Search results

Because BIM adoption is still afflicted by various types of hurdles, a complete BIM implementation model is required to provide the necessary methods for driving BIM adoption. As a result, this study looked into the parts of the BIM implementation model that had the most impact on increasing the percentage of BIM adoption in South Africa.

This study developed a four-wheel model of BIM implementation based on implementation process theory, which includes BIM inspiration, BIM capacity development, BIM use and BIM commitment. To assess BIM capacity development, two sub-constructs (BIM learning process and BIM learning methodologies) were used. Two sub-constructs were used to assess BIM utilisation (efficient BIM application and effective BIM application). The sub-constructs employed to quantify BIM motivation were organisational competitiveness, societal conformity and contractual obligations. Incentives, investments and obligations were used to assess BIM commitment. The model was validated using four assumptions and maximum likelihood estimation – structural equation modelling (MLE-SEM).

The MLE-SEM results demonstrated unequivocally that all of the constructions are critical components of the BIM deployment paradigm in the South African construction industry. BIM motivation, as characterised by organisational competitiveness and social compliance, has the greatest impact. The findings on BIM motivation also revealed that the desire for technological sophistication, competitiveness and social acceptance by clients are encouraging construction organisations and professionals to embrace BIM adoption.

This study's findings have contributed to the increasing body of literature on BIM deployment. The study has significant implications for achieving BIM implementation in underdeveloped nations where BIM deployment is either non-existent or in its early stages. The theoretical component of the study serves as the foundation for further analysis of BIM deployment.

This research is important for identifying BIM goals, developing a BIM implementation framework, allocating resources for BIM implementation and defining key performance indicators for BIM implementation. The BIM implementation aspects outlined in this study will be effective in lowering BIM adoption hurdles.

This study makes a unique contribution to BIM research by providing theoretical and empirical analysis into the elements of the BIM implementation model in a developing country. The study offers an excellent opportunity to further our understanding of BIM application in underdeveloped nations.

This study, using a contingent valuation approach, aims to shed light on the economic evaluation of online learning during the first wave of the pandemic.

A sample of 959 higher education students was asked about their willingness-to-accept (WTA) a monetary compensation for the loss of well-being resulting from the unexpected and mandatory transition to the online space. In explaining WTA determinants, the authors test the appropriateness of the double-hurdle model against the alternative of a Tobit model and find that the factors affecting the participation decision are not the same as those that affect the quantity decision.

Results show that a vast majority of the respondents think that the abrupt transition to online learning is detrimental to them, while those willing to accept a monetary compensation account for 77% of the sample, being the mean WTA between €448 and €595. As expected, WTA decreases with income and age, and it increases if some member of the family unit is unemployed. By aggregating the mean WTA by the population affected, total loss of well-being is obtained.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, to date, this method has not been used to value online learning in a WTA framework, much less in the particular context of the pandemic. Thus, based on the understanding that the economic evaluation of online learning could be very useful in providing guidance for decision-making, this paper contributes to the literature on the economic evaluation of higher education.

Pakistan has marvellous growth and development capacity, and entrepreneurial small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) play a key role in its development. As it is believed that entrepreneurial SMEs make an important contribution to the economy by providing employment and soaring production capacity, the purpose of this study is to investigate the hurdles that affect their performance.

A questionnaire-based survey was used to collect data from 225 entrepreneurial SMEs owners and managers in the southern region of Pakistan. Statistical analysis in SPSS was conducted to determine the barriers that limit the growth and development of SMEs.

The findings show that factors affecting entrepreneurial SMEs’ performance in Pakistan are lack of finance and infrastructure as well as economic barriers, corruption and management issues. These obstacles are positively and significantly associated with entrepreneurial SMEs’ failure.

This study’s significance lies in its identification of the barriers that affect the performance of entrepreneurial SMEs in Pakistan. The author also suggests how policymakers can devise better policies for SME growth.

The awarding of terminals to private operators is considered a prime task of landlord port authorities. Yet, terminal concessions in seaports have only recently gained interest in academic circles. The awarding process poses a complex set of managerial challenges to port authorities, one of the key issues being the determination of the duration of the concession.

