Search results

At the beginning of the nineties, the Danish construction market was in the midst of a severe slump (Eurostat, 1995). At the same time, the German market was beginning to boom, due to the process of unifying the two German states (European Construction Research, 1995). Because of the poor home market circumstances, many Danish construction industry actors, including individual architects and architectural firms, attempted to find work in Germany (Halskov, 1995). However, the aspirations of most of these actors were dashed. By 1996, many of the largest Danish civil engineering and contracting firms had lost billions of Danish kroner, and a great number of small firms, typically architectural firms or subcontractors in the construction process, had also experienced severe losses, some of which had jeopardized the very existence of these firms (ibid.). This turn of events surprised both insiders in the Danish construction industry and the general Danish population as both groups believed that Denmark has high construction standards and that the most of the firms that had attempted operations in Germany were technically competent and had sound domestic business policies.

Due to the increasing size and complexity of construction projects, construction engineering and management involves the coordination of many complex and dynamic processes and relies on the analysis of uncertain, imprecise and incomplete information, including subjective and linguistically expressed information. Various modelling and computing techniques have been used by construction researchers and applied to practical construction problems in order to overcome these challenges, including fuzzy hybrid techniques. Fuzzy hybrid techniques combine the human-like reasoning capabilities of fuzzy logic with the capabilities of other techniques, such as optimization, machine learning, multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) and simulation, to capitalise on their strengths and overcome their limitations. Based on a review of construction literature, this chapter identifies the most common types of fuzzy hybrid techniques applied to construction problems and reviews selected papers in each category of fuzzy hybrid technique to illustrate their capabilities for addressing construction challenges. Finally, this chapter discusses areas for future development of fuzzy hybrid techniques that will increase their capabilities for solving construction-related problems. The contributions of this chapter are threefold: (1) the limitations of some standard techniques for solving construction problems are discussed, as are the ways that fuzzy methods have been hybridized with these techniques in order to address their limitations; (2) a review of existing applications of fuzzy hybrid techniques in construction is provided in order to illustrate the capabilities of these techniques for solving a variety of construction problems and (3) potential improvements in each category of fuzzy hybrid technique in construction are provided, as areas for future research.

Despite the pivotal importance of marketing‐oriented boundary spanners for successful relationship development, only a few studies have investigated the influence of these boundary spanners on relationship outcomes. Findings of this study show that relationship advancement through a relationship promoter in the supplier or customer firm have a positive significant impact on the growth of sales within the relationship and the supplier’s share of a customer’s business. Relationship promoters are persons who identify appropriate partners of different organizations, bring them together, and facilitate the dialogue and the exchange processes between them. Relationship promoters support interactive learning processes and solve inter‐organizational conflicts. Furthermore, they fulfil an important social task. Relationship promoters overcome existing distances between partner firms and develop an understanding for the situation and objectives of the respective partner.

Suppliers do not only maintain relationships with customers for the customers’ benefits but also for their own sake. Various important value‐creating functions of business relationships with customers have been identified in the past. However, the preconditions of this inter‐organizational value‐creation have not been addressed in depth. Drawing upon a database of over 200 customer‐supplier relationships, adaptations, trust and commitment are identified as key drivers for value creation. The results of this study have considerable consequences for the management of inter‐organizational relationships and networks regarding the process of how value could be created in business markets.

This paper introduces hydroinformatics, a discipline that has strong ancestry in the computational sciences and artificial intelligence, as a way forward for water network management and maintenance in particular. Within hydroinformatics, geographic information systems and data mining (artificial neural networks and genetic algorithms specifically) are the new technologies with probably the widest applicability to the water industry. This paper introduces basic concepts of hydroinformatics and data mining, explains the process by which they may be applied and describes basic technologies with their advantages and disadvantages.

The purpose of this paper is to cumulate published empirical studies (1980-2009) on the relationship between individual variables and entrepreneurial status. The authors categorize repeatedly analyzed determinants into six perspectives (trait, cognitive, affective, intentions, learning, and economic), review empirical findings for each determinant and each perspective, investigate trends in the field, and propose avenues for future research.

The authors categorize determinants into one of the six paradigms and review findings for 46 repeatedly studied variables from 131 studies. Support for each variable, publication outlets chosen, and temporal trends in exploring entrepreneurial intentions, entrepreneurial status or differences between entrepreneurs and other individuals are analyzed.

Prior studies have focused on trait and economic perspectives with strong support, followed by the learning and intentions perspectives. The affective perspective is a still under-researched, yet growing field. Most articles were published in the 1990s. The emphasis on theoretical perspectives varies over decades. Directions for future research include integrating the perspectives (e.g. across the cognitive and affective domain), testing the temporal stability of influences, and developing and testing cross-level models that incorporate contextual influences.

The paper complements prior reviews and meta-analyses by picturing the breadth of the field and adding important points to the research agenda.

Notes that the most important fixed asset of any water distribution company is its pipe network. However, once installed it is difficult to manage not only because it is buried in the ground but because management of potable water networks encompasses complex activities concerned with supply. In addition, privatized UK water utilities are required to balance often conflicting demands from their shareholders, regulators and customers. Maintenance, including rehabilitation, replacement, and/or expansion of existing networks to meet current and future demands, is the major element of potable water distribution management. Introduces hydroinformatics as a way forward for water network management and maintenance in particular. Looks at elements such as geographic information systems and artificial neural networks. Outlines the scope for improvement to the new technologies for maintenance of water networks together with a wide range of possible applications.

The PMI Risk Framework (PRF) is introduced as a guide to classifying and identifying risks which can be the source of post-merger integration (PMI) failure — commonly referred to as “culture clash.” To provide managers with actionably insight, PRF dissects PMI risk into specific relationship-oriented phenomena, critical to outcomes and which should be addressed during PMI. This framework is a conceptual and theory-grounded integration of numerous perspectives, such as organizational psychology, group dynamics, social networks, transformational change, and nonlinear dynamics. These concepts are unified and can be acted upon by integration managers. Literary resources for further exploration into the underlying aspects of the framework are provided. The PRF places emphasis on critical facets of PMI, particularly those which are relational in nature, pose an exceptionally high degree of risk, and are recurrent sources of PMI failure. The chapter delves into relationship-oriented points of failure that managers face when overseeing PMI by introducing a relationship-based, PMI risk framework. Managers are often not fully cognizant of these risks, thus fail to manage them judiciously. These risks do not naturally abide by common scholarly classifications and cross disciplinary boundaries; they do not go unrecognized by scholars, but until the introduction of PRF the risks have not been assimilated into a unifying framework. This chapter presents a model of PMI risk by differentiating and specifying numerous types of underlying human-relationship-oriented risks, rather than considering PMI cultural conflict as a monolithic construct.