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The importance of humans to the successful delivery of construction projects has led to the emergence of research attention on construction workforce management. As such, this chapter uncovers emotional intelligence (EI) and the external environment as critical aspects of workforce management practices that have not gained substantial attention in past workforce management studies. While some theories and models (existing outside the construction domain) have considered the external environment, none of these models is specific to the construction industry. Furthermore, EI has received less attention within existing workforce management models. Through a review of related studies and theories, this chapter noted that the EI of construction workers and their senior management is crucial to the performance of these workers and the ultimate performance of their organisations. In the same vein, since construction organisations do not operate in silos, the external environment significantly influences the operations of organisations in the construction industry. The environment exact pressures that can influence workforce management practices and technological innovations construction organisations adopt.

During the Coronavirus crisis (COVID-19) that started in 2019 and at the extensive quarantine regulations, educational institutions, companies, and individuals have reacted by shifting their teaching and learning activities to virtual spaces. Yet, although the use of online learning has increased, it has not been able to achieve the long-promised transformative effect. The COVID-19 crisis has the potential to boost online education overall or at least enable better preparation of the system for the next crisis. Ultimately, to make a digital transformation sustainable, appropriate skills are required. In this study, we adapt the dynamic capabilities foundations creating a theoretical approach to explain how educational institutions have responded to the changing environmental conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Given the cruciality of construction workers' safe behaviors, the possible influential factors on workers' behaviors should be studied, and one of these factors is characteristics. The authors identified emotional intelligence (EI), motivation and job burnout as characteristics that might affect a worker's safety behavior, and the aim of this study is to investigate these possible relationships.

Workers' EI, motivation and job burnout status were assessed by a structured interview. Furthermore, workers' safety behaviors were assessed by a checklist derived from national codes, regulations and other research studies. Then, the researcher's observations took place, and the data were acquired.

EI and motivation of workers were able to predict safety behaviors, and the effect of job burnout on safety behaviors was not significant. In addition, motivation's influence on job burnout was not significant. Therefore, in order to promote safety behaviors, the EI and motivation of workers need to be taken into consideration.

The results indicate why construction managers should consider the workers' EI and motivation competencies and how this consideration could lead to safer and better performance in construction projects.

The possible effects of EI, motivation and job burnout on the safety behaviors of construction workers haven't been paid enough attention. Moreover, the authors couldn't find a study similar to the present one that was conducted in Iran. Also, an original model was presented, and safety behaviors were studied through fieldwork rather than using questionnaires.

Although there has been an increase in the application of a variety of robust technologies and systems, the oil and gas sector relies on project managers’ soft skills for success because of their vital role. Therefore, this study aims to explore the profound influence of project managers’ soft communication skills on successful risk management within Libya’s oil and gas projects.

A review of relevant literature and a quantitative approach through the administration of a questionnaire were used to determine factors impacting risk management implementation related to managerial communication skills. A total of 246 valid responses were received from the oil and gas companies in Tripoli, Libya. Partial least squares structural equation modelling was used to examine the direct and moderating relationship drawn by the hypotheses.

The findings suggest that managerial soft skills may be used to improve continuous risk management processes and intra-project communication. It was found that the experience is strengthening the positive relationship between written communication soft skills and project risk management implementation among Libyan oil and gas construction projects.

This study defines project managers’ soft communication skills and analyzes project managers’ soft communication skills with the role of experience as a moderator. This paper presents a valuable contribution by offering original insights tailored explicitly to the Libyan context. The information presented in this paper is relevant to project managers operating within the oil and gas industry. It also offers a novel approach to risk management in the Libyan oil and gas industry that can improve project efficiency and effectiveness.

The study explored the disparity between construction clients and contractors on what constitutes “client satisfaction”. Such disparity is important because it can lead to different conclusions and thus disagreement on the assessment of project success.

