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A growing number of foreign consulting firms have been engaged in the Chinese construction market where the supervision system, as a kind of engineering consultant service has been widely implemented. However, the performance of supervision system varies significantly across regions. Therefore, foreign consulting firms are in desperate need of related performance benchmarking statistics to determine the niche market. A major issue is lack of a quantitative method to objectively evaluate regional supervision systems’ performance. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

A new regional construction supervision system benchmarking model was developed via the principal component analysis method. This model is based on key performance indicators drawn from annual official statistics. This list of key indicators was refined by means of a focus group with selected experts. Consequently the performances of all 31 regional supervision systems were calculated and ranked.

Results indicate a general gap between coastal and inland regions. The various development trends of top 10 regions are analyzed and the underlying reasons are explored. Furthermore, the regions deserving more attention or currently lacking in development are identified. The supervision industry in China is shifting from a labor-intensive industry to a knowledge-intensive industry.

The proposed model provides a single quantitative parameter to conveniently benchmark the performance of various regions. The findings are vital for the benchmarking and clarification of future endeavor of the regional supervision systems and for foreign enterprises that are planning to enter the real-estate market in China.

Under the influence of the digital economy, the digital transformation of manufacturing enterprises has attracted widespread attention from scholars at home and abroad due to its uniqueness and importance. However, the existing literature is still deficient in the inner mechanism of digital transformation and lacks research on the digital transformation process. Through in-depth interviews and rooted theory, this paper focuses on the key factors of digital development of manufacturing enterprises and constructs a model of the digital transformation process.

This paper takes China's manufacturing enterprises as research projects. First, through a literature search, the authors proposed three key factors for constructing sustainable competitiveness from digital transformation, that is, core technology innovation, business model re-engineering and organizational structure optimization. Second, the authors adopted the grounded theory approach to identify three sustainable competitive factors of manufacturing enterprises resulting from digital transformation and constructed a theoretical model. Third, based on Chinese manufacturing enterprises data, the authors used an empirical study to validate the three influencing factors. Finally, the authors identified the inner mechanism of the digital transformation of enterprises and put forward suggestions for enterprises to maintain sustainable competitiveness.

First, based on the existing literature, this paper identified the importance of digital transformation of manufacturing enterprises, and the essence of digital transformation of manufacturing companies was found to lie in the change in the combined effect of technological, market and organizational innovation. Second, based on the grounded theory, through in-depth interviews with manufacturing enterprises on digital transformation and open coding of interview transcripts, it was concluded that the key factors for the digital transformation manufacturing companies are core technology change, business model re-engineering and organizational structure optimization. Third, based on a dynamic perspective, the authors evaluated and validated digital transformation. The study found that manufacturing enterprises can improve their digital transformation capabilities through the trajectory of “core technology change – business model re-engineering – organizational structure optimization” to improve their sustainable competitive advantage.

Firstly, this study proposed three key factors for constructing sustainable competitiveness from digital transformation, that is, core technology innovation, business model re-engineering and organizational structure optimization, which enriched the theory of transformation and upgrading. Secondly, this study constructs the structural equation model of digital transformation and discovers the key factors pf digital transformation.

The generation of construction and demolition waste in China is a pressing need to be minimized in order to alleviate the environmental burden. The effectiveness of implementing construction and demolition waste management in this economy, however, is very limited due to various barriers. Therefore, this paper aims to explore the major obstacles to managing construction and demolition waste in China.

The views from Chinese practitioners were collected via a questionnaire survey. The respondents were invited to rate a total of 16 obstacles that hinder the effective implementation of construction and demolition waste management as gleaned from previous literature and six semi‐structured interviews. The results of the questionnaire were analyzed by ranking analysis and factor analysis.

The findings show that “lack of a well‐developed waste recycling market”, “insufficient regulation support” and “waste reduction does not receive sufficient attention in construction design” are perceived as the three barriers of most importance. Furthermore, the 16 obstacles could be grouped into five underlying components including: component 1 – weak awareness and inadequate training, component 2 – insufficient support of the authority, component 3 – economic consideration, component 4 – immature market and component 5 – barriers related to site activity.

