Search results

Improved management of commercial property at risk from flooding may result from well-targeted advice from built environment (BE) professionals, such as surveyors, valuers and project managers. However, research indicates that the role of these professionals in providing such advice is currently limited for a variety of reasons. This paper aims to investigate the (perceived and real) barriers and opportunities for providing such advice in a number of international locations. In particular, the research sought greater understanding of the link between regulation and guidance; perceived roles and capacity; and training and education needs.

To cover different international settings, an illustrative case study approach was adopted within the selected countries (Australia, UK, USA, China and Germany). This involved a qualitative approach using semi-structured interviews of BE professionals with experience of advising on commercial properties at risk of flooding. Due to the specific nature of these interviews, a purposive sampling approach was implemented, leading to a sample of 72 interviews across the five international locations.

Perceived barriers were linked to regulatory issues, a shortage of suitably experienced professionals, a lack of formal guidance and insurance requirements. BE professionals defined their roles differently in each case study in relation to these factors and stressed the need for closer collaboration among the various disciplines and indeed the other key stakeholders (i.e. insurers, loss adjusters and contractors). A shortage of knowledgeable experts caused by a lack of formal training, and education was a common challenge highlighted in all locations.

The research is unique in providing an international perspective on issues affecting BE professionals in providing robust and impartial advice on commercial property at risk of flooding. While acknowledging the existence of local flood conditions, regulatory frameworks and insurance regimes, the results indicate some recurring themes, indicating a lack of general flood risk education and training across all five case study countries. Learning across case studies coupled with appropriate policy development could contribute toward improved skills development and more consistent integration of BE professionals within future flood risk management practice, policy and strategy.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how built environment professionals approach the valuation of flood risk in commercial property markets and whether insurance promotes mitigation in different insurance and risk management regimes, draw common conclusions and highlight opportunities to transfer learning.

An illustrative case study approach involving literature search and 72 interviews with built environment professionals, across five countries in four continents.

Common difficulties arise in availability, reliability and interpretation of risk information, and in evaluating the impact of mitigation. These factors, coupled with the heterogeneous nature of commercial property, lack of transactional data and remote investors, make valuation of risk particularly challenging in the sector. Insurance incentives for risk mitigation are somewhat effective where employed and could be further developed, however, the influence of insurance is hampered by lack of insurance penetration and underinsurance.

Further investigation of the means to improve uptake of insurance and to develop insurance incentives for mitigation is recommended.

Flood risk is inconsistently reflected in commercial property values leading to lack of mitigation and vulnerability of investments to future flooding. Improvements are needed in: access to adequate risk information; professional skills in valuing risk; guidance on valuation of flood risk; and regulation to ensure adequate consideration of risk and mitigation options.

The research addresses a global issue that threatens local, and regional economies through loss of utility, business profitability and commercial property value. It is unique in consulting professionals across international markets.

Departing from the job demands resources model, the purpose of this paper is to investigate whether religion, defined as strength of religious faith, can be viewed as resource or as demand. More specifically, the authors addressed the question as to how job insecurity and religion interact in predicting burnout and change-oriented behavior.

The authors conducted moderated structural equation modeling on survey data from a sample of 238 employees confronted with organizational change.

Results were largely consistent with the “religion as a demand” hypothesis: religion exacerbated rather than buffered the negative effects of job insecurity, so that the adverse impact of job insecurity was stronger for highly religious employees than for employees with low levels of religiousness. Religious employees appear to experience more strain when faced with the possibility of job loss.

The results of this study challenge and extend existing knowledge on the role of religion in coping with life stressors. The dominant view has been that religion is beneficial in coping with major stressors. The results of this study, however, suggest otherwise: religion had an exacerbating rather than a buffering effect on the relationship between job insecurity and outcomes.

This paper aims to understand how accountants in Sri Lanka perceive the effect of religiosity on ethical decision-making. Sri Lanka is a highly religious country, but it also has a high level of corruption, so understanding ethical decision-making in this context is important for the accounting profession.

