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The purpose of this paper is to identify and analyse factors that affect contractors’ behavioural strategies in resolving disputed claims.

Factors were explored by a literature review and an open-ended questionnaire survey. In total, 9 hypotheses involving 12 factors were developed accordingly. Then a structured questionnaire survey was conducted, and 248 valid questionnaires were received from Chinese contractors. Partial least squares structural equation modelling was employed to test the hypotheses.

Factors that have the largest impacts on the contractual approach and the relational approach regarding obliging and compromising are favourability of evidence, time pressure and reputation, respectively. Unexpected results show that obliging behaviours are negatively correlated with procedural fairness but positively correlated with occurrence time of the dispute.

The results are based on correlation, although the research design improves the internal validity. Furthermore, this study belongs to single-level research. In the future, researchers can conduct multilevel research to enrich theories.

The findings not only enhance practitioners’ understanding of the factors influencing contractors’ behavioural strategies when dealing with disputed claims, but also offer insights into both parties’ ex ante focus of attention on specific factors to facilitate the subsequent dispute resolution.

This study furnishes a nuanced picture of multiple factors’ impacts on contractors’ behavioural strategies of claim-related dispute resolution, and thus supplements the relevant construction dispute management literature. From the perspective of contractual governance, it is one of those exploring drivers of contract application in problem situations. It extends the body of knowledge on this topic and hopefully will encourage more research on contractual governance from the reactive perspective.

This paper aims to seek to and understand how civil conflict and international claims inform one another. Does the existence of ongoing civil and international conflicts affect how a government addresses an international claim? The paper builds on existing literature that link international and domestic conflict. However, it suggests that the logic behind civil conflicts may be different from that for international ones as states decide how to deal with any one claim.

The paper posits that states faced with domestic conflicts and additional international claims are more likely to seek to resolve an international claim than those without similar conflicts. It develops a series of hypotheses about the likelihood of claim escalation and peaceful settlement attempts and proceed to test them quantitatively using the Issue Correlates of War data combined with the uppsala conflict data program/peace research institute oslo Armed Conflict Data.

On the one hand, the paper finds support for the argument regarding the difficulty states are faced with when seeking to resolve multiple international claims. On the other hand, it finds that the presence of civil conflicts incentivizes states to resolve international claims either by force or peacefully, suggesting internal violence can both lead to diversionary behavior and attempts at conflict resolution.

The findings have important implications for work considering the complexity of domestic and international conflict linkages.

While many studies of claim militarization and peaceful attempts focus on dyadic and international characteristics, this paper creates a more nuanced understanding of the complexities of this foreign policy decision process.

Investigates the differences in protocols between arbitral tribunals and courts, with particular emphasis on US, Greek and English law. Gives examples of each country and its way of using the law in specific circumstances, and shows the variations therein. Sums up that arbitration is much the better way to gok as it avoids delays and expenses, plus the vexation/frustration of normal litigation. Concludes that the US and Greek constitutions and common law tradition in England appear to allow involved parties to choose their own judge, who can thus be an arbitrator. Discusses e‐commerce and speculates on this for the future.

This paper aims to set out an argument for the use of blockchain technology as a land registration tool, for Cyprus and other disputed land contexts, to assist with land disputes, which may, in turn, promote peace and harmony.

The paper is exploratory in nature. It raises the historical and present land issues in Cyprus and highlights that blockchain technologies could work as a tool to record disputed property rights on the Island.

While there have been many pilots to date for blockchain land registration, there is still scope to develop blockchain as a tool to record land interests. Cyprus offers an exemplar opportunity to use such a tool to assist in developing peace on the Island.

While the paper is conceptual in its application of blockchain technologies, it is novel in that it strives to show how technologies such as blockchain can act as a tool to assist with land registration matters, which, in turn, can assist with new ways to approach the peace process. More research is necessary for this area of inquiry, especially as to how sidechains can act as a conduit for recording competing land interests and disputed land claims.

The paper investigates knowledge sharing and co‐creation in an organisation‐wide discussion supported by Computer‐Mediated Communication (CMC). The paper draws on the empirical evidence from a field study of a consultative process as part of a University strategic decision‐making. Informed by Habermas’s theory of communicative action, the investigation focuses on communicative practices in the CMC discussion and the ways participants interact, share knowledge and co‐create meanings in a particular situation. Communicative analysis of organisational discourse via CMC reveals hidden structures and mechanisms that impede knowledge sharing and inhibit cooperative meaning making. The issue here is whether CMC enables or disables some of these structures and mechanisms. By interpreting the CMC discussion as an argumentation process the paper aims to provide deeper insights into this issue. Among the lessons learned are requirements for new technologies to support knowledge sharing and meaning co‐creation.

This paper aims to devise a case-controlled method combined with Bradford Hill criteria for causal inference of contractual disputes in construction projects. It is a genuine attempt in a systematic method from research design to execution for causal issues where only observational data is available.

The authors located insufficient top management support as the putative pathogen of construction disputes based on a literature review, an interview and Delphi surveys. A questionnaire survey was then conducted to collect case-controlled data to ensure comparability, in which for each disputed project put in the experimental group, the authors sought for a dispute-free project of similar characteristics. The incidence rates of insufficient top management support in the experimental and control groups were then examined by Bradford Hill criteria as an alternative to the test of intervention effect.

