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The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the construction industry, yet still, it is unclear from existing studies about the critical challenges imposed on quality assurance (QA), particularly Cross-border Construction Logistics and Supply Chain (Cb-CLSC). Thus, this study aims to identify and examine the critical challenges of QA of Cb-CLSC during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The aim is achieved via an embedded mixed-method approach pragmatically involving a desk literature review and engaging 150 experts across the globe using expert surveys, and results confirmed by semi-structured interviews. The approach is based on Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM) as its foundation.

The study revealed ten critical challenges of QA, with the top four including “the shortage of raw construction material (C7)”, “design changes (C6)”, “collaboration and communication difficulties (C1)” and “changes in work practices (C10)”. However, examining the interrelationships among the critical challenges using ISM confirmed C7 and C10 as the most critical challenges. The study again revealed that the critical challenges are sensitive and capable of affecting themselves due to the nature of their interrelationship based on MICMAC analysis. Hence, being consistent with why all the challenges were considered critical amid the pandemic. Sentiment analysis revealed that the critical challenges have not been entirely negative but also positive by creating three areas of opportunities for improvement: technology adoption, worker management, and work process management. However, four areas of challenges in the QA include cost, raw material, time, and work process, including inspection, testing, auditing, communication, etc.

The finding provides a convenient point of reference to researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and decision-makers on formulating policies to enhance the effectiveness of construction QA during the pandemic through to the post-pandemic era.

The study enriches the extant literature on QA, Cb-CLSC, and the COVID-19 pandemic in the construction industry by identifying the critical challenges and examining the interrelationships among them. This provides a better understanding of how the construction QA has been affected by the pandemic and the opportunities created.

The purpose of this paper is to systematically review and analyse the critical challenges and barriers of e‐government adoption. Such review aims to suggest the salient facts about the issues of successful implementation or adoption of the e‐government services under different circumstances to the researchers.

A total of 78 relevant research papers reviewing and analysing the challenges, barriers, and critical success factors were selected from a set of overall 448 articles on e‐government adoption research. These studies were comprehensively reviewed to examine some of the most significant supply and demand‐side challenges, barriers, and critical success factors explored by different studies in this context.

The findings indicated that technological barriers, lack of security and privacy, lack of trust, lack of resources, digital divide, poor management and infrastructure, lack of awareness, legal barriers, lack of IT infrastructure, and resilience were among some of the most commonly experienced challenges and barriers across the relevant studies. Moreover, it was also found that challenges and barriers associated with supply‐side (i.e. implementation) (C=53) were almost three times to the one applied to the demand‐side (i.e. adoption) (C=18). Furthermore, it was also found that citizen's satisfaction, information accuracy, security, and privacy were some of the critical factors for the success of e‐government initiatives.

This research only reviews the challenges, barriers and critical success factors and leaving apart many other research themes such as impact, digital divide, security, privacy, trust, and risk of e‐government adoption. Moreover, the theoretical and methodological paradigm of this research have not been explored.

This paper presents a comprehensive review of the challenges, barriers, and critical success factors of the e‐government adoption research both with regard to supply as well as demand side. Such review allows us to provide not only a brief account of the issues experienced in the e‐government research, but also prescribes the guidelines for the governments to consider certain facts before successfully implement their e‐government initiatives. Such a comprehensive review of e‐government adoption literature has not been performed earlier.

The development of more sustainable logistics calls for innovative thinking. In order to accelerate the development in the field, there is a need for increased understanding of the process behind successful implementation of sustainable logistics innovations (SLI). The purpose of this paper is to explore the SLI process, in order to identify critical factors, challenges as well as actors involved.

A multiple-case study in six Swedish retailers and logistics service providers (LSPs), successful in SLI implementations, was conducted. Both within-case and cross-case analyses were applied.

The SLI process consists of five phases. The positive relationship between formalisation and SLI success is supported. Critical activities and challenges not known from literature were found in each phase. Examples are the use of logistics and customer KPIs, quickness, developing simple concepts, using a sustainability business case template and selecting where to test SLIs. Some phases are involving many internal and external actors, while others involve few internal actors. Customers are not particularly involved, and retailers involve their LSP suppliers.

