban communities to ensure that the UGPs are designed to meet dweller’s needs. The site suitability assessment is based on several parameters, including the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), land use and land cover (LULC), population distribution, PM 2.5 levels and the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. The integration of these factors enables an evaluation of potential UGP’s sites.

The findings of this research reveal that 54.39% of the evaluated areas are unsuitable, 15.55% are less suitable, 12.76% are moderately suitable, 11.52% are highly suitable and 5.78% are very highly suitable for UGPs site selection. These results emphasize that the middle and outer regions of Ranchi City are the most favorable locations for establishing UGPs. The NDVI is the most important element in UGP site appropriateness, followed by LULC, population distribution, PM 2.5 levels and the UHI effect.

This study improves the process of integrating AHP and GIS, and UGPs site selection maps help urban planners and decision-makers make better choices for Ranchi City’s sustainability and greenness.

This study evaluates how well Victorian local councils’ procurement policies align with the sustainable and circular economy (CE) approach that prioritises sustainable and regenerative practices. It proposes a set of criteria designed to effectively integrate environmental sustainability issues into purchasing policies.

Employing the Specific, Measurable, Assignable, Realistic and Time-bound (SMART) framework, a multi-dimensional content analysis guided by the goal-setting theory was applied to evaluate all 79 Victorian local councils’ procurement policies. This approach provided an assessment of policy specificity, measurability, assignability, realism and time sensitivity in promoting environmental sustainability through purchasing policies.

The findings underscored a significant deficiency in policy adherence to all SMART criteria concerning environmental sustainability, hindering the effective green purchasing decisions within government entities. This lack of integration of greening in purchasing policy poses challenges for manufacturers of waste-derived goods, obscuring the procurement objectives of these critical public sector customers.

The paper contributes to the sustainable procurement (SP) discourse by proposing guidelines aimed at improving the efficacy of governmental purchasing of sustainable products. These guidelines address the broader imperative to mitigate the environmental impacts of governmental spending on less sustainable goods, thereby fostering ecological sustainability and promoting responsible consumption.

While past studies have often relied on subjective content analysis methods, the SMART assessment used to develop the environmental sustainability criteria for purchasing policies, which distinguishes this study from previous governmental policy evaluation studies. This approach marks a departure from traditional governmental policy evaluation studies, offering a more structured analysis of policy effectiveness in promoting SP practices.

For over 25 years, the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) has significantly influenced the US sustainable construction through its leadership in energy and environmental design (LEED) certification program. This study aims to delve into how Baton Rouge, Louisiana, fares in green building adoption relative to other US capital cities and regions.

The study leverages statistical and geospatial analyses of data sourced from the USGBC, among other databases. It scrutinizes Baton Rouge’s LEED criteria performance using the mean percent weighted criteria to pinpoint the LEED criteria most readily achieved. Moreover, unique metrics, such as the certified green building per capita (CGBC), were formulated to facilitate a comparative analysis of green building adoption across various regions.

Baton Rouge’s CGBC stands at 0.31% (C+), markedly trailing behind the frontrunner, Santa Fe, New Mexico, leading at 3.89% (A+) and in LEED building per capita too. Despite the notable concentration of certified green buildings (CGBs) within Baton Rouge, the city’s green building development appears to be in its infancy. Innovation and design was identified as the most attainable LEED benchmark in Baton Rouge. Additionally, socioeconomic factors, including education and income per capita, were associated with a mild to moderate positive correlation (0.25 = r = 0.36) with the adoption of green building practices across the capitals, while sociocultural infrastructure exhibited a strong positive correlation (r = 0.99).

This study is beneficial to policymakers, urban planners and developers for sustainable urban development and a reference point for subsequent postoccupancy evaluations of CGBs in Baton Rouge and beyond.

This study pioneers the comprehensive analysis of green building adoption rates and probable influencing factors in capital cities in the contiguous US using distinct metrics.