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In North Korea, illicit activities directly or implicitly supported by the North Korean Government are an integral part of the nation’s survival strategies. This study aims to discuss how North Korea directs its national power and resources to facilitate narcotics trafficking activities and how the role of North Korean State in the narcotics trafficking network has changed over time since the 1970s.

Analysis of narcotics trafficking in North Korea has primarily involved a review of secondary data, including previous academic research in this field, news articles, circumstantial and forensic evidence, seizure data and defector testimony.

This paper argues that prior to 2000, North Korea was systematically and directly engaged in narcotics production and distribution. The nation state could be regarded as a form of “criminal sovereignty”, because the sovereign state is itself criminal. However, in the post-2000s, North Korea’s Government began to gradually withdraw from narcotics trafficking, creating space for various non-state actors – such as criminal syndicates, private traders and local officials – to enter the once-monopolistic network. De-centralisation of narcotics trafficking network in North Korea suggests that the state’s criminal sovereignty may be gradually eroding and the pattern of state criminalisation in North Korea may be transforming.

This paper draws on theories concerning state criminalisation to understand the changing dynamics of narcotics trafficking network in North Korea.

To stimulate the financial sector further, the Malaysian government has established an International Offshore Financial Centre (IOFC) on the island of Labuan. The setting‐up of the IOFC provides new challenges for the enforcement community. Recent financial scandals involving offshore financial centres have highlighted the need to protect the IOFC from crimes and financial abuses and at the same time to ensure confidentiality is adhered to. In the paper, the Malaysian Offshore Banking Act 1990 is examined. The Offshore Banking Act, under certain conditions, allows a public officer to gain access to banking information. Stringent entry requirements are applied to banks and businesses but the bottom line is that bankers are expected to exercise responsible banking and a high standard of prudence.

The article aims to rely on the global wealth chains theory to study the effect of tax amnesty on anti-money laundering (AML) in Bangladesh. This theory is an analytical framework intended to identify how wealth is repackaged and disguised to move it out of spheres of state oversight, regulation and taxation. It introduces the law on AML in Bangladesh, pointing out the revised Financial Action Task Force (FATF) recommendation that has expanded the scope of money laundering predicate offences to cover both indirect and direct tax crimes and smuggling in relation to customs and excise duties and taxes.

Interviews in Bangladesh and desk research.

There are some gaps in the scope of the offence, the coverage of predicate offences and the types of property covered by the money laundering offence. There is also an absence of financial penalties available to effectively sanction legal persons. The current money laundering offences are derived from the ordinance issued in 2008 by the caretaker government (2006-2008). The current act contains detailed definitions of money laundering and property and a list of predicate offences and sanctions for the offence. However, there are some gaps in the physical elements of the offence, and the range of its predicate offences remains too narrow. Adding tax evasion to its list of predicate offences will, given the history of money laundering in Bangladesh, aid in combating illegal transfer of assets abroad and recovery of the same and abolish tax amnesty.

There is no paper that has analysed the linkages between money laundering and taxation in developing countries, especially Bangladesh.

This study aims to examine how project managers' leadership styles and subordinates' organisational commitment correlates with leadership outcomes and work performance of subordinates on construction projects. It provides significant value for both practitioners and academics. On the practical side, it seeks to inform project managers that they can adapt their leadership behaviours in order to enhance subordinates' organizational commitment, improve work performance, and consequently increase a positive working atmosphere. Academically, the study aims to provide additional insights into the leadership field by contributing to the future development of this study area.

Leadership styles and leadership outcomes were measured using Bass and Avolio's multifactor leadership questionnaire (MLQ). Porter et al.'s organizational commitment questionnaire (OCQ) was used to measure organizational commitment of subordinates. A total of 156 respondents (project managers, engineers and architects) working in construction projects in Thailand participated in the study.

The transformational leadership style has a positive association with work performance and organizational commitment of subordinates more than the transactional style. Transformational leaders produce higher leadership outcomes as well.

By applying the results in practice, project managers can adjust their leadership behaviours to support subordinates in producing high work performance and increasing leadership outcomes, whereas the human resource management function of construction companies can also utilize these results for the leadership development effort in their organization.

This paper is the first attempt to understand the influence of transformational, transactional and laissez‐faire leadership factors on leadership outcomes and work performance from subordinates in the construction industry in Thailand.

To meet the rapidly increasing demand for medical treatment during the outbreak of COVID-19, Huoshengshan and Leishenshan Hospital are rapidly built (9–12 days) in Wuhan. These two urgent emergency projects are unprecedented. In general, substantial literature suggests that the possibility of shortening a schedule by more than a quarter of its original duration is implausible. By contrast, the two projects had successfully compressed the schedules from months and years to about ten days. This study aims to investigate how this was done and provide references for future projects.

The study uses qualitative case study techniques to analyze the project practices in two urgent emergency projects. Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews and archival research. During interviews, interviewees were asked to describe the project practices adopted to overcome the challenges and freely share their experiences and knowledge.

The results illustrate that a high degree of schedule compression is achievable through tactful crashing, substitution and overlapping applications. The successful practices heavily rely on the high capacity of participants and necessary organization, management and technology innovations, such as three-level matrix organizational structure, reverse design method, site partition, mock-up room first strategies and prefabricated construction technology. For instance, the reverse design method is one of the most significant innovations to project simplification and accelerate and worthy of promotion for future emergency projects.

