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Life cycle assessment (LCA) has considerably contributed to increasing the environmental friendliness of buildings in developed countries. However, it is hard to find evidence on the application of LCA for buildings in developing countries; particularly, Sri Lanka. There is a lack of research to compare the status of LCA of buildings in developed countries vs developing countries. In this context, the purpose of this study aims to examine the status of LCA implementation for buildings between developed countries and Sri Lanka, a developing country.

The exploratory research was adapted, and in-depth interviews were held with LCA professionals from Sri Lanka and developed countries, respectively.

Relatively less attention has been paid to the implementation of LCA for buildings in Sri Lanka compared to the developed countries due to the time and effort required to collect life cycle inventory data and limited stakeholder understanding of the LCA. Hence, this study proposed improvements, including the development of LCA databases containing region-specific data and conducting programmes to raise stakeholders' awareness to address the gaps in Sri Lanka.

The identified LCA implementation process for buildings could be used as a guide for first-time LCA users, and it equally makes a valued reference for experienced practitioners.

A limited number of the studies formulate a comparison between the LCA for building in developed countries and developing countries. This research attempts to address this knowledge gap.

Siemens Medical Solutions (SMS) offered innovative products and systems, clinical solutions, and services for medical professionals. Its latest project, transforming a hospital to digital records and processes, was experiencing serious delays that had damaged the relationship with the client. Management believed the underlying problem was that SMS was not using the correct approach to organization and processes for solutions marketing. The executives in charge of on-time completion and successful delivery of the project must now agree on a different recommendation.

Students will examine the infrastructure, customer offerings, and competitive landscape for Seimens Medical Solutions, as well as evaluate three potential organizational models (transient solutions, solutions streamlined enterprise, and adaptive solutions) to determine which represents the ideal structure for SMS. They will be able to identify the role of leadership in the organization, recommend how SMS should prepare for this change, and recommend how it would measure the transformation's success.

The £122 700 freight baggage loading system illustrated was supplied by APL‐Atel Products and comprises: of: 2 off Super Hylo 15 double platform cargo‐loaders (shown centre left and right); 1 off APL 750 baggage conveyor (centre); 15 off Type 168 turntable container dollies (background); 3 off Type 166 pallet dollies (extreme right); 3 off Super Transporters 14, for containers and ‘Jumbo’ pallets (not shown).

IN ITS MODERN facility at East Midlands Airport, Castle Donington, are full engineering facilities for the maintenance, major overhaul, repair and modification of a wide range of civil and military aircraft. At this airport — which has full navigational and night flying aids, meteorological services, Customs facilities and full passenger handling and restaurant facilities — Field Aircraft Services Ltd, have established comprehensive aircraft engineering and handling facilities.

DEAR SIR, Flight‐Sergeant Wright's article on ‘Flight on asymmetrical engine power’, published in your December issue, dealt with the subject primarily from the point of view of military practice and service aircraft. On the civil side, the ability of transport aeroplanes to perform satisfactorily in the event of engine failure at the critical point at take‐off has for some time not only been a design requirement which has to be met as a condition of certification for new aeroplanes, but also an international operating regulation. It would appear from your leading article that these facts are not generally known.

Organizations are currently set in a background of dramatic discontinuity, i.e., environments that require continuous change due to fierce competition and market latent demands. From this perspective, it becomes eminent for organizations to develop an organizational context that stimulates routines reconstruction and internal capabilities to continue to be a competitive organization. The purpose of this paper is to examine entry and exit relationships of knowledge management (KM). Entries are considered, in this paper, the foundation factors of KM, and exits are related to dynamic capability (DC).

Data were collected through a survey conducted with 550 companies of the automotive industry, which are registered in the database of SINDIPEÇAS (National Union of Automobile Component Industries) with return rate of 143 valid questionnaires. The hypothesis testing and analysis were conducted using structural equation modeling.

The research shows the organizational structure as the main contextual factor related to KM, that supports DC. Besides organizational structure, this paper also assesses the interaction between human resources and organizational culture related to DC.