Data were collected using semi-structured interviews with 40 accountants in Sri Lanka with decision-making roles. Virtue ethics theory and content analysis were used to analyse the interview data and categorise accountants' responses into themes using an interpretive methodology.

This paper identifies three ways in which religiosity can influence accountants’ ethical decision-making. Firstly, through a faith in the beliefs of their religion; secondly, through awareness of religious prescriptions and virtues; and thirdly, through a commitment towards religious practices and rituals. However, the findings show that religiosity does not always influence the ethical decision-making of accountants because of pervasive corruption, which is a cultural norm in contemporary Sri Lanka. Thus, it is evident that there is an interrelationship between religious and cultural environments which can influence ethical decision-making.

While the religiosity of accountants can support ethical decision-making, the findings of this paper show that the cultural norm of corruption can mediate this connection as the evidence shows that accountants with a strong religious background, irrespective of their religion, may still act unethically when corruption is a cultural norm.

This paper aims to explain the discrepancy between pro-environmental intentions and behaviors with moderating effects of two socio-cultural values (espoused individualism and faith in others) on the link between intentions and actual behaviors to save electricity.

An online survey of 303 consumers in Hong Kong with a structured questionnaire was used to collect the data to test all the hypothesized relationships.

Attitude toward saving electricity has a significant positive effect on the intentions to save electricity, but subjective norms and perceived behavioral control have no such effect on intentions but do positively affect the actual electricity saving behavior. Finally, the link between intentions and behavior to save electricity is negatively moderated by espoused individualism and positively by faith in others.

This study was conducted with a sample of consumers in Hong Kong; hence, its findings may not be generalizable to other countries.

This study provides new insights into the link between pro-environmental intentions and behaviors by looking beyond the theory of planned behavior and exploring the moderating role of socio-cultural values on the intention-behavior link.

Man has been seeking an ideal existence for a very long time. In this existence, justice, love, and peace are no longer words, but actual experiences. How ever, with the American preemptive invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and the subsequent prisoner abuse, such an existence seems to be farther and farther away from reality. The purpose of this work is to stop this dangerous trend by promoting justice, love, and peace through a change of the paradigm that is inconsistent with justice, love, and peace. The strong paradigm that created the strong nation like the U.S. and the strong man like George W. Bush have been the culprit, rather than the contributor, of the above three universal ideals. Thus, rather than justice, love, and peace, the strong paradigm resulted in in justice, hatred, and violence. In order to remove these three and related evils, what the world needs in the beginning of the third millenium is the weak paradigm. Through the acceptance of the latter paradigm, the golden mean or middle paradigm can be formulated, which is a synergy of the weak and the strong paradigm. In order to understand properly the meaning of these paradigms, however, some digression appears necessary.

This paper is an extension of the previous study published by Chan and Boer (2016). It seeks to explore deeper into the subject matter, to better aid ex-offenders’ reintegration effort back into society. The purpose of this paper is to expand the sample size of participants from 12 to 25, and to further ascertain any emerging factors (also known as predictors) that influence the reintegration process of ex-offenders in the hope of further reducing recidivism rate.

The study adopted a qualitative research framework where attention was devoted to understanding the experiences of 25 formerly incarcerated males − 12 participants were from the initial study, and now extended with another 13 participants to deepen the scope of the study. All participants who took part in the study had been out of prison for at least five years and had been incarcerated in the prison of Singapore more than once but are no longer on parole.

This study indicated three other new factors that emerged with the additional 13 participants, along with those seven different factors from the previous study that influenced the success of reintegration. These Ten Reintegration Assessment Predictors are critical as they further increase the probability of success of ex offender reintegration to society upon release. The combination of these ten predictors reported are essential for the reintegration process, and when put together, they formed the reintegration model.

A limitation to this research was that only two halfway houses took part in the process. Both of which are faith-based halfway houses. The previous study had 12 participants who took part in the research. Despite of attempts to enlarge the number of participants in the study, only an additional 13 new participants volunteered to take part.