Based on the findings, industry practitioners' understandings about the barriers to better performing construction and demolition waste management in China can be deepened. Furthermore, the results also provide useful information for developing strategies to improve the performance of construction and demolition waste management in China.

Major obstacles to improving the performance of construction and demolition waste management in China are identified and analyzed in this study.

Some researchers claim that trust can directly affect knowledge sharing but others consider that it is a mediator between some independent variables and knowledge sharing. So the purpose of this paper is to investigate whether trust is a mediator for knowledge sharing in the construction industry.

Personal construct theory is employed to test the mediation role of trust in architectural design teams. A questionnaire survey of architects is conducted in Beijing, Shanghai and Qingdao, People's Republic of China. The mediator model is tested using structural equation modeling.

The paper shows that the mediation role of trust between two personal construct based factors, i.e. social interaction (SI) and attitude on work (AttonW) and willingness to share knowledge is supported.

As the paper focusses on architects working in the early-design stage of a project, the findings may not be applicable to other stages. In future, other project actors should also be considered so as to investigate the issues in construction management in a more comprehensive way.

The results suggest that team managers should improve the SIs between team members and provide guidance to team members about the correct attitude on work so that the level of interpersonal trust can be enhanced, thereby knowledge sharing is encouraged.

The personal construct theory developed in clinical psychology is applied to study the mediation role of trust for knowledge sharing in the construction industry. The interdisciplinary research offers a theoretical framework to reveal the cognitive process of knowledge sharing.

An important assumption in testing theoretical models is measurement invariance. However, little research in construction project management investigates the issue of measurement invariance. To bridge the gap, the current paper aims at: first, testing trust measurement invariance in project teams across gender; second, delineating various measurement invariance tests and demonstrating them with Amos; and last but not least, increasing researchers' awareness about measurement invariance issue in the construction project management field.

The measurement invariance of trust across gender is investigated using survey data collected from architects in project design teams of A-level architectural design institutes in China. Multisample confirmatory factor analysis is conducted with Amos to test configural invariance, metric invariance, scalar invariance, factor covariance and variance invariance, error variance invariance, latent mean invariance of the Chinese version of McAllister's two-dimension trust scale.

All the test results of the above invariances are supportive. Goodness-of-fit indexes such as CFI deserve more empirical studies to verify.

The results imply that the trust structure of male and female architects is equivalent. In other words, male and female architect data of trust research in construction project management could be aggregated.

It is recommended that test of measurement invariance should be conducted while new measurement scales are under construction.

Since all the invariance tests are rarely conducted within a single study, the current research is the first paper to investigate the measurement invariance issue in the construction industry.

The aim of this paper is to present a comprehensive analysis of risk management in East Asia from 1998 to 2021 by using bibliometric methods and tools to explore research trends, hotspots, and directions for future research.

The data source for this paper is the Web of Science Core Collection, and 7,154 publications and related information have been derived. We use recognized bibliometric indicators to evaluate publications and visually analyze them through scientific mapping tools (VOS Viewer and CiteSpace).

The analysis results show that China is the most productive and influential country/region. East Asia countries have strong cooperation with each other and also have cooperation with other countries. The study shows that risk management has been involved in various fields such as credit, supply chain, health emergency and disaster especially in the background of COVID-19. We also found that machine learning, especially deep learning, has been playing an increasingly important role in risk management due to its excellent performance.

This paper focuses on studying risk management in East Asia, exploring its publication's fundamental information, citation and cooperation networks, hotspots, and research trends. It provides some reference value for scholars who are interested or further research in this field.

As a high-performance engineering plastic, polyimide (PI) is widely used in the aerospace, electronics and automotive industries. This paper aims to review the latest progress in the tribological properties of PI-based composites, especially the effects of nanofiller selection, composite structure design and material modification on the tribological and mechanical properties of PI-matrix composites.