The results may help managers of companies from the automotive industry to understand which initiatives promote DC and innovation.

This paper presents one of the few researches that compare contextual factors related to KM that support DC; and it also compares the connection among human resources, organizational culture and organizational structure related to KM.

This study aims to demonstrate how Carney’s ladder of analytical abstraction is used to examine the motivations of banks for reporting human capital (HC) information.

The authors use semi-structured interviews of senior bank employees at eight large New Zealand banks. They analyse the managers’ views using a constructive mapping of responses applying Carney’s ladder of analytical abstraction. The findings are interpreted from a stakeholder theory perspective.

The authors find that the New Zealand banks report on HC to manage reputation, strengthen employee relationships and achieve competitive advantages. The results suggest that banks engage in opportunistic reporting to distract external stakeholders while advancing their interests.

The study will guide researchers in the use of Carney’s ladder of analytical abstraction in analysing qualitative data.

This study provides insights for businesses to improve the consistency and quality of HC reporting and ensure that the information needs of broader stakeholder groups are met.

Some previous voluntary reporting studies analyse their data using inductive analysis. The authors use Carney’s ladder of analytical abstraction as a framework to guide our inductive analysis.

This paper aims to investigate the increased mass‐marketing in the fair trade industry to provide a robust analysis of the industry, participants and growth for use both as a starting‐point for researchers in this field and as a case study for readers with an interest in any ethical trading initiative.

Utilizing data from a longitudinal exploratory research project, participant observation from two organizations and in‐depth interviews from a total of 15 organizations are combined to build a strong theory grounded in the data.

The paper provides insight into the nature of participants and industry structure in fair trade over time. Four distinct eras are identified which reflect both current literature and the practitioners' perspective. The four eras can be split into three extant eras – the solidarity era, niche‐market era, and mass‐market era, and the fourth – the institutionalisation era – depicts participants' beliefs about the future for the industry.

The three principal theoretical contributions are the definitions which are provided for the different eras of the market's progression, the view of industry structure and the newly defined participants from both the commodity and under‐considered craft markets.

Practical contributions are provided since the paper offers a holistic view of the fair trade market, so acting as a starting‐point for those new to fair trade.

This paper provides deep empirically grounded theory from which fair trade research can grow. It also provides future insights from participants in the industry, advancing current theory.

This paper aims to address a location-distribution-routing problem for distributing relief commodities during a disaster under uncertainty by creating a multi-stage model that can consider information updates during the disaster. This model aims to create a relief network that chooses distribution centers with the highest value while maximizing equity and minimizing response time.

A hybrid algorithm of adaptive large neighborhood search (ALNS) and multi-dimensional local search (MDLS) is introduced to solve the problem. Its results are compared to ALNS and an augmented epsilon constraint (AUGMECON) method.

The results show that the hybrid algorithm can obtain high-quality solutions within reasonable computation time compared to the exact solution. However, while it yields better solutions compared to ALNS, the solution is obtained in a little longer amount of time.

In this paper, the uncertain nature of some key features of the relief operations problem is not discussed. Moreover, some assumptions assumed to simplify the proposed model should be verified in future studies.

In order to verify the effectiveness of the designed model, a case study of the Sarpol Zahab earthquake in 2017 is illustrated and based on the results and the sensitivity analyses, some managerial insights are listed to help disaster managers make better decisions during disasters.

A novel robust multi-stage linear programming model is designed to address the location-distribution-routing problem during a disaster and to solve this model an efficient hybrid meta-heuristic model is developed.

Today's and, to a greater extent, tomorrow's technologies in the Printed Circuit Industry need — besides very stringent challenges on quality — a very careful, precise and cost effective selection of valuable materials and sophisticated techniques in order to achieve optimal relationships between the costs and benefits of each technology. A survey of materials, their costs, technical requirements and also of alternative methods is given — today's and tomorrow's state‐of‐the‐art.