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Efforts to reduce farmers' market risks and improve buyers' access to farm commodities have encouraged contract farming (CF) in Ghana's cashew sector in recent years. Consequently, the existence of CF shows that farmers who use it may be benefiting from it, as it is their economic responsibility to decide how to sell agricultural products. However, the magnitudes of these benefits or otherwise have been inadequately explored. This paper aims to empirically estimate the impact of CF on farm performance and welfare of smallholder cashew farmers.

The study used probit-two-stage least square (probit-2sls) as a primary estimator to account for self-selection bias and endogeneity that could arise from both observed and unobserved heterogeneities among farming households to estimate the causal effects of CF on farm performance and household welfare.

The results indicated that participation in CF contribute significantly to the gains in farm performance (price margins, yields and net farm revenue) and welfare (consumption expenditure per capita), and that the non-participants of CF would have benefited substantially if they had participated. An analysis of the farm size disaggregated into small, medium and large with regards to the outcome variables produces mixed results.

It can be concluded that participating in CF enhances farm performance and household welfare.

While many other studies do not account for changes in farm performance and welfare due to differences in farm size or other observed factors, this study fills a crucial void.

This review paper aims to highlight the causes of delays (COD) and their interactions in construction projects, potentially aiding in timely completion and waste reduction through early anticipation.

Forty-seven global literature were examined in detail to identify CODS and its interactions using the systematic literature review (SLR) method that utilised the PRISMA guidelines to ensure the studies reviewed were adequate to safeguard the robustness and comprehensiveness. Three-way analysis, such as Pareto, degree of centrality and loops, was undertaken to identify the critical Level 1,2 and 3 CODS that affect the Construction projects.

The research findings demonstrate that 65 CODs in eight categories affect construction projects. The CODs act in coherence rather than silos; the CLD displays complex interconnections of 44 factors obtained through the pairwise comparison of the 47 identified literature of the SLR. Through its systematic analysis of interaction loops, this research identified Ten level 1 critical CODs, two second-level critical CODs and 4 Third-level critical CODs. “Contractors' excessive workload/beyond potential/inadequate experience” emerged as the top COD that affects scheduling and project delay.

The study limitations include using only English articles and a restricted number of databases. However, the chosen databases were reputable and underwent thorough peer review processes. This study may have limitations due to the SLR, which means that factors affecting COD and interactions may vary by country, and future research is suggested for validation.

This study identified interactions of construction delays that potentially support scheduling risk management during the early stage of the project and reduce waste to improve sustainability. The theoretical implications of SLR-based research include helping develop a framework that would potentially have all COD in the current scenario and aid future academic and industrial research factor-wise and country-wise in aiding sustainability. This will support and provide construction professionals and academia with knowledge of the COD related to factors and their interactions to be considered in the early assessment and management of future projects and improve sustainability.

Most literature studies the factors or causes of construction delays that affect construction projects. The CODs primarily do not operate in silos but combine with other causes to enhance their influence on delays. Hence, it is of utmost importance to study the interactions of COD to enhance the knowledge in the construction field that would aid in schedule repair and, in turn, on-time project delivery. The study is the first related to COD and their interactions in construction projects in the digital era.

Precast wall lifting during prefabricated building construction faces multiple non-lean problems, such as inaccurate lifting-time estimation, unreasonable resource allocation and improper process design. This study aims to identify the pathways for improving lifting performance to advance lean construction of prefabricated buildings.

This study developed a methodological framework that integrates the discrete event simulation method, the elimination, combination, rearrangement and simplification (ECRS) technique and intelligent optimization tool. Two schemes of precast wall lifting, namely, the enterprise's business as usual (BAU) and enterprise-leading (EL) schemes, were set to benchmark lifting performance. Furthermore, a best-practice (BP) scheme was modeled from the perspective of lifting activity ECRS and resource allocation for performance optimization.

A real project was selected to test the effect of the methodological framework. The results showed that compared with the EL scheme, the BP scheme reduced the total lifting time (TLT) by 6.3% and mitigated the TLT uncertainty (the gap between the maximum and minimum time values) by 20.6%. Under the BP scheme, increasing the resource inputs produces an insignificant effect in reducing TLT, i.e. increasing the number of component operators in the caulking subprocess from one to two only shortened the TLT by 3.6%, and no further time reduction was achieved as more component operators were added.

To solve non-lean problems associated with prefabricated building construction, this study provides a methodological framework that can separate a typical precast wall lifting process into fine-level activities. Besides, it also identifies the pathways (including the learning effect mitigation, labor and machinery resource adjustment and activities’ improvement) to reducing TLT and its uncertainty.

The emergence of the gig economy, with the growth of technology and increased use of digital solutions, has been transforming the nature of work and its organisation in different ways. The differences in technical infrastructure, access to the internet, availability of cloud computing, and ownership of digital devices influence how countries manage this transition. Besides promoting economic growth and employment opportunities, the expansion of gig work offers wider possibilities for addressing some of the structural problems that the Indian economy has faced in recent years. In this chapter, we review the nature of the gig economy in the context of informalisation, flexibility, and vulnerability associated with gig work. In many contexts, gig workers are neither formal nor informal; they are independent contractors, enjoying no benefits as formal or informal workers do. We explore the links between gig workers and those workers engaged in the informal economy; both operate with a certain degree of flexibility but are vulnerable to many risks associated with occupation, health, and social problems. The discussion also highlights the importance of making gig work more inclusive by extending its flexible employment options to more women, persons with disabilities, and those from marginalised backgrounds and utilising the gig economy in formalising the economy in general.

