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The purpose of this paper is to analyze the similarities and differences between the Danish rethinking project management (RPM) initiative named Project Half Double (PHD) and the RPM research stream. The paper furthermore discusses how PHD and RPM can inspire each other in research and practice.

This is an empirical paper based on collaborative research between industry and researchers. PHD has developed principles and practices driven by industry consisting of ten leading stars and the impact, leadership and flow (ILF) method. The ten leading stars and ILF method are compared to RPM research. The comparative analysis is then used in a broader discussion about how the research-driven RPM initiative can enrich the industry-driven PHD initiative and vice versa depicted in a theoretical understanding of translations between global ideas and local implementations.

RPM and PHD share a focus on value creation, social processes, learning and complexity while PHD also focusses on lean thinking, agile thinking, front-end loading and leadership, which are largely topics beyond the RPM research stream.

The paper presents how stakeholders from Danish industry interpret the actuality in projects and how they want to move forward with a radically different project paradigm. This is expressed in the ten leading stars and ILF method, which is compared and contrasted to the existing RPM literature providing a foundation for further development of both RPM and PHD.

Effective use of capital is an important strategic tool for any manufacturing company operating in today’s high technology and capital intensive environment. This purpose of this paper is to carry out an investigative study into strategic business processes for capital effectiveness practices (CEP) in industry, by means of a literature review, a survey of a sample of UK and US companies and a case study of the Chemco Corporation.

The purpose of this paper is to present a newly developed fuzzy-set based model for estimating, allocating, depleting, and managing contingency fund over the life cycle of construction projects.

Fuzzy set theory is utilized in the design and development of proposed contingency modelling framework to incorporate uncertainties associated with the development phases of construction projects. A set of developed indices, measures, and ratios are introduced to quantify and characterize these uncertainties. The developed framework is designed to incorporate expert opinion and provide user-system interaction.

The results obtained from the application of the developed framework on actual project case not only illustrate its accuracy, but also demonstrate its capabilities for contingency management over life cycle of construction projects. Unlike other methods, the framework provides project managers with structured method for contingency depletion utilizing a set of depletion curves and selection factors.

The novelty of the developed framework lies not only in its new developments for contingency estimating but also its modelling for contingency allocation and depletion. It is expected to be of direct value to industry professionals and academics interested in contingency management over the entire life cycle of construction projects. The proposed framework provides management functions and features beyond those generated through Monte Carlo simulation and even those developed using fuzzy set theory.

Interest rates on CDs are down. Interest rates on government securities are down. Interest rates on savings accounts are miniscule. As your library's investor, you probably had included earned interest on the income side of your budget — and most likely you're not quite making the dollar figure you had planned. One alternative means to equal your projections is to enter the very popular mutual fund market.

In the process of the implementation of the eBologna program and the recent change of the university system, curricula at German universities have been redesigned; courses have been condensed and learning content has been re‐structured into modules, each of which requires an evaluation. Simultaneously, skills required for working in research and development changed; knowledge of mathematical or numerical algorithms and programming skills play an increasingly important role in the daily job routine of the working engineer. The purpose of this paper is to describe, implement and test a new course on numerical simulations along with a new software infrastructure, addressing this predicament.

To support learning by practical exercises, engineering faculties, the faculties of mathematics and physics, and the Computing Center of the University of Stuttgart setup a project for implementing an online programming lab for teaching the required skills. The focus of this project is to provide easy access to the necessary software tools, to avoid the overhead of installation and maintenance, and to seamlessly integrate these tools into the e‐learning infrastructure of the university.

Student evaluations showed a high acceptance of the project and the developed software is now well‐accepted and taken as a self‐evident part of the homework routine.

An online programming lab that integrates seamlessly into the e‐learning infrastructure of the university and is platform and system independent by following the established SCORM standard.

The aim of this research was to understand how governmental stakeholder engagement facilitates the sustainability of industrial engineering (IE) projects. A model for governmental stakeholder engagement activities is presented.

The authors relied on a single-case study of a mining project in Northern Europe, where a novel collaboration and engagement approach with governmental stakeholders was piloted in the project's front-end phase. The analysis focused on the collaborative practices through which the IE project investor engaged governmental stakeholders during the project's front-end phase and how the engagement contributed to solving challenges in the early planning and permitting process and achieving project plans that balanced economic, social and environmental aspects.

The findings show how four collaborative engagement practices reduced uncertainty and equivocality related to the legal sustainability requirements, enabled the development of sustainable design solutions and overall accelerated the permitting process without compromising the quality of final project plans.

The findings can be used to plan governmental stakeholder engagement and understand related challenges that need to be overcome. The study highlights the need to develop established practices and guidelines for governmental stakeholder engagement.

This study complements prior research on stakeholder engagement and project sustainability by developing an understanding of how governmental stakeholder engagement can be a key mechanism enabling the sustainability of IE project's end product. This research contributes to stakeholder theory by elaborating on a new stakeholder role, intermediary stakeholder.

The learning outcomes are as follows: to teach the concept of mutual fund as whole, how mutual fund works and who are the investors; discuss how any asset management company can work and what is their investment process; discuss how mutual funds are affected by changes in economic outlook/macro-economic variables; discuss the alternative risk-adjusted measures of performance evaluation, such as the Sharpe ratio, Treynor, Jensen’s alpha and measure of risk-adjusted performance; and discuss which index to use as a benchmark and how to improve funds’ performance.

In April 2019, Khaldoon Bin latif, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Faysal Asset Management, reflected on the changes that had occurred during his two and a half years at Faysal. He was quite pleased with the recent performance of Faysal Funds and the company’s relationship-oriented approach to money management for individuals with high net worth. Yet, he wanted to ensure that both the investment-process and performance-evaluation measures that he had implemented at Faysal would continue to provide superior returns. Latif also wanted Faysal to outperform the relevant indices, not only on an absolute basis, but also on a risk-adjusted basis. He pondered which indices and models Faysal should use in the future based on their performance.

Undergraduate/graduate

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 1: Accounting and Finance.

This study is about the determinants of cash holding and impact of cash holding on mutual funds’ performance. In addition, the study analyzes the impact of performance-related determinants of cash holding on funds' performance.

Panel data of ten years of 190 open-end mutual funds are analyzed through fixed effect regression technique. The risk-adjusted funds' performance of cash based portfolios is computed through capital asset pricing model (CAPM) (1964), Fama and French (1993) and Carhart (1997) models.

The results indicate that small size funds, high charging front-end load funds, high turnover ratio funds, high 12-month fund returns run up, high dividend paying funds and high redemption level funds hold more cash for precautionary purpose to avoid costs of cash short-falls. Further, monthly average raw returns and risk-adjusted performance of funds with the lowest raw and residual cash holding are found higher than the funds with the highest cash holding. An increase in cash is found to dilute performance.

This is a pioneer study in a corporate environment with shallow capital market, reliance of businesses on bank credit, firms exposed to agency issues, wealth expropriations and existence of business groups with political linkages but with opportunities of investments due to expected favorable geo-socio-political situation. The study generates outcomes relevant for other similar economies.