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This study aims to identify significant factors, analyse them using the consistent fuzzy preference relations (CFPR) method and forecast the probability of successful deployment of the internet of things (IoT) and cloud computing (CC) in Gujarat, India’s building sector.

From the previous studies, 25 significant factors were identified, and a questionnaire survey with personal interviews obtained 120 responses from building experts in Gujarat, India. The questionnaire survey data’s validity, reliability and descriptive statistics were also assessed. Building experts’ opinions are inputted into the CFPR method, and priority weights and ratings for probable outcomes are obtained to forecast success and failure.

The findings demonstrate that the most important factors are affordable system and ease of use and battery life and size of sensors, whereas less important ones include poor collaboration between IoT and cloud developer community and building sector and suitable location. The forecasting values demonstrate that the factor suitable location has a high probability of success; however, factors such as loss of jobs and data governance have a high probability of failure. Based on the forecasted values, the probability of success (0.6420) is almost twice that of failure (0.3580). It shows that deploying IoT and CC in the building sector of Gujarat, India, is very much feasible.

Previous studies analysed IoT and CC factors using different multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods to merely prioritise ranking in the building sector, but forecasting success/failure makes this study unique. This research is generally applicable, and its findings may be utilised for decision-making and deployment of IoT and CC in the building sector anywhere globally.

This paper aims to further our understanding of policy–practice gaps in organizations from an organizational learning perspective. The authors conceptualize and analyze policy–practice gaps in terms of what they label the dual challenge of organizational learning, i.e. the organizational tasks of both adapting ongoing practices to prescribed policy demands and adapting the policy itself to the needs of practice. Specifically, the authors address how this dual challenge can be understood in terms of organizational learning and how an organization can be managed to successfully resolve the dual learning challenge and, thereby, bridge policy–practice gaps in organizations.

This paper draws on existing literature to explore the gap between policy and practice. Through a synthesis of theories and an illustrative practical example, this paper highlights key conceptual underpinnings.

In the analysis of the dual challenge of organizational learning, this study provides a conceptual framework that emphasizes the important role of tensions and contradictions between policy and practice and their role as drivers of organizational learning. To bridge policy–practice gaps in organizations, this paper proposes five key principles that aim to resolve the dual challenge and accommodate both deployment and discovery in organizations.

Because this is a conceptual study, empirical research is called for to explore further and test the findings and conclusions of the study. Several avenues of possible future research are proposed.

This paper primarily contributes by introducing and elaborating on a conceptual framework that offers novel perspectives on the dual challenges of facilitating both discovery and deployment processes within organizations.

Operational excellence (OpEx) is a proven philosophy focusing on continuous improvement in processes and systems for superior performance and efficiency. It plays a crucial role in the energy sector, acting as a catalyst for safety, customer satisfaction, sustainability and competitiveness. This research aims to assess OpEx methodologies in Oman’s energy sector, examining methods, approaches, motivations and sustainability.

This study applies qualitative analysis methodology, involving interviews with 18 industry experts, from the energy sector in a sizeable energy country.

The analysis revealed a growing demand, particularly, in the oil and gas industry, driven by emerging business needs. Qualitative data analysis has identified 10 themes such as implemented methodologies, motivation drivers, deployment approaches, sustainability factors, benefits and challenges. Additionally, new themes emerged, including influencers to start OpEx, resource requirements, enablers for successful OpEx and systems.

This research was limited to Oman and the findings drawn from Omani energy companies may have limited applicability to energy companies in other regions. Therefore, if these findings were to be used, the validation of the findings in relation to other countries should be conducted, to ensure the validity of the context and outcome.

These findings contribute to understanding OpEx dynamics in the Omani energy sector, offering valuable insights for effective utilisation and organisational goal achievement. Furthermore, the study offers valuable insights on how to effectively employ OpEx initiatives in the energy sector to achieve their goals and create value. It addresses the lack of knowledge, offers a framework for successful OpEx implementation, bridges the theory-practice gap and provides insights for optimal utilisation.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first empirical study on assessing OpEx methodologies in the energy sector, and therefore it serves as a foundation for many future studies. The study provides a theoretical foundation for the OpEx methodologies in terms of organisational readiness for successful OpEx implementation.