The empirical findings are significant as they evoke new thinking and direction for addressing the main challenges of sharp schedule compression and provide valuable references for future emergency projects, including selecting high-capacity contractors and replacing the conventional design methods with reverse design.

Substantial studies indicate that the maximum degree of schedule compression is highly unlikely to exceed 25%, but this study suggests that sharp compression is possible. Although with flaws in its beauty (i.e. compressing schedule at the expense of construction cost and quality), it is also a breakthrough. It provides the building block for future research in this fertile and unexplored area.

The purpose of the paper is to explore the influence of a total quality management (TQM) programme on the level of focus in project management practices.

Prior literature was used to develop a construct indicating the degree of focus on customers, time/cost/quality (iron/golden triangle) and other stakeholders. A questionnaire was mailed to a random selection of UK organizations to obtain data on the degree of focus and on whether a TQM programme existed.

The results from an analysis of completed questionnaires show that those in organizations with a TQM programme in place are more customer‐focused in their project management practices than those in organizations with no TQM programme. No such relationship was found between the level of iron/golden triangle and other stakeholder focus and a TQM programme.

Given the exploratory nature of the research reported in this paper there is the opportunity for further work on larger populations to confirm the generalizability of the findings. Also, this research has highlighted an association between the level of focus of project management practice and the existence of a TQM programme, and this requires further investigation in terms of confirming suggested cause and effect relationships.

The existence of a link between a TQM programme and customer‐focused project management practice provides a potential route for those looking to improve project performance through placing a greater emphasis on satisfying the customer. The absence of a link between TQM and a focus on other stakeholders suggest that the elements of TQM that facilitate an increase in customer‐focus are not able to overcome the barriers to high levels of stakeholder‐focus on project management practice.

The exploratory research in this paper focuses on the link between TQM and an area of operational practices, namely, project management‐related, that has received limited attention in prior studies.

The main subject of the article is continuous performance improvement (CPI). More specifically, the author seeks to understand the most important management challenges under that heading. An extensive empirical study determines companies' most important continuous performance improvement roots.

The study was conducted from January to September 2008. The author conducted 48 interviews with senior executives of well‐known global companies. The companies cover a wide range of industries.

Three categories of performance roots are undeniably the chief variables of company and management effectiveness: leadership, business models, and people, i.e. the “golden triangle” of continuous performance improvement. CPI at world‐class levels will only occur if all of these levers are focused upon on an ongoing basis.

The study is embedded in qualitative research, i.e. mainly open‐ended interviews.

Continuous performance improvement means constantly searching for a “better practice”, implementing that practice, and then searching for another “better practice”. Without the emphasis on continuous improvement, one‐time gains are unlikely to lead to further improvements. The competitive squeeze provides the main rationale for executives to build a continuous performance improvement mindset. In doing so, they preserve margins and vitality. A continuous performance improvement approach must be developed that minimizes both perceived and actual risk while ensuring that the benefits from the changes are captured quickly.

Each industry faces a regular, predictable and persistent erosion of competitive positions as a result of competitive pressure, technological progress and changes in industry dynamics. While the dynamics of industries are not easy to understand, the real challenge is how to build a continuous performance improvement mindset and how to roll it out at a pace that will be sufficiently fast to stay ahead of the pack. This article is about the main components of a continuous performance improvement approach (the golden triangle of CPI).

In a current trend of a growing amount of short city trips, it becomes crucial to understand how local residents perceive the presence of tourists and tourism in their cities and how their socio-cultural context influences those perceptions. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to this understanding which will enable the city planners to take actions to create the well-balanced and resilient communities in which the needs of residents and tourists are equally met.

To understand residents’ perceptions’ about tourism in Bruges, this research applied photo-elicitation interviews with 28 residents who lived in various locations in the historical center to understand socio-cultural background of residents, their tourism-related concerns and whether they are in line with what is commonly perceived as problematic in Bruges.

Results show that as long as residents can benefit from tourism and tourism-related infrastructure, they support tourism. On the other hand, tourism decreases the liveability of the historical center due to supersession of infrastructure serving the residents by tourist-oriented amenities.

To build a sustainable and resilient city in the future, the authorities of Bruges should cease further “museumification” of the historical city by breaking the hegemony of tourism industry, providing affordable housing and rethinking the concentration model of tourism.

The photo-elicitation method proved to produce rich content and good-quality data by stimulating respondents’ memories and evoking experiences and emotions. Thus, this paper recommends that future research about residents’ attitudes is developed around visual methods as they give voice to the residents and are able to uncover issues which are difficult to capture with other methods.

This paper aims to empirically investigate the relationship between service quality (SQ) in heritage tourism, destination attachment (DA), and electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) intention.

This study followed cross-sectional survey-based research design and surveyed 327 foreign tourists visiting the Golden Triangle, a heritage tourist circuit in India through mall interception method. The data were analysed using structural equation modelling.

The results reveal that heritage SQ has a significant positive effect on DA and eWOM intention and DA has a significant positive effect on eWOM intention.

The research findings make the theoretical and practical contribution in the domain, focussing explicitly on heritage tourism, in which such relation has not been studied yet, in sense of the foreign tourists.

Concentrates on the ways in which the changes in property market conditions which are currently affecting primarily the Paris sub‐markets of the Golden Triangle and La Défense have begun to put pressure on the traditional methods of financing property in France. Discusses the current market conditions and ways in which these changing investment attitudes will inevitably lead French property companies to adjust both the development phase of projects and also their refinancing. Concludes that new financing techniques imported both form the UK and USA may be needed to alleviate some of the problems.