Search results

The purpose of this paper is to critically evaluate the use of the evolutionary approach, and in particular the generalisation of Darwinian principles beyond biology to study socio‐cultural change.

The paper presents a review of developments in generalising Darwinism to study socio‐cultural change, including key criticisms against using the approach. In the process key disagreements between the different conceptual approaches taken by evolutionary scholars, and key criticisms against using an evolutionary approach are highlighted.

It was seen that a number of critics fail to grasp the abstracted concept of Universal and Generalised Darwinism, focusing their arguments on detailed differences between socio‐cultural and biological evolution. Future research within the field should be directed towards building consensus regarding the definitions of key concepts, and using detailed empirical investigations to shed light on the usefulness of the different approaches taken for research and practice.

The key contribution of this paper is the presentation of a critical review of developments made in generalising Darwinism. It is further argued that the universal appeal of the approach offers researchers an opportunity for cross‐fertilising ideas, generating new insights across disciplines and learning from developments being made in parallel fields of study.

Community policing has been the focus of considerable research attention and financial support in recent years. Despite extensive inquiry, there are still many unanswered issues surrounding this philosophy of policing. In addition, many studies of community policing have occurred in agencies which have specialized it as a program, rather than broadly generalizing it as a philosophy. This study seeks to overcome limitations in existing research by examining aspects of police attitudes toward community policing and testing the extent to which such attitudes are predicted by demographic and experiential variables. Data are drawn from a Midwestern police agency which was implementing generalized community policing. Results suggest that there is a distinction between global and specific perceptions, however different measures predict such attitudes. The implications of these findings for future research considering community policing attitudes among police officers are also discussed.

This study aims to identify and rank the key success factors linked with digitalization in the Indian construction sector. Because the construction firms in India are in the early stages of implementing digitalization in their operations, it provides a framework from which they may focus on the effectiveness of digitalization.

This research study examines 12 success factors related to digitalization in construction, which are derived from various sectors. Furthermore, experts from the construction industry and academia have validated these factors with respect to the Indian construction sector. The multi-criteria decision-making techniques are further used to examine the interrelationship, ranking and weightage of digitalization success. Finally, the success factors are validated through a questionnaire-based empirical study followed by ranking using a t-test. The results from both approaches (company-specific and generalized) are compared and discussed.

This research identifies that selecting appropriate digital methods and techniques is a critical success factor as far as digitalization in the Indian construction scenario is concerned. Besides that, continuous monitoring and control in digital implementation significantly impact other factors.

While similar results are obtained from approaches adopted in the study, a few success factors appear to differ in terms of their ranking position. Further studies can explore the finer details that can explain the behavior pattern. This study can also be extended by assessing the structural relationship among the identified factors that can throw more light on the dynamics of the continuation of digitalization in construction which can further help in formulating policies or digitalization rollout.

The outcome of this study sheds light on construction business knowledge by stressing key success elements connected to digitalization in construction processes in the Indian construction sector. Moreover, this study shows that the success of digitalization in construction is similar to that of transformation in the information technology industry, where adopting suitable digital methods and techniques plays a vital role in the transformation process.

Despite the multiple benefits of construction digitalization, limited research focuses on digitalization success factors, making this study unique. Furthermore, this study demonstrates that integrating Fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory and maximum mean de-entropy approaches may be used to successfully prioritize success factors in the nascent stage of construction digitalization.

The purpose of the study is to examine the value-based performance of firms in construction sector in India using Tobin's Q and Market Capitalization (MCAP) and then determine their significant financial drivers.

The study is based on data from 87 firms engaged in infrastructure, real estate, industrial construction and allied areas in India over a study period of 10 years. Three distinct forms of panel regression models have been developed using Tobin's Q and MCAP as dependent variables. The models developed are using Baltagi's (1981) Error Component 2SLS, Varadharajan-Krishnakumar's (1987) Generalized 2SLS and Arellano – Bower/Blundell – Bond's (1991) dynamic panel.

The study found that MCAP is a better suited value-based performance measure for construction sector firms in India. The study further reports that the age of the firm, profit after tax, investment in research and development, dividends, leverage and net fixed asset are significant positive drivers, whereas cash flow is a significant negative driver.

The study is limited to a geographic location; therefore, the findings of this study cannot be generalized.

As MCAP is a better suited value-based performance measure of a firm in the construction sector, managers should focus on improving profitability, higher research and development activities, higher dividends and higher expenditures on net fixed assets for improvement.

This is an original attempt to examine the value-based performance of firms in the construction sector in India using Tobin's Q and MCAP.

Over the past few decades, examinations of emerging economies (EEs) have received increasing attention in international business (IB) research. This article takes a critical stance on some of the re-occurring shortcomings of that research.

The authors conducted a critical literature review of 493 articles on EEs that have been published in five top-tier IB academic journals in the period 2010–2020. True to the nature of a critical literature review, the authors judge and question some of the practices that have impeded knowledge accumulation.

The authors found a recurring lack of definitional clarity and contextualization, as well as overgeneralized inferences from findings. The authors provide recommendations on how to address these weaknesses and a checklist to guide future IB research on EEs.

The authors question and problematize what they see as dominant but undesirable practices when conducting EE research. The actionable directions for addressing uncovered issues and checklist to guide future research in this area that the authors offer are rather bold and unambiguous.

This study aims to identify and analyse the issues faced by internet-based small businesses in developing countries regarding cybersecurity and document how these businesses address the risks.