Despite extensive academic research related to digital technologies (DT), their integration into architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) projects lags in practice. This paper aims to discover DT deployment patterns and emerging trends in real-life AEC projects.

A case study methodology was adopted, including individual case analyses and comparative multiple-case analyses.

The results revealed the temporal distribution of DT in practical AEC projects, specific DT products/software, major project types integrated with digital solutions, DT application areas and project stages and associated project performance. Three distinct patterns in DT adoption have been observed, reflecting the evolution of DT applications, the progression from single to multiple DT integration and alignment with emerging industry requirements. The DT adoption behavior in the studied cases has been examined using the technology-organization-environment-human (TOE + H) framework. Further, eight emerging trend streams for future DT adoption were identified, with “leveraging the diverse features of certain mature DT” being a shared recognition of all studied companies.

This research offers actionable insights for AEC companies, facilitating the development of customized DT implementation roadmaps aligned with organizational needs. Policymakers, industry associations and DT suppliers may leverage these findings for informed decision-making, collaborative educational initiatives and product/service customization.

This research provides empirical evidence of applicable products/software, application areas and project performance. The examination of the TOE + H framework offers a holistic understanding of the collective influences on DT adoption. The identification of emerging trends addresses the evolving demands of the AEC industry in the digital era.

This paper aims to unravel the relationship between market-driven impacts of climate change and firms’ deployment of renewable energy (RE) innovation. The purpose is to understand how market-related forces, influenced by uncertainty, shape firms’ behaviour in response to climate change challenges.

Drawing on the behavioural theory of the firm (BTOF), the paper develops a conceptual model to decode the relationship between each category of market-driven impacts and the resulting RE innovation within firms. The model takes into account the role of uncertainty and differentiates between multinational enterprises (MNEs) and domestic firms.

The analysis reveals five key sources of market-driven impacts: investor sentiment, media coverage, competitors’ adoption of ISO 14001, customer satisfaction and shareholder activism. These forces influence the adoption of RE innovation differently across firms, depending on the level of uncertainty and the discrepancy between environmental performance and aspiration level.

This paper contributes to the literature in four ways. Firstly, it emphasises the importance of uncertainty associated with market-driven impacts, which stimulates different responses from firms. Secondly, it fills a research gap by focusing on the proactivity of firms in adopting RE innovation, rather than just operational strategies to curb emissions. Thirdly, the paper extends the BTOF by incorporating the concept of uncertainty in explaining firm behaviour. Finally, it provides insights into the green strategies of MNEs in the face of climate change, offering a comprehensive model that differentiates MNEs from domestic firms.

This study aims to address a significant and previously unanswered question for both academics and practitioners: how do organizations learn to apply Blockchain technology to support modern slavery (MS) supply chain capabilities? Specifically, this study examines whether employees’ digital dexterity (EDD) and strategic investment in Blockchain technology (SIBT) can support three MS supply chain capabilities: internal MS capability (IMSC), MS capability with customers (MSCC) and MS capability with suppliers (MSCS).

This study uses resource accumulation and deployment perspective to explain how EDD promotes SIBT, which then drives the development of MS supply chain capabilities. Survey data collected from the Chinese manufacturing industry were used to test the proposed theoretical framework and hypotheses through structural equation modelling and moderated regression analysis.

EDD has a positive relationship with SIBT. SIBT has a positive relationship with IMSC. IMSC fully mediates the relationships between SIBT and MS capability with customers and suppliers.

By conceptualizing MS supply chain capabilities as a multi-dimensional construct for the first time, this study discovers the significant mediating roles of IMSC. The empirical findings also clarify digital dexterity of employees that drives investment in Blockchain technology to foster MS supply chain capabilities as resource accumulation and deployment processes.

This paper aims to examine the congruency effects of physically embodied robots in service encounters, which addressed a significant research gap concerning the synthesis of robot design elements (e.g., appearance and voice) and their service purposes.