This study addresses the lack of empirical research in logistics innovation and has bridged the gap of innovation studies in other companies than in LSPs. Furthermore it has combined two developing areas, sustainable innovation and logistics innovation, into SLI. A number of critical activities and challenges, and complex patterns for actors’ involvement in the SLI process phases are explored as insights from particular cases; these results could be analytically generalised to theory.

The practical implications lie in guiding managers who wish to improve sustainability and innovativeness in logistics and, consequently, business success. Knowledge from successful companies about which phases to go through in which sequence, which challenges that can be expected and who to include in the SLI process could imply that more companies focus on SLI.

Knowledge on how to include sustainability in a clear innovation process, e.g., by making strong business cases, should imply an accelerated development of sustainable logistics in society.

This study addresses the lack of empirically-based research in logistics innovation and expands the concept to retailers.

The aim of the research is to identify and prioritise the implementation challenges of blockchain technology and suggests ways for its implementation in supply chains.

Underlined by the technology, organisational, and external environment model, a conceptual framework with four challenge categories and sixteen challenges is proposed. Data collected from three stakeholder groups with experience in the implementation of blockchain technology in India is analysed by employing an analytical hierarchy process method-based case study. Further, a criticality–effort matrix analysis is performed to group challenges and suggest ways for implementation.

The analysis revels that all stakeholders perceive complexity challenge associated with the technology, organisational structure, and external environment, and issues of compatibility with existing systems, software, and business practices to be high on the criticality and effort scales, which thus require meticulous planning to manage. Likewise, top-management support issues related to insufficient understanding of how technology fits with the organisation’s policy and benefits offered by the technology requires high effort to address this challenge.

The results were obtained by focusing on the Indian context and therefore may not apply to other nations’ contexts.

By investigating the challenges that the developers, consultants, and client organisations need to address, this study assists managers in developing plans to facilitate coordination among these organisations for successful blockchain implementation.

To the authors’ knowledge this study is the first to identify and prioritise the challenges from the perspectives of multiple stakeholder groups with experience in blockchain technology implementation.

The goal of this paper is to enhance consideration for the potential for institutions of higher education throughout the world, in different cultures and contexts, to be change agents for sustainability. As society faces unprecedented and increasingly urgent challenges associated with accelerating environmental change, resource scarcity, increasing inequality and injustice, as well as rapid technological change, new opportunities for higher education are emerging.

The paper builds on the emerging literature on transition management and identifies five critical issues to be considered in assessing the potential for higher education as a change agent in any particular region or place. To demonstrate the value of these critical issues, exemplary challenges and opportunities in different contexts are provided.

The five critical issues include regional‐specific dominant sustainability challenges, financing structure and independence, institutional organization, the extent of democratic processes, and communication and interaction with society.

Given that the challenges and opportunities for higher education as a change agent are context‐specific, identifying, synthesizing, and integrating common themes is a valuable and unique contribution.

Despite the extensive research on post-disaster reconstruction projects (PDRP), there is a paucity of studies that examine critical challenges for the project practices in post-war-developing countries, particularly, Africa. The purpose of this research is to investigate the key project management challenges impacting the post-disaster reconstruction projects (PDRP) during the construction and planning stages in Angola, with an aim to fill the knowledge gap.

The primary data was collected from 130 project management practitioners working with planning, provincial government organisations including consultants, and contractors within the Angolan public sectors organisations. Response data was subjected to descriptive statistics, mean scores, and inferential statistics (One sample t-tests) and Kendall's concordance.

The descriptive and empirical analysis demonstrated a disparity of the ranking of the 21challenges affecting the PDRP among the groups; with statistically significant differences amongst the 10 challenges. Based on the overall sample, 6 out of 10 critical challenges are between (24–25) levels of agreement close to the mean. The results of the mean score ranking indicate that “working with poor or restricted access to location”, “project culture that fits the needs of local people”; “improving the capacity of local government”, “minimizing the negative effects of local people” and “relocation issues by establishing property rights during the reconstruction project” were the five critical challenges to managing PDRP whereas “improving information and communication processes”, “securing adequate resources (material and machinery)”, “dealing with rising costs of materials and labour” were considered to be the least critical.