Despite the importance of the duration of terminal concessions in seaports, the issue has not received much attention in academic circles. Factors impacting on the duration of contracts, leases or concessions have, however, been studied extensively in other research areas, such as agriculture, coal contracts, franchising and natural gas. This paper uses insights from these academic studies to obtain a better understanding of the impact of concession duration on the stakeholders involved and relates them to empirical evidence on concession length in European seaports. The paper then proposes a classification scheme for the exogenous determination of concession duration, based on techniques developed for Public-Private-Partnerships in large infrastructure projects. In the last section the paper discusses the importance of concession durations to various stakeholders in seaports and illustrates these principles using a case study.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between leadership and business model innovation (BMI) in an entrepreneurial firm. From the literature, it was found that the role of a leader in BMI was unexplored. A research framework was created which was the replication of the model created showing the relationship between leadership and innovation.

The qualitative single in-depth case study was used to understand the effects of leadership in BMI. The case of an entrepreneurial firm in the graphic and animation education sector from India was chosen to test the research framework. The leader of Xplora Design Skools was observed closely, and he was interviewed multiple times.

From the analysis, it was clear that, in this organization, the leader was a trigger for BMI through creating and influencing creativity and innovation in the organization. This case also shows that he was making tangible contribution to the work being done and motivating his employees. These initiatives show his influence on the process or execution of BMI.

This is the first study explores the role of a leader in BMI in an entrepreneurial firm in emerging economy contexts like India.

Both the academic literature and practitioners have long noted the need for an equity investment mechanism for worker-controlled firms that alleviates investor anxieties without undermining internal workplace democracy. The purpose of this paper is to outline one such possible mechanism.

The proposal locks together the interests of workers and external investors, via non-voting shares with dividends set by a pre-agreed value-added sharing formula. Each worker is paid a base wage, with the average across the firm being a pre-defined multiple of the national minimum wage. Any additional surplus is split into a number of equal “slices”, with each share receiving one slice as its dividend, and the average worker receiving a pre-agreed number of slices as a bonus.

Workers have an incentive to maximise their own incomes, and in so doing, will also automatically maximise the dividends received by investors, obviating the need for the shares to have normal voting rights. Working on this principle of aligned interests, the authors also discuss reinvestment, worker ownership of non-voting shares and possibilities for a secondary share market. The authors show how this proposal will be a significant step in aligning the interests of investors with owner-workers in a democratic, negotiated way that shares both risk and returns, thus making worker-controlled firms more attractive to equity investment.

In light of the recognised problem of underinvestment in worker-controlled firms and the risk of their degeneration, this paper will interest both academics and practitioners in employee ownership, co-operatives and various forms of workplace democracy.

Advances in Big Data, artificial Intelligence and data-driven innovation bring enormous benefits for the overall society and for different sectors. By contrast, their misuse can lead to data workflows bypassing the intent of privacy and data protection law, as well as of ethical mandates. It may be referred to as the ‘creep factor’ of Big Data, and needs to be tackled right away, especially considering that we are moving towards the ‘datafication’ of society, where devices to capture, collect, store and process data are becoming ever-cheaper and faster, whilst the computational power is continuously increasing. If using Big Data in truly anonymisable ways, within an ethically sound and societally focussed framework, is capable of acting as an enabler of sustainable development, using Big Data outside such a framework poses a number of threats, potential hurdles and multiple ethical challenges. Some examples are the impact on privacy caused by new surveillance tools and data gathering techniques, including also group privacy, high-tech profiling, automated decision making and discriminatory practices. In our society, everything can be given a score and critical life changing opportunities are increasingly determined by such scoring systems, often obtained through secret predictive algorithms applied to data to determine who has value. It is therefore essential to guarantee the fairness and accurateness of such scoring systems and that the decisions relying upon them are realised in a legal and ethical manner, avoiding the risk of stigmatisation capable of affecting individuals’ opportunities. Likewise, it is necessary to prevent the so-called ‘social cooling’. This represents the long-term negative side effects of the data-driven innovation, in particular of such scoring systems and of the reputation economy. It is reflected in terms, for instance, of self-censorship, risk-aversion and lack of exercise of free speech generated by increasingly intrusive Big Data practices lacking an ethical foundation. Another key ethics dimension pertains to human-data interaction in Internet of Things (IoT) environments, which is increasing the volume of data collected, the speed of the process and the variety of data sources. It is urgent to further investigate aspects like the ‘ownership’ of data and other hurdles, especially considering that the regulatory landscape is developing at a much slower pace than IoT and the evolution of Big Data technologies. These are only some examples of the issues and consequences that Big Data raise, which require adequate measures in response to the ‘data trust deficit’, moving not towards the prohibition of the collection of data but rather towards the identification and prohibition of their misuse and unfair behaviours and treatments, once government and companies have such data. At the same time, the debate should further investigate ‘data altruism’, deepening how the increasing amounts of data in our society can be concretely used for public good and the best implementation modalities.