Grounded in congruity theory and human-robot interaction literature, this study conducted a pretest and two experimental studies revealing the need to view robot design holistically and recognizing the pivotal role of congruity in shaping consumers’ service robot adoption. The moderating role of service purposes (utilitarian vs hedonic) was also investigated in terms of robot design and consumer reactions.

Consumers generally tend to favor robots with congruent designs, particularly for utilitarian service purposes. The serial mediation through perceived congruence and perceived intelligence explains such a favorite tendency.

This study advances service robot design research by highlighting the critical role of congruity in enhancing consumer engagement. It supports the use of comprehensive, congruent designs for services with utilitarian purposes and recommends adaptable designs for hedonic settings.

This study addressed the research gap by examining service robot design from a holistic perspective. The research findings highlight the importance of congruency effects in service robot design and deployment and provide valuable insights and guidelines to industry practitioners for optimal investment in service robots.

Smart contracts are written in high-level programming languages, compiled into Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) bytecode, deployed onto blockchain systems and called with the corresponding address by transactions. The deployed smart contracts are immutable, even if there are bugs or vulnerabilities. Therefore, it is critical to verify smart contracts before deployment. This paper aims to help developers effectively and efficiently locate potential defects in smart contracts.

GethReplayer, a smart contract testing method based on transaction replay, is proposed. It constructs a parallel transaction execution environment with two virtual machines to compare the execution results. It uses the real existing transaction data on Ethereum and the source code of the tested smart contacts as inputs, conditionally substitutes the bytecode of the tested smart contract input into the testing EVM, and then monitors the environmental information to check the correctness of the contract.

Experiments verified that the proposed method is effective in smart contract testing. Virtual environmental information has a significant effect on the success of transaction replay, which is the basis for the performance of the method. The efficiency of error locating was approximately 14 times faster with the proposed method than without. In addition, the proposed method supports gas consumption analysis.

This paper addresses the difficulty that developers encounter in testing smart contracts before deployment and focuses on helping develop smart contracts with as few defects as possible. GethReplayer is expected to be an alternative solution for smart contract testing and provide inspiration for further research.

Multinational business deliver value via multiple sites with similar operational capacities. The age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) delivers significant opportunities for the deployment of digital tools for business optimization. Therefore, this study aims to study the Industry 4.0 implementation for multinationals.

The key objective of this research is multi-site systems integration using a reproducible, modular and standardized “Cyber Physical System (CPS) as-a-Service”.

A best practice reference architecture is adopted to guide the design and delivery of a pioneering CPS multi-site deployment. The CPS deployed is a cloud-based platform adopted to enable all manufacturing areas within a multinational energy and petrochemical company. A methodology is developed to quantify the system environmental and sustainability benefits focusing on reduced carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions and energy consumption. These results demonstrate the benefits of standardization, replication and digital enablement for multinational businesses.

The research illustrates the ability to design a single system, reproducible for multiple sites. This research also illustrates the beneficial impact of system reuse due to reduced environmental impact from lower CO₂ emissions and energy consumption. The paper assists organizations in deploying complex systems while addressing multinational systems implementation constraints and standardization.

The purpose of this paper is to improve the productivity and quality of the wire arc additive manufacturing process by benchmarking the strategies from the selected six strategies, namely, heat treatment process, inter pass cooling process, inter pass cold rolling process, peening process, friction stir processing and oscillation process.

To overcome the lack of certainty associated with correlations and relationships in quality functional deployment, fuzzy numbers have been integrated with the quality functional deployment framework. Twenty performance measures have been identified from the literature under five groups, namely, mechanical properties, physical properties, geometrical properties, cost and material properties. Using house of quality weights are allocated to performance measures and groups, relationships are established between performance measures and strategies, and correlations are assigned between strategies. Finally, for each strategy, relative importance, score and crisp values are calculated.

Inter pass cold rolling process strategy is computed with the highest crisp value of 15.80 which is followed by peening process, heat treatment process, friction stir processing, inter pass cooling process,] and oscillation process strategy.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there has been no research in the literature that analyzes the strategies to improve the quality and productivity of the wire arc additive manufacturing process.