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The successful implementation of hospital projects (HPs) tends to confront sundry challenges in the planning and construction (P&C) phases due to their complexity and particularity. Employing key performance indicators (KPIs) facilitates the monitoring of HPs to advance their successful delivery. This study aims to comprehensively investigate the KPIs for hospital planning and construction (HPC).

The KPIs for HPC were identified through a systematic review. Then a comprehensive assessment of these KPIs was performed utilizing a meta-analysis method. In this process, basic statistical analysis, subgroup analysis, sensitive analysis and publication bias analysis were performed.

Results indicate that all 27 KPIs identified from the literature are significant for executing HPs in P&C phases. Also, some unconventional performance indicators are crucial for implementing HPs, such as “Project monitoring effectiveness” and “Industry innovation and synergy,” as their high significance is reflected in this study. Despite the fact that the findings of meta-analysis are more trustworthy than those of individual studies, a high heterogeneity still exists in the findings. It highlights the inherent uncertainty in the construction industry. Hence, this study applied subgroup analysis to explore the underlying factors causing the high level of heterogeneity and used sensitive analysis to assess the robustness of the findings.

There is no consensus among the prior studies on KPIs for HPC specifically and their degree of significance. Additionally, few reviews in this field have focused on the reliability of the results. This study comprehensively assesses the KPIs for HPC and explores the variability and robustness of the results, which provides a multi-dimensional perspective for practitioners and the research community to investigate the performance of HPs during the P&C stages.

Mental health problems are a grave concern in construction. Although the distinction between high job demands and low job resources, as reflected in the Job Demands-Resources (JD–R) model, has been used to examine the extent to which psychosocial hazards influence mental health for construction practitioners, limited research has reflected on the nature of these psychosocial hazards by exploring experiences of site-based construction practitioners.

This study adopted a phenomenological approach to examine people’ experiences and thoughts of the complex phenomena of psychosocial hazards and mental health in construction. In total, 33 semi-structured interviews were undertaken with site-based construction practitioners in Australia to unveil construction-focused psychosocial hazards and their effects on mental health. The data were analysed via content analysis, employing an interpretation-focused coding strategy to code text and an individual-based sorting strategy to cluster codes.

Eighteen psychosocial hazards were identified based on the JD–R model. Six of these represented a new contribution, describing salient characteristics inherent to the construction context (i.e. safety concerns, exposure to traumatic events, job insecurity, task interdependency, client demand and contract pressure). Of particular importance, a number of interrelationships among psychosocial hazards emerged.

The significance of this qualitative research lies in elucidating psychosocial hazards and their complex interrelatedness in the context of the mental health of construction practitioners, enriching the understanding of this central health and safety issue in the high-risk setting of construction work. The findings contribute to addressing mental health issues in the Australian construction industry by identifying higher order control measures, thereby creating a mentally healthy workplace.

Entrepreneurial Ecosystems (EES) is among the fastest growing entrepreneurship research topics. With even greater vigour, the non-scientific world of economic development agencies, administrations and policymakers has adopted the construct and applies it widely “in the field”, often lacking a solid empirical foundation and pursuing sub-optimal approaches. Improving policy instruments for EES development requires a data driven approach to first understand an EES of a specific region before making any attempts to change it. The paper showcases an empirical approach to create empirically rooted EES policy implications, contributing to closing the gap for insight in regional EES data of sub-national regions.

Exploring a mixed method design, utilising quantitative Global Entrepreneurship Monitor data and combining it with EES stakeholder interviews, focusing on dysfunctions, redundancies, power asymmetries and cut off elements as well as in-layer division and public organisation behaviour.

One finding is, that regional economic development agencies (EDA), as a main public instrument to foster regional entrepreneurial activity, seem to bring the potential of a negative impact on Entrepreneurial Ecosystems bottom-up development and the ability to become self-sustained if they assume the role of competitors towards private organisations and businesses.