The philosophical stance was interpretivism, thus the qualitative methodology was adopted. Employing purposive sampling, 30 interviews with clients and another 30 interviews with contractors were conducted in Saudi Arabia. The data obtained were evaluated by thematic analysis.

The results indicate differences in the consensus ad idem (meeting of the minds) between clients and contractors in terms of both their perceptions and prioritisation of the attributes that underpin client satisfaction. For example, some contractors thought that using advanced technologies was very important for client satisfaction, whereas some clients preferred the contractors to be honest with them.

The data collection was limited to Saudi Arabia and only the views of clients and contractors were studied, thereby limiting the generalisability of the findings.

The identification of the differing priorities of clients and contractors on client satisfaction provides an informed basis to make more concerted efforts to satisfy clients and minimise disputes on projects in Saudi Arabia.

The study contrasted the views of clients and contractors simultaneously on the subject matter of client satisfaction in relation to project success, and analysed this through the lens of consensus ad idem. The key influences on clients' satisfaction in Saudi Arabia are also presented.

The purpose of this study is to examine how the adoption of blockchain technology can improve organizational sustainability and what are the contributions of morality, ethics and governance in this scenario.

This study has used different literature and theories to build a successful theoretical model and then validated it using the partial least squares structural equation modeling approach. Various statistical modeling analyses have been performed to test the robustness of the proposed model, which is found to be effective and unique as it has a high explanatory power.

This study has found that adoption of blockchain technology can improve the sustainability performance of organizations. It has also highlighted that organizational sustainability will be further enhanced if the underlying algorithms of blockchain technology are transparent to make the applications moral and ethical. This study has further demonstrated that appropriate governance of blockchain technology can support the organizations to enhance their sustainability performance.

This study demonstrates the importance of an organization’s governance over blockchain technology and its impact on sustainability. The study provides valuable input to practitioners and policy makers regarding blockchain technology and its governance models. Also, the study provides valuable recommendations to leaders and managers of organizations on how to successfully adopt blockchain technology.

This study presents a unique theoretical model to explain the influence of the adoption of blockchain technology and an organization’s sustainability. The study also adds value to the overall body of literature in the areas of ethics, governance and blockchain technology along with sustainability.

This study collected the bibliographic data of 2034 journal articles published in 2000–2021 from Web of Science (WoS) core collection database and adopted two bibliometric analysis methods, namely historiography and keyword co-occurrence, to identify the evolution trend of construction risk management (CRM) research topics.

CRM has been a key issue in construction management research, producing a big number of publications. This study aims to undertake a review of the global CRM research published from 2000 to 2021 and identify the evolution of the research topics relating to CRM.

This study found that risk analysis methods have shifted from simply ranking risks in terms of their relative importance or significance toward examining the interrelationships among risks, and that the objects of CRM research have shifted from generic construction projects toward specified types of construction projects (e.g. small projects, underground construction projects, green buildings and prefabricated projects). In addition, researchers tend to pay more attention to an individual risk category (e.g. political risk, safety risk and social risk) and integrate CRM into cost, time, quality, safety and environment management functions with the increasing adoption of various information and communication technologies.

This study focused on the journal articles in English in WoS core collection database only, thus excluding the publications in other languages, not indexed by WoS and conference proceedings. In addition, the historiography focused on the top documents in terms of document strength and thus ignored the role of the documents whose strengths were a little lower than the threshold.

This review study is more inclusive than any prior reviews on CRM and overcomes the drawbacks of mere reliance on either bibliometric analysis results or subjective opinions. Revealing the evolution process of the CRM knowledge domain, this study provides an in-depth understanding of the CRM research and benefits industry practitioners and researchers.

Drawing upon information processing theory (IPT) and natural resource-based view (NRBV), this study analyses the role of social media technologies (SMT) on internal and external environmental collaboration and green innovation (green product, process and managerial innovation).

This study took in-depth empirical research by developing a survey questionnaire to identify the relationship between SMTs, environmental collaboration and green innovation. The respondents of the questionnaire were supply chain professionals working in the manufacturing industry of Pakistan. The survey collected 475 responses, which were tested through PLS-SEM using Smart-PLS.

