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The supply of trade credit by small‐ to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) is the product of both customer demand and the possibility of strategic advantage, but is subject to risk. In the current financial climate the demand for trade credit may be heightened, leading to further increased risk. This paper seeks to evaluate current risk mitigation measures in the UK and considers how these might be improved.

The supply of and demand for trade credit and the inherent risks are explained by reference to the literature. Then, using both the academic and grey literature and data from a large‐scale questionnaire, the paper highlights the limitations of both regulatory and management approaches to mitigate the risks in the context of UK SMEs. Finally, the paper considers the prospects for improved management.

Trade credit may be a product of market demand or a desire to extract strategic advantage. Both regulatory measures and internal management regimes have failed to mitigate risks in the UK for SMEs extending trade credit.

The paper concludes that current UK regulatory regimes are unlikely to prove effective and that better management of trade credit may be imperilled by the power imbalances between SMEs and larger firms. The paper suggests areas for the improvement of trade credit management under the headings of policies, people, processes and practices within SMEs.

The paper demonstrates why, despite the risk, UK SMEs offer trade credit and consider how those risks might be mitigated.

The purpose of this paper is to study the remuneration of management in the financial crisis. What are the key elements of management payment at the Euro Stoxx 50 companies, does management remuneration comprise long-term incentives in order to overcome principal-agent conflicts and how did the financial crisis affect management payment in terms of payment elements and size?

Based on the Euro Stoxx 50 financial reports of the fiscal year 2009 and other documents elements and size of management payment are being analysed.

Management payment has been affected by financial crisis. Among the Euro Stoxx 50 companies management remuneration is quite heterogeneous.

There is still a lack of use of appropriate metrics. There are doubts whether measures like TSR really can align manager's decisions to a sustainable, long-term orientated strategy.

The paper gives an insight view in management remuneration at the Euro Stoxx 50 companies.

While the potential for digital innovation (DI) to transform organizational practices is widely acknowledged in the information systems (IS) literature, there is very limited understanding on the socio-political nature of institutional interactions that determine DI and affect organizational practices in social cash organizations. Drawing on the neo-institutionalist vision, the purpose of the study is to examine the unique set of institutional exchanges that influence the transition to digital social cash payments that give rise to new institutional arrangements in social cash organizations.

The paper draws on an in-depth case study of a government social cash organization in Pakistan. Qualitative data were collected using 30 semi-structured interviews from key organizational members and stakeholders.

The results suggest that DI is determined by the novel intersections between the coercive (techno-economic, regulatory), normative (socio-organizational), mimetic (international) and covert power (political) forces. Hence, DI is not a technologically deterministic output, but rather a complex socio-political process enacted through dialogue, negotiation and conflict between institutional actors. Technology is socially embedded through the process of institutionalization that is coupled by the deinstitutionalization of established organizational practices for progressive transformation.

The research has implications for government social cash organizations especially in the Global South. Empirically, the authors gained rare access to, and support from a government-backed social cash organization in Pakistan (an understudied country in the Global South), which made the data and the consequent analyses even invaluable. This made the empirical contribution within this geographical setting even more worthy, since this case study has received little attention from indigenous scholars in the past. The empirical findings showcased a unique set of contextual factors that were subject to BISP and interpreted through an account of socio-cultural sensitivities.

The paper provides practical implications for policymakers and practitioners, emphasizing the need to address institutional challenges, including covert power, during the implementation of digitalization projects in the public sector. The paper has certain potential for inspiring future e-government related (or public sector focused) studies. The paper may guide both private and government policy-makers and practitioners in presenting how to overcome certain institutional challenges while planning and implementing large scale multi-stakeholder digitization projects in similar country contexts. So while there is scope of linking the digitization of public sector organizations to anti-corruption measures in other Global South countries, the paper may not be that straightforward with the private sector involvement.

The paper offers rich social insights on the institutional interchanges that occur between the social actors for the innovation of technology. Especially, the paper highlights the social-embeddedness nature of technology that underpins the institutionalization of new organizational practices. These have implications on how DI is viewed as a socio-political process of change.