As other work on EES, the approach used in this paper only sub-optimally covers temporal system dynamics.

This paper contributes to future EES support policies being rooted in an empirical foundation.

This paper not only progresses the empirical basis for research on regional EES but also lays the foundation for specific policy implications for a sub-national level entrepreneurial ecosystem.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and explain the role of individual learning and development in acquiring tacit knowledge in the context of the inexorable and intense continuous change (technological and otherwise) that characterizes our society today, and also to investigate the software (SW) sector, which is at the core of contemporary continuous change and is a paradigm of effective and intrinsic knowledge sharing (KS). This makes the SW sector unique and different from others where KS is so hard to implement.

The study employed an inductive qualitative approach based on a multi-case study approach, composed of three successful SW companies in China. These companies are representative of the fabric of the sector, namely a small- and medium-sized enterprise, a large private company and a large state-owned enterprise. The fieldwork included 44 participants who were interviewed using a semi-structured script. The interview data were coded and interpreted following the Straussian grounded theory pattern of open coding, axial coding and selective coding. The process of interviewing was stopped when theoretical saturation was achieved after a careful process of theoretical sampling.

The findings of this research suggest that individual learning and development are deemed to be the fundamental feature for professional success and survival in the continuously changing environment of the SW industry today. However, individual learning was described by the participants as much more than a mere individual process. It involves a collective and participatory effort within the organization and the sector as a whole, and a KS process that transcends organizational, cultural and national borders. Individuals in particular are mostly motivated by the pressing need to face and adapt to the dynamic and changeable environments of today’s digital society that is led by the sector. Software practitioners are continuously in need of learning, refreshing and accumulating tacit knowledge, partly because it is required by their companies, but also due to a sound awareness of continuous technical and technological changes that seem only to increase with the advances of information technology. This led to a clear theoretical understanding that the continuous change that faces the sector has led to individual acquisition of culture and somatic knowledge that in turn lay the foundation for not only the awareness of the need for continuous individual professional development but also for the creation of habitus related to KS and continuous learning.

The study reported in this paper shows that there is a theoretical link between the existence of conducive organizational and sector-wide somatic and cultural knowledge, and the success of KS practices that lead to individual learning and development. Therefore, the theory proposed suggests that somatic and cultural knowledge are crucial drivers for the creation of habitus of individual tacit knowledge acquisition. The paper further proposes a habitus-driven individual development (HDID) Theoretical Model that can be of use to both academics and practitioners interested in fostering and developing processes of KS and individual development in knowledge-intensive organizations.

This paper aims to identify the learning benefits and the challenges of Web 2.0 educational activities when applied in typical learning settings and as perceived by pioneer educators with extensive Web 2.0 experience.

The testimonies of 26 Greek primary and secondary education teachers were collected. All teachers had an extensive involvement with Web 2.0 in their classrooms. The interviews were semi-structured and focused on personal case studies, students' views of Web 2.0, problems and prerequisites and educational opportunities of Web 2.0.

The teachers indicated that Web 2.0 learning activities promote the learner to the center of the learning process, open the schools’ doors to society and help students learn how to cooperate and create digital content, while enabling them to reflect more on their thoughts, extend the time-space of the educational dialogue and promote trust between students and teachers. The participants had also to cope with challenges which concerned their colleagues’ attitude and the educational environment, the parents’ attitude, the amount of time and effort required, the unpredictable character of the activities, the limitations imposed by the curriculum, the overestimation of students’ skills and the lack of training opportunities.

The findings can be transformed to a set of critical guidelines for policy makers and for educating the educators.

The set of findings are derived from teachers with a long-term, intensive, daily practice with Web 2.0 and offer an holistic systematic view of problems and opportunities.

The purpose of this study is to provide an in-depth understanding of the B2B customers’ perspective regarding salespeople’s social media use.

The study adopts a qualitative approach based on semi-structured interviews with 26 key informants performing their job in customer role in various industries.

