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The transition from a product driven to market driven culture has enforced changes in management style in previously nationalised companies. This article examines the background to the phenomenon of privatisation in the United Kingdom and explores current practice. The transition to change over two decades has brought about more demanding and value conscious customers along with a technological revolution in information technology. Corporate culture is seen as the litmus test in shaping changes in performance, and a strong culture is an important factor in unifying the social dimensions of an organisation. Privatisation has seen changes emerge in some companies more dominantly than in others. The principal purpose of this paper is to use this background as a building block to describe the detailed empirical research that has been conducted within three previously nationalised companies. This research is reported in the next issue of this journal.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of service quality toward public satisfaction and public trust on local government in Indonesia.

A quantitative approach was used to achieve the objectives of the study. The study consisted of nine exogenous variables and one endogenous variable. The exogenous variables were delivery, timeliness, information, professionalism, staff attitude, organizational politics, internal roles, external roles and citizen satisfaction, while the endogenous variable was public trust toward the regional government. The samples were taken using two sampling methods, cluster sampling technique and proportional stratified random sampling technique. The cluster sampling was institutional sample in which the researchers selected 2 out of 11 regencies in West Sumatra, and 2 out of 7 cities in West Sumatra. The regencies were Pasaman Barat and Tanah Datar and the cities were Padang Panjang and Padang. In the lower level, there were ten nagari and ten lurah. On the second stage, the sample was selected using the proportional stratified random sampling technique that had been set at the first stage. Slovin formula with 2 percent of errors was used to determine the number of samples. The total respondents in this study were 4,177 respondents.

The hypothetical model can be used as a new model for public service that was provided by the local governments (cities and districts) and it was able to increase citizen satisfaction and citizen trust with local government, especially in the basic need services such as education and health as described in Figure 1. In order to increase public satisfaction on the basic needs, such as education and health services, regional government should improve delivery, timeliness of service, availability of information, staff professionalism, staff attitude, external and internal roles of manager and at the same time minimize organizational politics within the local government. Furthermore, it is also evident in this model that increasing public satisfaction on basic services can increase public confidence toward regional government. The finding that shows the novelty of this research is the internal and external role of managers in improving public satisfaction and trust in regional government. Meanwhile, the addition of internal political as variable is a development to improve the existing models.

Regional government should reconstruct their basic public service in order to meet need of the public. No previous study has comprehensively studied the relationship between interaction quality, physical environmental quality, and outcome quality to public satisfaction and its implication to public trust, especially in Indonesia.

UK companies have to pay the same real interest rates as European and North American companies, but they are in general less profitable so there is less breathing space between profits and interest. Consequences include short‐termism by both the City which is reluctant to lend and companies which are reluctant to borrow when investment is so risky. Another consequence is that UK Boards of Directors are dominated by accountants rather than those who lead production, research and marketing. The real rate of return is best raised by increasing productivity more than wages and by moving up‐market where higher margins can be earned. Industry′s difficulty is that moving up‐market involves R&D which cannot easily be financed when profit rates are only slightly above interest rates. Emphasizes the advantages to industry of low inflation, low government borrowing and a tight control over public expenditure leading to internationally low tax rates.

This study aims to examine how embeddedness influences consultants' information seeking when making decisions within a social network of relationships, and how these social networks evolve throughout the project delivery stages. The study is grounded in social network theory and examines embeddedness from three perspectives: structural (network cohesion), relational (tie strength in terms of friendship and knowledge awareness) and actor prominence.

A social network analysis (SNA) questionnaire was administered to a team of consultants working on a management consultancy project in Shanghai, China. The SNA measures of density, degree centrality and betweenness centrality were used to analyse relationship patterns among project team members, permitting comparison between the networks. Networks were also compared across the three project delivery stages of collect, consider and create.

Structural embeddedness was observed in the active information seeking behaviour among consultancy team members. The moderate network density of the self-organising information seeking networks across the project delivery stages ensures that the team remains connected but avoids information redundancy and overload. Relational embeddedness was evident through the multiplexity of ties among team members with overlapping friendship and information seeking relationships. The knowledge awareness network's sparseness indicates a team of autonomous knowledge workers with distributed expertise. Project managers were the most prominent actors across the three project delivery stages, underlining these actors' relational leadership role.