The preparation technology of PI and its composites is introduced and the effects of carbon nanotubes (CNTs), carbon fibers (CFs), graphene and its derivatives on the mechanical and tribological properties of PI-based composites are discussed. The effects of different nanofillers on tensile strength, tensile modulus, coefficient of friction and wear rate of PI-based composites are compared.

CNTs can serve as the strengthening and lubricating phase of PI, whereas CFs can significantly enhance the mechanical properties of the matrix. Two-dimensional graphene and its derivatives have a high modulus of elasticity and self-lubricating properties, making them ideal nanofillers to improve the lubrication performance of PI. In addition, copolymerization can improve the fracture toughness and impact resistance of PI, thereby enhancing its mechanical properties.

The mechanical and tribological properties of PI matrix composites vary depending on the nanofiller. Compared with nanofibers and nanoparticles, layered reinforcements can better improve the friction properties of PI composites. The synergistic effect of different composite fillers will become an important research system in the field of tribology in the future.

A public emission reduction project offers saleable carbon credits to encourage individual residents to participate in activities with low carbon emissions: if the residents participate, they will earn carbon credits that can be sold to polluting firms for carbon offsetting. This study explores the economic and environmental implications of these projects.

The authors develop a multiperiod model to incorporate the decisions of individual residents and a polluting firm. The model captures residents' difference in estimating the price of carbon credits: A proportion of residents are naive residents who shortsightedly take the previous market price of carbon credits as the basis of their decision-making.

A public emission reduction project can improve the cost-efficiency of carbon reduction, increase both the profit of the polluting firm and consumer surplus, but may hurt the welfare of the participating residents. Reducing transaction costs of carbon credits may cause a greater loss to participating residents. As the ratio of naive residents decreases, the overall welfare of participating residents increases and the number of participating residents decreases.

To encourage more residents to reduce carbon emissions, the project should be promoted to new areas (e.g. rural areas) where there are more naive residents. Although reducing transaction costs is an effective way to increase the economic viability of the project, the government should pay attention to protecting the welfare of residents, and educating residents is an effective way to improve their overall welfare.

This paper is the first to reveal the economic and environmental implications of public emission reduction projects.

This study aims to explore the impacts of structural holes (SH) and guanxi and their interaction on the application and integration of tacit knowledge among co-workers in inter-organizational arrangements.

The relationships were examined using a mixed-methods research approach through 305 questionnaires and 50 interviews collected from a university and a pharmaceutical company in China.

SH hinders the application and integration of tacit knowledge, while guanxi promotes these latter. In addition, guanxi moderates the negative impact of SH on tacit knowledge application (TKA) and tacit knowledge integration (TKI).

By developing a framework to identify how co-workers strategically leverage their guanxi and SH to facilitate TKA and TKI, this study identifies the key factors that drive these latter in complex inter-organizational arrangements, contributing to the literature on knowledge management. In addition, the study makes a contribution to the advancement of SH theory by comparing guanxi with other social relationships in terms of their application to SH in different cultures, and recognizing the cultural contingencies that condition the effect of SH on knowledge management performance, thereby generating an important implication for the identification of the different roles that structural-hole owners play in brokerage situations. Finally, by comparing the difference between guanxi and interpersonal relationships in Chinese culture, this study provides a reasonable explanation for guanxi’s moderating effect on SH.

By uncovering the significance of guanxi cultivation with individuals who occupy yet-to-be-filled SH to make them more committed to the network, this study seeks to provide organizational leaders with helpful suggestions for the creation of incentives to fill SH.

By developing a framework to identify how co-workers strategically leverage their guanxi and SH to facilitate TKA and TKI, this study provides a theoretically defensible and empirically supported solution to the problems experienced by co-workers in applying and integrating tacit knowledge effectively in complex inter-organizational arrangements.