The study was restricted to one province and Country (out of 18) namely, Luanda, Angola. Therefore, the findings may not be generalized to public sector organisations operating in different countries with different contexts, political settings and disaster complexities.

The establishment of challenges in PDRPs helps the key stakeholders by providing the foundation to project teams to address the challenges during planning and construction stages, and thus improving project delivery in the future. Understanding the uniqueness of PDRPs and interdependency of project management from the implementing organization is of particular value for the managers of future projects and other decision-makers, especially in the emerging countries. Moreover, the findings could be used to reflect on the need to formulate policies appropriate to post disaster environments, which among other issues could address building policies, which could include land ownership regulations and procedures together with property rights.

This study contributes to the body of knowledge on the subject within a previously unexplored post-war context with a focus on public organizations perspective. The study provides insights on the challenges affecting the post-disaster reconstruction across the Angolan public sector.

The purpose of this paper is to: identify the current and future challenges faced by university facilities managers; analyse their associated risk levels; and establish practical ways to address the identified key challenges.

Personal interviews were conducted with 25 members of the Australasian university facilities managers (UFMs). The constructs generated at the pilot interviews were used to design a structured but open‐ended questionnaire with which the Tertiary Education Facilities Managers Association (TEFMA) members were surveyed. The multi‐attribute method was used in the data analysis.

Results showed that the critical challenges currently facing the UFMs comprised issues relating to the following (in diminishing order of significance): inadequate funding, emergency management and business continuity planning, statutory compliance, sustainability and environmental stewardship, keeping up with rapid changes in technology, operational efficiency, identifying and meeting stakeholder needs, maintenance and manpower. Preparing for and responding to disaster/emergency was perceived as the most critical challenge of the future, perhaps, due to the recent natural disasters. Overall, poor funding was identified as the root of all other issues faced by the UFMs, hence suggested strategies for addressing the key challenges harped on financial improvement measures. Other key measures included optimized asset utilization, supporting business case for capital investment with demonstrable returns on investment, improving FM's strategic relevance through linking FM and corporate strategies, and investment in efficient technologies such as the building automation and management systems.

The findings have contributed to filling an important knowledge gap by not only identifying the current and future challenges facing the UFMs, but also prioritising them based on their relative influences on the achievement of the strategic goals of the FM department. This way, the limited resources at the disposal of the UFMs could be disbursed more cost‐effectively in addressing the critical challenges in line with their identified risk levels. This would be of practical benefit to the facilities and property managers in formulating appropriate responses to the identified critical constraints with a view to achieving more satisfactory outcomes in their operations.

Any endeavor to circumscribe, with a certain degree of precision, the nature of the relationship between social science and critical theory would appear to be daunting. Over the course of the past century, and especially since the end of World War II, countless efforts have been made in economics, psychology, political science, and sociology, to illuminate the myriad manifestations of modern social life, from a multiplicity of angles. It is doubtful that it would be possible to do justice to all the different variants of social science, in an assessment of their relationship to critical theory. Moreover, given the proliferation of critical theories since the 1980s, the effort to devise a “map” that would reflect the particular orientations and intricacies of each approach to critical theory also would be exacting, in its own right.¹

Any endeavor to circumscribe, with a certain degree of precision, the nature of the relationship between social science and critical theory would appear to be daunting. Over the course of the past century, and especially since the end of World War II, countless efforts have been made in economics, psychology, political science, and sociology to illuminate the myriad manifestations of modern social life from a multiplicity of angles. It is doubtful that it would be possible to do justice to all the different variants of social science in an assessment of their relationship to critical theory. Moreover, given the proliferation of critical theories since the 1980s, the effort to devise a “map” that would reflect the particular orientations and intricacies of each approach to critical theory would also be exacting in its own right.¹

To consider Critical Management Studies as a social movement.

The purpose is fulfilled by reflecting upon the history of Critical Management Studies by reference to social movement theory, institutional theory and the social theory of hegemony.

Critical Management Studies is plausibly understood as a social movement.

The chapter offers a fresh perspective on Critical Management Studies by representing it as a movement rather than as a specialist field of knowledge.