This study is an analysis that aims to understand the rationale behind the concept of value creation contained in the integrated reporting (IR) framework. As such, the authors examined the quality of the disclosures made in integrated reports by measuring the level to which the six capitals (6Cs) have been integrated into disclosures on value creation.

The IR framework’s value creation model focuses on six content elements and three guiding principles. Hence, the present analysis combines content analysis with quantitative measures in the form of a bespoke Integrated Disclosure Index. The index measures the level of integration found in the disclosures instead of the mere presence or absence of mentioned capitals, content elements and guiding principles in isolation. The present sample comprised the 2016 integrated/sustainability reports for 184 listed companies sourced from the Integrated Reporting Examples Database.

The 6Cs are well disclosed in form but only partially disclosed in substance. Further, overall levels of integration between the capitals, the content elements and the guiding principles are higher than average. Disclosures on materiality, business models and stakeholder relationships are somewhat lacking, as are the related medium- and long-term disclosures on outlook.

The paper contributes to the academic debate on IR by building a case for holistically assessing the substance of integrated reports. Considering that the IR value creation model can underpin and align with the 17 UN sustainable development goals, the authors show how the fundamental concept of the 6Cs sustaining value creation is understood and implemented differently across the various elements and principles of the IR framework.

This research also provides guidance for overcoming some of the practical hurdles associated with assessing the quality of reports because the authors provide tools for spotlighting the substance of disclosures over their form.

This paper delves into the substance of integrated reports by assessing how well the 6Cs have been integrated into disclosures on the content elements and guiding principles of the IR framework. In contrast to previous IR research that has mainly analysed capital, elements and principles in isolation, the authors develop an index assessing the integration of these three fundamental concepts of IR.

A better understanding of the processes that shape households’ adaptation decisions is essential for developing pertinent policies locally, thereby enabling better adaptation across scales and multiple stakeholders. This paper aims to examine the determinants of household decisions to adapt, it is also possible to target factors that facilitate or constrain adaptation. This helps to identify key components of current adaptive capacity, which leads to important insights into households’ competence to adapt in the future.

This paper takes a full-pledged approach examining factors and processes that shape households’ climate adaptation decision-making in rural Cambodia at three levels: adaptation status, adaptation intensity and choices of adaptation strategy. The three-stage analyses are materialized by applying the double hurdle model and multivariate probit model, which provides a potential way to systematically assess household adaptation decision-making in rural settings.

Results show a high level of involvement in adaptation among local households who are facing multiple stressors including climatic risks. The findings suggest that perceived climate change influence households’ decisions in both adaptation status and intensity. Access to financial credit, farmland size, water availability and physical asset holdings are identified as key factors promoting the adoption of more adaptation measures. To facilitate adaptation, collective effort and support at community level is important in providing knowledge based climate information dissemination and early warning systems. Public sector support and development aid programs should focus on positive triggers for targeted community and household adaptation.

The study, to the authors’ best knowledge, is one of the first studies to investigate the determinants of local adaptation decision-making systematically in Cambodia. It also provides a comprehensive approach to improve understanding of adaptation decision-making processes by exploring how various capital assets are associated with different stages of adaptation decisions. The findings contribute to policy implications enlightening adaptation planning at multi-scales with knowledge of key factors, which enhance local adaptive capacity to reduce climate change vulnerability.

Purpose: This study examines the relationship between gender, nationality, care responsibilities for children, and the psychological work climate of researchers.

Basic Design: Based on a dataset of approximately 2,900 cases, the main effects of gender and nationality, their interaction effect and the interaction effects of gender with care responsibilities for minor children, and with hierarchical position are considered in relation to work climate. Dummy regressions and t-tests were performed to estimate and compare the means and regression parameters of the perceived group climate and the view of leaders as evaluated by researchers. The dataset used was taken from a full survey of employees of the Max Planck Society, which is one of Germany’s largest research organizations with over 80 facilities and institutes in various disciplines and a focus on basic research.

Results: Gender differences concerning the evaluation of the work climate are particularly pronounced among doctoral candidates and researchers who have a non-EU nationality. Gender gaps increasingly level out with each successive career step. Additionally, a main effect of gender and a weak interaction of gender and care responsibility for minor children was supported by the data. A main effect of nationality on work climate ratings was found but could not be meaningfully interpreted.

Interpretation and Relevance: The interaction effect between gender and the position of a researcher can be interpreted as being a product of the filtering mechanism of the research system. With this interpretation, the results of the study can plausibly be explained in the light of previous research that concludes that female researchers face higher career hurdles than male researchers.