The authors inductively identify five themes regarding the B2B customers’ perspective of social media use in B2B selling. These themes allow for valuable implications for social selling activities and expected outcomes.

Against a growing body of literature on drivers, best practices and outcomes of social media use by B2B salespeople, less attention has been paid to the customer’s side. The authors extend current research by providing a more complete picture of social selling activities and expected outcomes.

The purpose of this chapter was to investigate consumer perceptions of retail agglomeration (RA) characteristics in Zagreb region. Perceived RA characteristics were compared between two major types of RA: Planned retail agglomerations (PRA) and Evolved retail agglomerations (ERA).

Data were collected with consumer survey and analyzed using descriptive statistics, exploratory factor analysis and analysis of variance (ANOVA).

Findings indicate that four factors of RA characteristics can be identified: convenience, accessibility, atmosphere, and image. The shoppers’ ratings indicate the strength and weaknesses of RA, and also the dominant position of PRA as compared to evolved RA.

Results show that there were significant differences in shoppers’ perceptions between Planned and evolved RA in Zagreb region. Shoppers evaluated PRA better than ERA on all four factors. Convenience and atmosphere are the best-rated PRA characteristics. Managerial implications are discussed in the study.

Sustainable economic growth is a major policy target of many governments over the world; Hong Kong also has no exception after its sovereignty handover on 1^st July 1997. Hong Kong has also been inertly receiving more than one hundred Chinese immigrants every day for several decades which mainly serves the purpose of family reunion through One-way Permit scheme. There exists a public voice in relation to Chinese immigrants' intentions of migrating to Hong Kong; some people argued Chinese immigrants are not simply aimed to reunifying their family but purposely grasping public resources of Hong Kong; public resources include public healthcare benefits and subsidized public housing; such hidden motivation and immigrants' economic contribution are not theoretically mutually exclusive. This chapter summarizes literature in relation to various concerns about immigrants' contribution towards economic growth, also consolidates immigrants' survey results which regularly conducted by Hong Kong Home Affairs Department and Immigration Department, and utilized Hong Kong census and by-census datasets to empirically compare the return rates of schooling and work experience between Chinese immigrants and natives over the past forty years, and investigate the causality between Hong Kong economic growth rates and these two return rates.

We use OECD-PIAAC data to estimate the earnings effects of both years of education and of numerical skills. Our identification strategy exploits differential exposure to educational reforms across birth cohorts and countries. We find that education has the strongest earnings effect. A one standard deviation increase in years of education raises earnings by almost 22 percentage points (corresponding to a return to education above 7 percentage points), which compares with a lower percentage points return to an equivalent increase in numerical skills. Our results suggest that the same set of unobservables drives the accumulation of both formal years of education and numeracy skills. OLS estimates underestimate returns to human capital, consistently with the idea that educational reforms favor the human capital acquisition of abler children from disadvantaged parental backgrounds. When we consider numerical skills alone education reforms cannot identify any significant effect of skills on wages, however, when we jointly consider schooling and skills as endogenous factors in a recursive structure we find a significant role for skills in determining wages.

This work examines the returns to education for workers who pursue additional education after time out of the labor force. It compares those who remain in the labor force during additional education with those who drop out of the labor force during additional education. It compares two cohorts of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY).

This work utilizes a difference equation to estimate the returns to education for workers who pursue additional education after time spent out of school and in the labor force.

The results indicate a sheepskin return of approximately 14% for those who remain in the labor force and a return of approximately 9% to years of additional education for those who drop out of the labor force. This contrasting pattern of returns is robust to sample selection correction and a variety of checks.

This work does not fully account for all threats to causation. Further research could pursue these and make use of data from more clearly defined periods of education.

This work finds key differences between the internal labor market faced by those remaining in the labor force and the external labor market faced by those dropping out of the labor force. A policy focused on re-training workers should account for these differences.

This is the first work to compare workers who pursue additional education while remaining in the labor force to workers who pursue additional education and drop out of the labor force.