Organizational scholars studying compensation often place an emphasis on certain employee groups (e.g., executives). Missing from this discussion is research on the compensation systems for low-wage jobs. In this review, the authors argue that workers in low-wage jobs represent a unique employment group in their understanding of rent allocation in organizations. The authors address the design of compensation strategies in organizations that lead to different outcomes for workers in low-wage jobs versus other workers. Drawing on and integrating human resource management (HRM), inequality, and worker literatures with compensation literature, the authors describe and explain compensation systems for low-wage work. The authors start by examining workers in low-wage work to identify aspects of these workers’ jobs and lives that can influence their health, performance, and other organizationally relevant outcomes. Next, the authors explore the compensation systems common for this type of work, building on the compensation literature, by identifying the low-wage work compensation designs, proposing the likely explanations for why organizations craft these designs, and describing the worker and organizational outcomes of these designs. The authors conclude with suggestions for future research in this growing field and explore how organizations may benefit by rethinking their approach to compensation for low-wage work. In sum, the authors hope that this review will be a foundational work for those interested in investigating organizational compensation issues at the intersection of inequality and worker and organizational outcomes.

Policy for women's entrepreneurship is designed to promote economic growth, not least in depleted rural areas, but very little is known about the contributions of rural women entrepreneurs, their needs or how the existing policy is received by them. Using a theoretical framework developed by Korsgaard et al. (2015), the authors analyse how rural women entrepreneurs contribute to rural development and discuss the implications for entrepreneurship policy. This paper aims to focus on the aforementioned objectives.

The authors interviewed 32 women entrepreneurs in rural Sweden representing the variety of businesses in which rural Swedish women are engaged. The authors analysed their contributions to rural development by analysing their motives, strategies and outcomes using Korsgaard et al.’s framework of “entrepreneurship in the rural” and “rural entrepreneurship” as a heuristic, interpretative device.

Irrespective of industry, the respondents were deeply embedded in family and local social structures. Their contributions were substantial, multidimensional and indispensable for rural viability, but the policy tended to bypass most women-owned businesses. Support in terms of business training, counselling and financing are important, but programmes especially for women tend to miss the mark, and so does rural development policy. More important for rural women entrepreneurs in Sweden is the provision of good public services, including for example, schools and social care, that make rural life possible.

Theoretically, the findings question the individualist and a-contextual focus of much entrepreneurship research, as well as the taken-for-granted work–family divide. How gender and how the public and the private are configured varies greatly between contexts and needs contextual assessment. Moreover, the results call for theorising place as an entrepreneurial actor.

Based on the findings, the authors advise future policymakers to gender mainstream entrepreneurship policy and to integrate entrepreneurship and rural development policy with family and welfare state policy.

The paper highlights how rural women respond to policy, and the results are contextualised, making it possible to compare them to other contexts. The authors widen the discussion on contributions beyond economic growth, and the authors show that policy for public and commercial services and infrastructure is indeed also policy for entrepreneurship.

In construction projects, underpayments can be recognised as one of the significant drawbacks that impact the success of a project. Research into underpayments is considered ambiguous and provides a limited reflection of the issue, which makes it complicated to trace how it originates in the first place. This study aims to examine the causes that lead to underpayments and develop a holistic synthesis of underpayments for subcontractors in the lifecycle of a construction project.

An open-ended and closed-ended questionnaire was used to collect the data using purposeful sampling with 28 construction stakeholders who ranged from main contractors, subcontractors and others (Small medium enterprises SMEs, Consultancies, Clients etc.). Data collected was analysed to trace drivers and the impact of underpayment and suggested mitigation strategies to be identified whilst viewing the perspectives of a main contractor and subcontractor.

The findings show that the most prominent driver for underpayments is variation disputes followed by cash flow. The research also suggests mitigation strategies such as collaborative working, more robust budget control and early identification of risks as potential remedies to overcome the underpayment issue. The research concludes with a framework that elicits the complexity underlying underpayments for subcontractors in construction projects.

The research evolves the understanding that underpayment is a complex phenomenon, relying heavily on the data/information exchange mechanism between the main contractor and subcontractors. This research provokes the need to understand underpayment further so it can be mitigated.

Previous studies have postulated that an advance payment system (APS) positively impacts the contractor's working capital and is paramount to ensuring an efficient and effective project cash flow process. However, scant research has been undertaken to empirically establish the cash flow performance and domino effect of APS on project and organisational performance.

The epistemological design adopted a positivist philosophical stance augmented by deductive reasoning to explore the phenomena under investigation. Primary quantitative data were collected from 504 Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) registered contractors (within the grade bandings 1–9) in South Africa. A five-point Likert scale was utilised, and subsequent data accrued were analysed using structural equation modelling (SEM).

Emergent findings reveal that the mandatory use of an APS does not guarantee a positive project cash flow, an improvement in organisational performance or an improvement in project performance.

The ensuing discussion reveals the contributory influence of APS on positive cash flow and organisational performance, although APS implementation alone will not achieve these objectives. Practically, the research accentuates the need for various measures to be concurrently adopted (including APS) towards ensuring a positive project cash flow and improved organisational and project performance.

There is limited empirical research on cash flow performance and the domino effect of APS on project and organisational performance in South Africa, nor indeed, the wider geographical location of Africa as a continent. This study addresses this gap in the prevailing body of knowledge.