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Strategic planning in pursuit of competitive advantage has become a wide‐spread modern business objective. The construction industry shows some evidence of strategic planning implementation; however such concepts are mainly adopted by large contracting companies that have the resources to identify and develop competitive weapons such as information systems/technology (IS/IT). For professional service firms in construction, the nature of the service, the form of client‐customer relations and thus the style of competition are quite different from those followed by contractors. The relevance of competitive strategy and the competitive use of weapons such as IS/IT for professional service firms in construction has not, as yet, been quantifiably tested. Therefore this paper aims to address this imbalance in construction organization research by identifying the competitive strategies used by quantity surveyors based in the UK and assessing the support that IS/IT provides to the competitive strategies of members of this profession. A survey of quantity surveying practices questioned which competitive strategies are followed, how these strategies are implemented and the extent to which IS/IT is being used in each strategy's implementation. The results of this survey, in association with existing competitive strategy and IT literature, are used to derive a new model which proposes specific strategies that UK quantity surveyors can and are using to influence their competitive positioning.

In our global world, international cooperation has vital importance when addressing humanitarian disasters. Today, as the majority of refugees live in the Southern countries proximate to their homelands, neighboring countries are predominantly the ones that carry the bulk of the refugee burden. Under certain circumstances, states engage in international cooperation in managing refugee crises; to this end, this study analyzes the motivations behind the signing of the 2016 European Union (EU)–Turkey refugee deal and its outcomes for both parties. Past research has shown that the 2015 refugee crisis in Europe demonstrated that the initiatives that the EU countries embarked upon to pursue a monolithic policy against this mass flow fell short and, therefore, enhanced Turkey's leverage with Europe, which provided Turkey with the ability to gain concessions in bilateral talks. However, this study claims that the EU member countries were in a more advantageous position compared to Turkey as a consequence of signing the refugee deal, and it is better to characterize the deal between the parties as burden-shifting rather than burden-sharing. In addition, although the inflow of approximately one million refugees to European shores panicked the European states and coerced most of them to return to their own national migration policies, this study shows that no concrete concessions were provided to Turkey to manage this massive flow. The provisions of the Deal were not the extraordinary payoffs that EU member countries offered Turkey to fight against the irregular migration, but the extension of EU's traditional migration policy.

The Private Finance Initiative (PFI) is a long‐term concession of services used by the UK Government to capture private capital to fund public projects. This model is being increasingly applied in Portugal and the assessment of its competitive advantage is very important to Portugal. The empiric study undertaken both in Portugal and the UK has permitted some conclusions to be drawn already. PFI has developed the way the construction industry is managed, and has increased the competitive advantage of UK construction industry acting in the four vectors of competitive advantage: innovation, quality, efficiency and attention to the client. Innovation occurred through new designs that were more efficient and cost effective through the project’s whole life cycle. There is the widespread use of management tools: whole life cycle costing, risk management and benchmarking. PFI also improved communication in the UK construction industry, forcing interaction and feedback from all stakeholders in a project.

A theory of pre‐bid building price forecasting accuracy is proposed, based on the heuristic bias framework and with reference to the common practice of basing building price forecasts on the price per square metre of floor area, termed here as Price Intensity (PI). The main prediction of the theory, that high PI contracts will be underestimated and low PI contracts will be overestimated, is tested by a re‐analysis of a set of Singapore data and in comparison with previous work.

Contemporary international migrations are changing the global labor landscape. However, not all labor migration results are beneficial. Some home countries lose a great amount of home-educated labor to host countries that offer better working and living conditions, consequently lowering the available amount of critically needed intellectual capital for national utility. Ideally, host countries seeking workers should strive to develop a national policy that maximize “brain gain” by attracting workers with complimentary skills and knowledge to fill local employment gaps. Conversely, donor countries that send workers abroad should develop policies that minimize its brain drain by encouraging their skilled citizens to return home after acquiring enhanced skills and knowledge, thus taking advantage of “brain circulation” effects. Therefore, a nation’s best interest, either a host or donor country, may be best served through the development of protocols that minimize friction during the migration process for preferred migrants. Using Malaysia, as an example, we argue that the recognition of dual citizenship would be the appropriate prescription in reducing the “Great Brain Drain” problem afflicting the local labor market. This recognition serves several purposes: (1) provide labor with economic opportunities while retaining their ability to adjust to political climate by taking advantage of the global mobility of talent with favorable immigration policies; (2) increase Malaysia’s financial and human capital stock by leveraging its diasporas; and (3) alleviate friction in the migration process between Malaysia and host countries that will smooth travel between countries and increase economic transactions back to the country in the form of social and economic remittances. This paper examines this allowance and discusses the implications of a potential Malaysian dual-citizenship policy.