The study provides a deeper understanding of collaborative decision-making behaviours in dynamic-project environments. Limited attempts have been made to visualise and analyse the relationships involved in small consulting teams. The novelty of the network approach adopted stems from its ability to offer a structural view of the relationship among consultants, thus offering a distinctive and arguably more complete picture of consultancy team dynamics.

The study validates the social network theory of embeddedness in a real-world collaborative decision-making setting and provides a deeper understanding of information seeking behaviours for decision-making in dynamic-project environments. From a project management process viewpoint, the evolving nature of the information seeking network as it changes across the project stages with associated actors' roles was also visualised graphically, offering a distinctive and arguably more complete picture of consultancy team dynamics.

The allocation of risk among project participants is an important determinant of innovation success in construction projects. The purpose of this paper is to examine the capacity of risk allocation to encourage the implementation of environmental innovation, particularly sustainable energy innovation (SEI), within the private finance initiative (PFI) project delivery model.

A four-case qualitative research methodology is adopted within the context of the UK government’s building schools for the future programme.

The findings identify that SEIs are encouraged on the innovative projects by the perceived clarity, appropriateness, and manageability of the risks associated with the project’s energy performance on the PFI contract. The main SEIs were largely developed as strategies to manage long-term energy performance risks allocated to private sector actors and safeguard their long-term commitment to the project. However, the findings indicate that excessive perceived innovation-related risks, particularly capital cost risk, may restrict further SEIs to be implemented.

The qualitative case study approach adopted may limit the generalisability of the findings.

The study and provides practical guidance to policymakers and project managers in developing strategies to support the implementation of SEI in PFI projects.

The study attends to a significant gap in knowledge as there is a lack of conceptual and empirical work on managing innovative processes for sustainable energy in PFI projects.

Non-traditional procurement is thought to offer enhanced benefits over traditional contracts. However, several factors significantly impacting the optimization of the benefits have been suggested. Even though effective communication is ranked high among these factors, not enough empirical insights have been given to the nature of communication performance in non-traditional procurements in construction project delivery. The purpose of this paper is to focus on understanding the taxonomy of communication performance in non-traditional procurements in the South African Construction Industry, given the centrality of communication to team effectiveness, performance, project success and managerial efficiency.

Adopting a deductive research approach, an empirical questionnaire survey was conducted drawing on the practical communication experience of project teams engaged in projects using non-traditional procurement systems.

Using aggregated mean scores and inter-rater agreement index and Mann‒Whitney tests, the results revealed inaccuracies, barriers and procedural challenges as frequently occurring in the interpersonal and organizational communication in the adopted non-traditional procurement systems. Additionally, untimeliness and distorted information were noted to be occurring occasionally, whereas incomplete communication, misunderstood information and gatekeeping rarely occurred. Lastly, protocol-related communication challenges were deemed to have never occurred in their interpersonal and organizational communication in their project delivery. In the assessment of communication performance, the less frequently occurring assessment indicator is a testament to good communication performance, whereas the frequently occurring indicator represents a poor performance in the communication.

This systematic approach toward understanding the taxonomy of the interpersonal and organizational communication performance in non-traditional procurement is very significant toward communication performance improvement in the industry. The insight given by the findings may help construction project practitioners to focus their attention on the necessary aspects of communication in non-traditional procurements to optimize their benefits over traditional procurement models.

The purpose of this paper is to identify how much particular variables influence the cost differences between order values and final accounts for certain trade subcontractors.

The methodology consists of a literature survey and a case study. A sample of 33 projects, undertaken by a contracting organisation, are analysed as a basis for testing their significance.

For highly asset specific transactions the research suggests that the level of variables which can affect their performance is greatest, suggesting integration within the contracting firm to mitigate the threat of opportunistic behaviour. Procurement route utilised on a project was strongly linked to outturn cost performance, as is inclusion in the tender bid, suggesting earlier subcontractor involvement through design and build and partnering arrangements is significantly better at managing subcontractor cost performance than traditional routes.

The market volatility of the construction industry has meant the procurement of subcontractors has long been established as an important part of the project coalition. Transaction cost economic theory has recently become popular within the construction research industry. Much of this research has examined the vertical boundaries to which a construction firm is subjected when considering integration of trades or continued use of subcontractors. Empirical data on the cost performance of subcontractors within a project environment are not widely available. For this reason, this research aids practitioners and researchers by identifying why particular variables influence the cost differences between order values and final accounts for certain trade subcontractors.