This study contributes to neo-institutional theory by theorizing covert power as a political force that complements the neo-institutional framework. This force is subtle but also resistive for some political actors as the force shifts the equilibrium of power between different institutional actors. Furthermore, the paper presents the social and practical implications that guide policymakers and practitioners by taking into consideration the unique institutional challenges, such as covert power, while implementing large scale digital projects in the social cash sector.

Delayed payments have been long standing, pressing issue in construction projects, especially in Government-funded construction projects. The root causes and the consequences of delayed payments must be identified before implementing strategies to mitigate the consequences of such delayed payments. However, these causes and consequences and the parties responsible for managing the delayed payments have not been identified so far. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the management of payment delays in Government-funded construction projects.

The study used a mixed approach comprising four case studies and a questionnaire survey. The empirical data collected from the case studies and the questionnaire survey were analysed using manual content analysis and mean rating, respectively.

The study identified the most significant causes and the most significant consequences of delayed payments that occur in Government-funded construction projects. It also revealed the strategies that clients, consultants, contractors and other parties can adopt to mitigate the adverse consequences of such delayed payments.

This study identified the most significant causes of delayed payments in Government-funded construction projects, the most significant consequences of such delayed payments and the most suitable strategies the clients, consultants and contractors can adopt to mitigate the consequences of such delayed payments. Thus, this study supports streamlining the management of payment delays in Government construction projects and identifies the roles that different parties must play in managing payment delays in Government building projects, which is an under-researched area.

Construction project delivery is hinged on the performance of the contractor and subcontractors. In many private construction projects in the UK, there are trust issues between the subcontractor and contractor, especially when there are no collateral warranties to protect the rights of the subcontractors. The purpose of this study is to investigate and identify the causations of distrust between subcontractors and contractors and proffered panaceas.

Qualitative open-ended questions were used. Twenty respondents, mainly supervisors, tradesmen, subcontractors and main contractors in the UK, were interviewed. The thematic analysis approach was used to identify the dominant themes.

The interview findings were presented descriptively, and the frequency approach identified more occurring themes from the interviewees’ responses. The six themes contributing to distrust between subcontractor and contractor are financial pressures, partnering approach, payment and trust, nature of trust, internal influence and unfair payment.

The findings of this study revealed that many subcontractors have limited knowledge of the clauses in contracts they are entering into. Thus, in addition to obtaining collateral warranties, subcontractors must carefully understand their contractual obligations and payment arrangements before agreeing to be part of a construction project.

Although this study aimed to shed light on the distrust between subcontractors and contractors in private UK construction projects, improvements in contract administration, subcontractors continued professional development and improved valuation processes can reduce distrust between subcontractors and contractors.

The phenomenon of delayed payment to contractors, particularly in the construction industry, is a vital one and has implications for the health of economies of both developing and developed countries. However, the knowledge of this phenomenon seems patchy and scattered. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the knowledge on the subject matter with directions for future research.

A systematic literature review coupled with a scientometric analysis was used to identify the main strands of delayed payment to contractor research as a basis for qualitative analysis and directions for future investigations.

Current trends of delayed payment to contractor research are categorised into five broad themes, namely: causes, effects, mitigation measures, ethical and law and regulatory issues. On the basis of these themes, directions for future research are proffered.

To the best of the authors knowledge, this is the first attempt at providing a comprehensive and an integrated knowledge on delayed payment to contractor research with pointers for further investigation and policy directions.

Effective performance management (PM) in public–private partnership (PPP) projects is critical to realizing value for money (VFM). This study aims to provide an in-depth understanding of problems existing in PPP PM and possible avenues for improvement, presenting an experimental system to verify that building information modeling (BIM) and other information communication technologies can improve PPP PM.