Possible reasons for using kites to kill gazelles are comprehensively reviewed in this article. Even though they are now well inventoried and documented, desert kites are still not well understood, as exemplified by the recurrent controversies about their function and dating. According to the dominant view, kites were hunting structures used to drive and to mass kill large herds of wild ungulates, particularly gazelles. Although kites were intensively used during the Early Bronze Age, some of them could have been built and used before that. Beyond these issues, the cultural and socioeconomic aspects of the kites phenomenon are even less understood, and therefore, we focus on changing reasons for the long-lasting use of kites as hunting devices. We contend that the reasons why they were used during the period of utilization for hunting gazelles changed, in most cases, in response to socioeconomic development. It is hypothesized, for example, that, as a result of urban development, kites may have been increasingly (but not exclusively) used to kill gazelles to trade their products with urban communities and farmers, even though they had other uses as well which are also considered. The main hypothesis presented in this article enables diverse opinions about the types of uses and reasons for utilizing desert kites to be reconciled, including in particular varied reasons given in the literature about why they were used for killing gazelles.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse how predatory journals use spam emails to manipulate potential authors. This has been done based on McCornack’s information manipulation theory (IMT). Generally, predatory publishing is on the increase globally but more pronounced in developing countries. Although it affects both young and seasoned scholars, inexperienced scholars and those ignorant on credible publishing are the most affected.

The current study through document analysis focuses on email invites from predatory journals sent to the author between June 2016 and December 2018 after publishing a peer-reviewed journal article. The resultant texts were analysed using a directed qualitative content analysis.

Findings indicate that the invites flouted all the four Gricean maxims (of quality, quantity, manner and relevance) as posited by IMT. This suggests that the spam mails sent to the author sought to manipulate potential authors to publish with predatory journals.

This qualitative study focuses on email invites to the author which may not fully capture the manipulation by predatory journals.

It is important that scholars in developing contexts are aware of how predatory publishers seek to manipulate their victims. Universities and research institutions should be intentional in enlightening their academic staff on predatory journals and their characteristics. Similarly, universities should consider disincentivising their faculty members who publish in such platforms.

The originality in this study lies in its use of IMT to explain how predatory journals manipulate potentials authors.

Through activism, brands participate in the sociopolitical controversies that shape society today. Based on social identity theory, this study aims to examine the moderating effects of consumer–brand identification (CBI) and political ideology in explaining consumer responses to brand activism. Furthermore, the role of perceived marginalization that can arise in the case of consumer–brand disagreement is explored.

The hypothesized effects were tested in three experiments. Study 1 (n = 262) and Study 2 (n = 322) used a moderation analysis, which was supplemented by a mixed design analysis with repeated measures in Study 1. In Study 3 (n = 383), the mediating effect of perceived marginalization by the brand was tested using a moderated mediation model.

The results show that strong CBI as well as a conservative ideology buffer the negative effects of consumer–brand disagreement on brand attitude and word-of-mouth intentions. In the case of agreement with a brand’s stance, no direct or interactive effects of brand activism on consumer responses occur. Perceived marginalization by a brand mediates the effects of brand activism.

This study extends the “love is blind” versus “love becomes hate” debate to the realm of brand activism and finds evidence for the former effect. It also contributes to the research on political consumption by highlighting the role of political ideology as an important boundary condition for brand activism. Perceived marginalization is identified as a relevant risk for activist brands.

The relationship between learning and mental health, as well as a growing body of literature, underscores the need for art therapy in educational settings. This is particularly true for learners with special needs. Shostak et al. (1985) affirmed that “for children with special needs, art therapy in a school setting can offer opportunities to work through obstacles that impede educational success” (p. 19). School art therapy facilitates improved social interaction, increased learning behaviors, appropriate affective development, and increased empathy and personal well-being. It can be adapted to meet the specific developmental needs of individual students and to parallel students’ developmental, learning, and behavioral objectives. This chapter introduces the reader to the history and basic constructs of art therapy as a psychoeducational therapeutic intervention in schools. Model programs are identified, as well as the role of the art therapist within the context of K-12 education settings. Additionally, examples of special populations who benefit from art therapy intervention within school systems are provided, along with considerations for school-wide art therapy.