From the themes that emerged from the previous study, critical factors for reintegration of offenders were ascertained. With the addition of three factors identified, it would further strengthen the factors needed to increase the success of reintegration of offenders. Resources could be channelled appropriately to strengthen the factors identified that are critical for the work of reintegrating offenders through their transition from incare to aftercare. Eventually, this is done to decrease the rate of recidivism and reoffending.

Decreasing the rate of recidivism and reoffending is always in the interest of every government. However, it is often not an easy task since most incarcerated persons will encounter numerous challenges after their release as they seek to reintegrate into the community. Under tremendous stress and pressure when facing the challenges, the cycle of reoffending perpetuates which eventually affects the rate of recidivism. This would adversely impact both individuals and the community they are in.

In Singapore, various initiatives to introduce new programmes and alternative sentencing options were initiated by the government to lower the rate of recidivism. Following from the previous study of 12 individuals who had successfully reintegrated back into the community, seven factors were identified to influence reintegration. With the addition of 13 participants to the research, three other factors further emerged and the study now concluded with ten factors deemed critical to strengthen the reintegration of offenders. From the study, a reintegration model for offenders was formulated.

This study defined and developed a four-item scale to measure motivation to serve (MTS) then correlated it with Cerff’s Motivation to Lead’s two scales as well as Affective and Normative Commitment scores. A convenience sample of 89 participants came from a non-denominational church in Oklahoma City, OK. The MTS showed significant correlation with Normative Commitment but not with the two Motivation-to-Lead scales or Affective Commitment. The benefit of this study lies in the development of a new scale to measure Motivation to Serve and the understanding that the new scale is significantly correlated with Normative Commitment.

The purpose of this study is to conduct a systematic review on encumbrances facing the implementation of GBP in selected African countries. Green building practices (GBP) implementation is germane and promotes the development of a green environment and buildings. Many studies have been conducted on the encumbrances faced with GBP implementation, especially in developing countries. But evidence of a comprehensive study that investigates and analyses these hindrances from different developing countries is missing. Therefore, a systematic review is conducted systematically reviewing the current literature on encumbrances facing the implementation of GBP in selected African countries. Also, the study proffers possible drivers for stakeholders to promote GBP in African countries.

A total of 38 published papers were identified from the Web of Science, Scopus database and supported with materials from Google Scholar related to Africa’s GBP. The continent was divided into five regions, and each region covered three countries.

Two themes emerged from the analysed review – encumbrances facing GBP implementation and possible drivers for stakeholders to promote GBP in African countries. A total of 18 encumbrances and 18 drivers were identified from the analysed literature and grouped into 6 sub-themes.

Current empirical articles were reviewed to suggest the drivers for stakeholders to promote GBP that emerged from this paper. Thus, to enrich the results from this paper, primary source data of regional studies of GBP in Africa’s context should be carried out via the mixed-methods design.

A total of 18 drivers were identified for stakeholders to promote GBP in Africa and form part of the paper’s implications. Also, the paper findings would serve as a treasured suggestion for the stakeholders (policymakers, construction practitioners, clients and academics) who are fascinated by the promotion of GBP across African nations.

This is possibly the foremost analysed systematic review study on GBP implementation in Africa. Therefore, it fills the theoretical gap and proffers possible drivers for stakeholders to promote GBP in the African context.

Man has been seeking an ideal existence for a very long time. In this existence, justice, love, and peace are no longer words, but actual experiences. How ever, with the American preemptive invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and the subsequent prisoner abuse, such an existence seems to be farther and farther away from reality. The purpose of this work is to stop this dangerous trend by promoting justice, love, and peace through a change of the paradigm that is inconsistent with justice, love, and peace. The strong paradigm that created the strong nation like the U.S. and the strong man like George W. Bush have been the culprit, rather than the contributor, of the above three universal ideals. Thus, rather than justice, love, and peace, the strong paradigm resulted in in justice, hatred, and violence. In order to remove these three and related evils, what the world needs in the beginning of the third millenium is the weak paradigm. Through the acceptance of the latter paradigm, the golden mean or middle paradigm can be formulated, which is a synergy of the weak and the strong paradigm. In order to understand properly the meaning of these paradigms, however, some digression appears necessary.