The association of insufficient top management support and construction disputes was tested to conform with the Bradford Hill criteria with case-controlled data where applicable and logical deduction where statistical tests were not applicable. With a clear, positive, reasonable and statistically significant association, while excluding methodological biases, confounding and chance, the authors reached a causal verdict of insufficient top management support causing contractual disputes.

This paper supports the validity of applying a case-controlled method combined with Bradford Hill criteria in investigating causal issues in project management, especially the verdict of causal inference based on empirical data. In addition, the located root cause of contractual disputes could inform project management personnel with reasoned strategies for dispute avoidance.

In order to succeed in an action under the Equal Pay Act 1970, should the woman and the man be employed by the same employer on like work at the same time or would the woman still be covered by the Act if she were employed on like work in succession to the man? This is the question which had to be solved in Macarthys Ltd v. Smith. Unfortunately it was not. Their Lordships interpreted the relevant section in different ways and since Article 119 of the Treaty of Rome was also subject to different interpretations, the case has been referred to the European Court of Justice.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the post-enactment status of China’s Labour Contract Law and Labour Dispute Mediation and Arbitration Law, focusing on the dramatic rise in remuneration litigation amidst much criticism of weak or ineffective implementation of these laws.

This paper deploys both quantitative and qualitative analysis methods to investigate the features of remuneration litigation. Remuneration judgments by Beijing People’s Courts from 1 January 2014 to 31 December 2017 provide the primary empirical data. The intrinsic features of remuneration disputes are investigated to delineate subcategories of claims. Several judges were also interviewed to further explore the nature of remuneration disputes.

Four types of remuneration claims were identified: regular wage, minimum wage, overtime and others (including subsidies and welfare). Examination of these four types, especially how they are processed until concluded by court adjudication, provides a fuller picture of the post-enactment status of these laws and yields objective and rational findings. To explain the continuing steady rise in the volume of remuneration claims, as more workers have knowledge of their rights and access to the courts, this study identifies an increase in the number of factually complicated cases (e.g. overtime claims) and abmiguity in the relevant law, leaving some remuneration disputes difficult, if not impossible, to adjudicate. Conversely, the study also finds significant positive trends following these laws’ enactment, particularly a reduction in straightforward cases, such as disputes concerning non-payment of wages/minimum wages, on which the law is clear. It is evidently imperative to improve the clarity of the current laws through further legislation, as the most appropriate next step in China’s juridification process of developing its own rule of Labour Law.

This study is purposely limited to examining remuneration litigation in Beijing’s courts from 2014 to 2017, which is representative of the national trend of dramatically rising remuneration disputes, and thus provides valuable insights. Future studies should cover a wider geographic territory and other categories of labour disputes to provide an even more comprehensive picture of the challenges and potential solutions.

By understanding the driving factors of rising labour remuneration disputes, the legislature, workers and employers can act accordingly to curb labour conflicts. The growing complexity and technicality of remuneration litigation indicates that the pressing need of labour juridification is to deploy a subtle, comprehensive method to improve legal clarity and judicial professionalism.

This study uniquely divides the types of remuneration litigation in Beijing, adopting methods and yielding findings absent from the prior literature. Both the progress and challenges in China’s rule of Labour Law process are reflected in this work, together with public policy and theoretical implications for further study.

Public–private partnerships (PPPs) are notoriously prone to disputes among stakeholders, some of which may unduly jeopardize contract performance. Contract disputes arising in Iran are often due to inefficiency of PPP concession agreements and practice. This study presents a causal-predictive model of the root causes and preventive measures for inter-organization disputes to enhance the likelihood of achieving desirable performance in PPP projects.

A theoretical “causal-predictive” model was developed with fourteen hypotheses based on extant literature and contractual agency theory, which resulted in the creation of a pool of 110 published items. Data were obtained from a questionnaire survey with 75 valid responses, completed by 4 stratified groups of Iranian PPP experts. Partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used for validating the proposed model via a case study.

Results reveal that the main three factors of PPP desirable performance are as follows: on-time project completion, high quality of activities/products and services for public satisfaction. Further, the most influential factors of the lifecycle problems, construction stage, and preferred risk allocation included risk misallocation, improper payment mechanism and failure to facilitate a timely approval process.

For researchers, the findings contribute to the theory of contractual agency; specifically, how different influences among the model's elements lead to better PPP performance. In practical terms, proposed outcome-based strategies will inform PPP stakeholders to avoid dispute occurrence and thus improve the time, quality and services of projects.

It is necessary and useful to differentiate destructive from constructive conflict and avoidable from necessary claims; and also to minimize disputes arising from unresolved conflict and claims in construction projects. This paper analyses such needs and proposes means of meeting them through an appropriate classification of construction claims; an estimation of their relative significance in terms of magnitude and frequency; and an identification of the proximate and root causes of the significant claims. A hierarchy of such claims, proximate and root causes is presented, based mainly on data collected from 61 projects and on 46 responses to questionnaires in Hong Kong. Measures of the relative significance of the claims categories are also presented. The results are reinforced by observations from parallel studies in Hong Kong and elsewhere, as well as from the literature. Strategies are suggested to avoid the avoidable and mitigate the unavoidable or unavoided claims, through controlling the controllable causes. Management focus is also recommended on controlling the causes of those categories of claims and disputes that are seen to be significant in terms of higher impact and/or probability of occurrence.