Within construction procurement, transaction cost economics offers a mechanism to understand “unseen” costs associated with the pre- and post-contract work. Pre-contract, these include costs related to information gathering and procurement. Post-contract they include activities of contract administration and enforcement. The purpose of this paper is to estimate the magnitude of transaction costs (TCs) for different procurement systems used in construction projects in New Zealand. Specifically estimating the relative values of TCs for Traditional and Design-Build delivery systems for the purpose of comparison.

This study develops a conceptual model for the relationship between procurement systems and TC. The model was operationalized and developed into a questionnaire. A cross-sectional sample approach was deployed, involving pilot and survey questionnaires, and results verification through “real world” cases. Data were sought from construction professionals in management, design and operations (i.e. project managers, architects, engineers, quantity surveyors, and procurement officers). TCs were measured using time-spent conducting procurement-related activities as a surrogate for cost. Professionals evaluate their time-spent in procurement activities using a Likert scale 1-5, comparing the Traditional and Design-Build delivery systems. Data were triangulated with “real world” cases to test and explain the developed model. The test included validity and reliability, path analysis, regression analysis, factor analysis, and structural equation modelling (SEM). The primary analytical technique used was SEM to yield information on goodness-of-fit, model development and comparison, and confirmatory strategies. SPSS Amos 21 statistical software was used for data analysis and model development.

The results suggest that procurement systems have indirect impact on TCs. The relationship between procurement system and TCs is fully mediated by costs of information, procurement, administration, and enforcement. Applying the developed models (the Traditional and Design-Build) to “real world” cases, it was found that TCs in the Traditional system amounts to 18.5 percent of the annual salary cost of a project manager (as an indicator quantum), while in the Design-Build system, it amounts to 14.5 percent of the annual salary cost of a project manager. TCs were calculated using regression equations based on factor loadings in the Traditional and Design-Build models.

This study applies new theoretical model for the link between procurement system and TCs, investigating and empirically demonstrating the influence of procurement system on TCs in construction. It also offers a new plausible explanation for the factors influencing TCs in procurement. The study emphasizes “in-house” TCs from the perspective of the professionals. The findings have practical implications on construction business practice due to their robust empirical nature and theoretical framework, which might enhance the performance of the construction industry.

This study contributes to the procurement selection in construction, by introducing a new conceptual model for the link between procurement system and TCs. It has extended the current practices for procurement selection by estimating TCs for the Traditional and Design-Build systems for comparison.

As has been said, the commercial “infants' food,” leaving on one side the condensed milk, is almost invariably a powder, and, as such, should conform in composition as nearly as possible to a dried human milk. Of course, the preparations are not altogether free from water. From a large number of analyses it appears that the percentage in the great majority of cases varies between 4 and 8, the maximum being 13.9 and the minimum under 1. The average is approximately 6.5 per cent.

The purpose of this paper is to account for the remarkable proliferation of Mexican restaurants and tequila bars in contemporary urban Australia, in the absence of any geographical contiguity, historical connection or cultural proximity between Australia and Mexico.

The paper traces how the particularities of direct cultural contact, interpersonal networks and grass-roots entrepreneurism can open up new markets, and how the ground is, thus, prepared for subsequent large-scale international corporate entry to those markets. This research is based on interviews with key figures in the development of the Mexican food industry in Australia, interpreted in terms of the extant literature on cultural globalisation. The first-hand accounts of these participants have been interpreted in the light of available secondary sources and relevant theory.

The most striking theme to emerge in the study is the relative absence of Mexicans, or even Mexico-experienced Australians, in the making of a market for Mexican food in Australia. Rather, initially, Americans were prominent, as entrepreneurs and in forming a consumer market, while in later decades, entrepreneurs and consumers alike have been Australians whose experience of Mexican food has been formed in the United States, not Mexico. The role of hipster subculture and travel is seen as instrumental. Also of interest is the manner in which the personal experiences and interrelationships of the Americans and Australians have shaped the development of the Mexican food industry. This is not to ignore the much more recent participation of a new wave of immigrants from Mexico.

While the scope of the study is national, the sharper focus is on the experience of Melbourne; it would be useful for future researchers to investigate other major cities, even if Melbourne has been the most pivotal of Australian cities in the history of Mexican food in Australia. The study has conceptual and theoretical implications for debates around cultural globalisation and “Americanisation”.

The paper provides a close-grained and suitably theorised account of how a particular consumer trend has become extended on a global basis, with particular attention to both individual experience and agency, and corporate activity.