The mixed research method adopted in this study combined empirical research with experimental research. Semistructured interviews were used to ascertain the current situation of PPP PM with the help of Nvivo software. A BIM-based performance management system (BPMS), which combines BIM with Web and Cloud technology, was then constructed to achieve performance monitoring, performance measurement, and performance-based payment. Finally, a case study was introduced to explain the function application of the proposed system.

The case demonstration verified is found to verify that the developed BIM-based execution framework for PPP PM can effectively guide stakeholders toward achieving mixed PM, promote effective PM, and improve work efficiency with the support of BIM and other information and communication technologies.

Through the development of a BPMS for PPP projects, the effectiveness and efficiency of PM are improved. Practical PM applications are also provided to different stakeholders, through which the key performance indicators and the behaviors of the government and private-sector partners can be monitored to form a more comprehensive and reasonable PM mechanism and promote the realization of VFM in PPP projects.

“… in the interests of productivity and efficiency senior managements need to pay more attention to the functioning of the existing payment system and to the negotiating of change when this appears to be appropriate.”

The purposes of this paper are as follows. First, the paper investigates the causes of risk and methods for managing it based on previous studies of trade risk and trade risk management. Second, the paper analyses the types and forms of trade risk for exporting companies and investigate the relationship between actual trade risks and perceptions of trade risk. Third, the paper establishes a measurement device for trade risk management and export performance based on previous studies. Fourth, the paper derives the concepts based on the accumulated details to establish a research model and verifies a cause and effect relationship. Fifth, the paper analyses what kind of effect the perception of trade risk exerts on trade risk management. And sixth, the paper analyses the effect of the method of trade risk management on the export performance of exporting companies to shed light on the utility of trade risk management.

The purpose in this research is to analyse the effects of trade risk management on the export performance of exporting companies. The authors have conducted a review of previous studies about trade risk, trade risk management, and the outcomes thereof. Based on that review, the authors have established a research model, derived hypotheses, and used statistical methods to verify those hypotheses.

First, the authors analysed the methods of settling payments, transaction terms, the transportation environment, and experience in trade claims and found that they influenced the perceived level of trade risk. Second, exporting companies’ prior perception of trade risk determines which methods of trade risk management are suitable. Third, the analysis of the methods of trade risk management and export performance found that financial performance was influenced more than non-financial performance by trade risk management.

The authors determined whether trade risk management effectively counters the losses incurred as a result of the trade risks faced by exporting countries. The authors used an empirical statistical analysis to comprehensively analyse appropriate trade risk management and export performance. Prior to implementing the empirical analysis, the authors conducted research on trade risk and its management and established a research model and research hypotheses based on a theoretical background of trade risk methods appropriate to the circumstances faced by exporting companies.

This study aimed to present the methodology of the text data analysis to establish marketing strategies for fintech companies in a practical way. Specifically, the methodology was presented to convert customers' review data, which consisted of the text data (unstructured data), to the numerical data (structured data) by using a text mining algorithm “Global Vectors for Word Representation,” abbreviated as “GloVe”; additionally, the authors presented the methodology to deploy the numerical data for marketing strategies with eliminate-reduce-raise-create (ERRC) value factor analytics.

First, the authors defined the background, features and contents of fintech services based on a review of related literature review. Additionally, they examined business strategies, the importance of social media for fintech services and fintech technology trends based on the literature review. Next, they analyzed the similarity between fintech-related keywords, which represent the trends in fintech services, and the text data related to fintech corporations and their services posted on Facebook and Twitter, which are two of the most popular social media globally, during the period 2017–2019. The similarity was then quantified and categorized in terms of the representative global fintech companies and the status of each fintech service sector. Furthermore, the similarity was visualized, and value elements were rebuilt using ERRC strategy analytics.

This study is meaningful in that it quantifies the degree of similarity between customers' responses, experiences and expectations regarding the rapidly growing global fintech firms' services and trends in fintech services.

This study suggests a practical way to apply in business by providing a method for transforming unstructured text data into structured numerical data it is measurable. It is expected that this study can be used as the basis for exploring sustainable development strategies for the fintech industry.