The study results indicate that SMTs positively influence both internal and external environmental collaboration. Furthermore, internal environmental collaboration (IEC) fosters green products and green managerial innovation. In contrast, external environmental collaboration (EEC) fosters green processes and green managerial innovation. This study has also tested the mediation of IEC and EEC, which shows that both IEC and EEC mediate all the relationships except green process and green product innovation. The results also revealed that innovation capabilities moderate the relationship between environmental collaboration and green innovation.

Though this study has various practical implications, it is not free of limitations. First, the data were collected from Pakistan, and the results may only be compared with other developing countries. Second, few social media platforms have been considered, but they are increasing in numbers and could be used in upcoming studies. Third, green innovation in the context of products, processes and management is considered, but the concept is evolving, and its other indicators can be taken in upcoming studies.

This study addresses the implication of SMTs, environmental collaboration, innovation capabilities and green innovation, which are helpful for managers and policymakers to design policies.

This study provides the seminal operationalization of SMTs in environmental collaboration and green innovation. This study emphasizes innovation capabilities that firms should adopt.

The purpose of this study is to enhance material conservation and further the knowledge of efficient material management practices on construction sites. This study investigated contractors’ material management practices on construction sites in Nigeria. The factors influencing material conservation on construction sites were also examined.

Data were collected through a survey of 125 contractors who were administered with structured questionnaire, which resulted in 82 valid returned questionnaire. Data collected was analyzed using frequency, importance, utility and severity indexes.

This study found checking materials delivered to a site for specification, use of security personnel to safeguard materials and analysis of materials as key material management practices used on construction sites. Critical factors influencing material management are materials double-handling, management of surplus materials, subsequent design changes, excessive paperwork and not receiving materials at the expected time.

The implementation of the material management practices identified in this study will support contractors to efficiently manage materials on construction sites. The factors influencing material conservation reported in this study will also help contractors understand the critical factors that may affect material management in their construction sites and make better plans for future projects.

This study has reported key issues confronting contractors on the conservation of materials on construction site and various material management practices suitable for application in a wide range of infrastructure projects. This is significant because the construction industry is recording outrageous cost and time overruns of infrastructure projects, which are vital to economic prosperity of nations. The issues and panaceas presented in this study had received scant consideration in construction literature in the sub-Sahara Africa. This study represents a novel synthesis and adds value to knowledge in a manner that has not been reported in previous studies.

Research on strategic procurement was mostly focussed on the clients' and main contractors' perspectives, while limited work had been done from a subcontractor's perspective. The paper hypothesises that “strategic capability” influences the latent constructs of power, dependence and collaboration in the main contractor–subcontractor relationship. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of a subcontractor's strategic capabilities on power, dependence and collaboration.

A survey questionnaire was developed and distributed amongst the subcontractors in Australia, and 212 complete responses were received. Then second order confirmatory factor analysis and partial least square structure equation modelling (PLS-SEM) analysis were performed to test the hypothesised relationships.

The findings support “strategic capabilities” as a construct expressive of a subcontractor's unique market position and good business reputation. The findings also suggest that strategically capable subcontractors enhance their potential for forming partnerships with main contractors through dependence (StratC. → Dep., β = 0.84; Effect Size (ES) = 0.713; p < 0.01), collaboration (StratC. → Collab., β = 0.84; ES = 0.697; p < 0.01) and bargaining power (StratC. → Pow., β = 0.83; ES = 0.672; p < 0.01).

The study is one of its kind to explore the impact of a subcontractor's strategic capability on their bargaining power, dependability and ability to form collaborations. Furthermore, results indicate that the “strategic capabilities” of subcontractors can strongly influence their ability to create “dependence”, foster “collaboration” and exert “power” over a main contractor. The findings can help improve the strategic procurement decision-making processes of both subcontractors and main contractors to build better business relationships.