This study used the qualitative method. Respondents were internet-based small businesses selected by using theoretical sampling. Data were collected by using interviews and observations. The validity of the analysis was ensured by using triangulation and member checking.

This study reveals that small businesses managed to identify the loss of physical and monetary assets as possible damage. However, only a few businesses identified loss of intangible assets as possible cyber risks. Most small businesses had used basic cybersecurity measures to protect data access and some primary business activities. Unfortunately, they rarely take initiatives in preventing and early detecting cyber risks.

Findings of this study cannot be generalised as it aims to obtain new insights and document unexplored findings. Thus, if this study’s findings are going to be generalised, it is necessary to conduct an additional study. Secondly, this study did not assess how far small business had fulfilled the relevant information security framework as assessment required additional research, and this study only aimed to map the current situation in small businesses.

This study emphasised the importance of identifying valuable assets or resources when implementing cybersecurity measures. Focusing on security measures to protect identified assets from cyber risk will make the efforts more efficient and effective than using standardised cybersecurity measures. Third-party developers can also use this study to understand small businesses’ current cybersecurity implementation and their characters to design online platforms that suit these needs. Governments can also design educational activities that address small businesses’ lack of knowledge.

Most studies which focus on small businesses and information technology (IT) usually only discuss how they use IT. This study also brings new contributions by focusing on developing countries and specifically addresses internet-based technology cyber risk faced by e-commerce businesses. The qualitative method is used as most studies in e-commerce adoption were positivistic in nature, and inductive-based studies were rarely found on the topic.

entailed assessing directions in subject matter content and the types of research strategy employed. In research using human participants, the purposes were to assess: sampling strategy, statements limiting generalizability, incentive use, and the use of undergraduates (UGs) as participants. Finally, with studies utilizing UG participants, the purpose of this paper was to assess: directions in subject matter content, research strategy, sampling strategy, justification of participants, statements limiting generalizability, and incentive use.

A content analysis of fashion/clothing research articles (n=963) appearing in three scholarly journals between 1996 and 2013.

Consumer behavior was the most frequent research topic and survey methodology dominated the research strategy employed. Majority of samples were nonprobability, slightly over half of the authors provided statements limiting generalizability of their findings, use of incentives was routinely not reported, and a little over a third used UGs as participants. Of researchers using UGs, consumer behavior was the most frequent topic, UGs were justified as participants, and when both UGs and nonstudents were included as participants, comparisons in responses were typically not made.

Articles included were limited to those published in three journals.

Author/reviewer guidelines should suggest providing: an appropriate rationale for UG use; descriptive population statistics; statements limiting generalization; information describing the sampling technique; and information on the use of incentives. Also when authors have UGs and nonstudent adults as participants it would be useful to analyze for significant differences between the two groups.

First investigation of use of UGs as participants in clothing/fashion research.

This study purposely re‐examine the mortgage–finance nexus in Africa.

This study adopted a panel data set spanning over the period 1995–2017 by using system generalized method of moments (GMM) dynamic pooled estimator developed by Arellano and Bond (1991) and Arellano and Bover (1995) involving 51 African countries.

The findings discovered that financial development (bank asset) affects mortgage development positively and this effect is highly significant while broad money supply as a measure of financial development impedes mortgage development in Africa. Furthermore, with the introduction of the quadratic term, broad money supply established a U-shaped relationship with mortgage financing indicating that more money in circulation facilitates mortgage development in Africa. However, the shape of the other variables depends largely on the nature of proxy used.

This study is unique in many aspects. First, examining the extant literature on the financial development and mortgage financing nexus, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no study is cited at the African level with this relationship. Secondly is the empirical model, as it used the system GMM dynamic pooled estimator developed by Arellano and Bond (1991) and Arellano and Bover (1995) to establish whether there is any effect of finance–mortgage nexus.

This is the third of a series of studies on Chinese brand naming using content analysis from a linguistic perspective. The first study generalized the principles guiding Chinese brands in terms of syllable pattern, tone pattern, compounding structure and semantic preference. The second looked at specific branding rules, focusing on two entirely different products: cosmetic products and bicycles. The present study, following the same linguistic framework of analysis, analyzes three groups of closely related products: spirits, beers, soft drinks, to see how these brands are creatively and distinctively constructed. Finds that the brand naming patterns of the three drinks are basically in agreement with the general Chinese branding principles, and the differences among them directly reflect the development, the consumer markets and characteristics of each product.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the nature of qualitative construction partnering research.

In total, 20 qualitative peer-reviewed papers about construction partnering research are reviewed.

The results show four methodological gaps. All identified gaps have in common that specific time and place dependent details that may have influenced understanding of studied individuals are underexposed.

The main limitation of this study is that empirical-based papers are divided into either qualitative or quantitative research, but the boundary between those categories is not as black and white as it may look like in first instance.

The identified gaps are translated to recommendations for further study. This will help the reader to become more aware of the difficulties and decisions encountered by the researcher, and in that way the reader is more aware and gains more understanding of the context-related character of the study. Applying the recommendations will lead to different conclusions and recommendations to improve construction partnering in working practice.

More focus on local time- and place-dependent factors of the studied individuals as well as the process of studying it, inevitably leads to encountering (and becoming more aware of) personal, subjective and unexplainable decisions and behavior. Describing and analyzing these personal, subjective and unexplainable points in the research process will improve the quality of the research.

This study contributes to the further development of academic research on this topic and increase effectiveness of partnering in the construction sector.