Search results

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.

The purpose of this study is to identify the factors that influence the willingness of Saudi Arabian students from four universities in Saudi Arabia, to adopt learning management systems (LMSs). This will be accomplished by using two popular technology acceptance models unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) and theory of planned behavior (TPB).

In total, 445 undergraduates from four Saudi educational institutions participate in filling out the study questionnaire. To investigate the correlations between the variables, the study used structural equation modeling for data analysis.

The results of the study show that effort expectancy (EE), subjective norm (SN), attitude toward behavior (ATB) and perceived behavioral control (PBC) are found to be substantially connected with their intentions to use (ITU) LMSs. The findings also show that there is a strong relationship between students’ intentions and their actual use of LMSs.

Like many studies, this research has some limitations. The primary limitation is that the findings of the study cannot be extrapolated to other settings since the report’s analysis and investigation were limited to four Saudi universities. Therefore, to generalize the study’s findings, similar research needs to be conducted in other Gulf and similar cultural universities.

The integrated model identifies key factors that influence the intent of Saudi Arabian students to use LMS, including EEs, social influence, ATB and PBC. This model can help develop solutions for the obstacles that prevent students from using LMS. The findings can be used to provide assistance to increase the likelihood of LMS acceptance as part of the educational experience. The model may also inspire further research on this topic in the Gulf nations, particularly in Saudi Arabia.

As none of the relevant studies conducted previously in Saudi Arabia has integrated the two models to study the students’ ITU LMSs, this study combines two major theories, TPB and UTAUT, in the context of Saudi Arabia, contributing to the field of technology use in education by expanding empirical research and providing a thorough understanding of the challenges associated with the use of LMS in Saudi universities. This study should be viewed as filling a crucial gap in the field. Moreover, this integrated model, using more than one theoretical perspective, brings a thorough comprehension of the barriers that hinder students’ adoption of LMSs in the academic context in Saudi Arabia and thus assists in making effective decisions and reaching viable solutions.

This paper aims to test the main factors that affect cash waqf collection among the employees of Islamic banking institutions (IBIs) in Malaysia.

The data was gathered using a survey method from 218 employees of IBIs in Malaysia. The obtained data was analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences software and smart partial least squares-structural equation modeling to verify the hypothesis and reach conclusions.

The results revealed that word of mouth and trust have significant positive impacts on cash waqf collection. The outcomes also confirmed that convenience and accessibility to cash waqf play significant roles in affecting cash waqf collection.

Based on the researchers’ knowledge, there are only a few studies which focused on measuring the driver of cash waqf collection from the employees’ perspective, particularly in the Malaysian context. This study specifically applies the theory of reasoned action to determine employees’ attitudes toward cash waqf fund collections in IBIs in Malaysia. Having an understanding of the factors that influence employees to contribute to cash waqf would better equip IBIs in managing their cash waqf contributions and in designing their marketing and branding strategies for promoting their institutions.

Multi-label Text Classification (MTC) is one of the most recent research trends in data mining and information retrieval domains because of many reasons such as the rapid growth of online data and the increasing tendency of internet users to be more comfortable with assigning multiple labels/tags to describe documents, emails, posts, etc. The dimensionality of labels makes MTC more difficult and challenging compared with traditional single-labeled text classification (TC). Because it is a natural extension of TC, several ways are proposed to benefit from the rich literature of TC through what is called problem transformation (PT) methods. Basically, PT methods transform the multi-label data into a single-label one that is suitable for traditional single-label classification algorithms. Another approach is to design novel classification algorithms customized for MTC. Over the past decade, several works have appeared on both approaches focusing mainly on the English language. This work aims to present an elaborate study of MTC of Arabic articles.

This paper presents a novel lexicon-based method for MTC, where the keywords that are most associated with each label are extracted from the training data along with a threshold that can later be used to determine whether each test document belongs to a certain label.

The experiments show that the presented approach outperforms the currently available approaches. Specifically, the results of our experiments show that the best accuracy obtained from existing approaches is only 18 per cent, whereas the accuracy of the presented lexicon-based approach can reach an accuracy level of 31 per cent.

Although there exist some tools that can be customized to address the MTC problem for Arabic text, their accuracies are very low when applied to Arabic articles. This paper presents a novel method for MTC. The experiments show that the presented approach outperforms the currently available approaches.

The main objective of this study is to investigate the factors that influence the adoption intention of cloud computing services among individual users using the extended theory of planned behavior.

A purposive sampling technique was used to collect a total of 339 data points, which were analyzed using SmartPLS to derive variance-based structural equation modeling and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA).

The results obtained from PLS-SEM indicate that attitude towards cloud computing, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, perceived security, cost-effectiveness, and performance expectancy all have a positive and significant impact on the adoption intention of cloud computing services among individual users. On the other hand, the findings from fsQCA provide a clear interpretation and deeper insights into the adoption intention of individual users of cloud computing services by revealing the complex relationships between multiple combinations of antecedents. This helps to understand the reasons for individual users' adoption intention in emerging countries.

This study offers valuable insights to cloud service providers and cyber entrepreneurs on how to promote cloud computing services to individual users in developing countries. It helps these organizations understand their priorities for encouraging cloud computing adoption among individual users from emerging countries. Additionally, policymakers can also understand their role in creating a comfortable and flexible cloud computing access environment for individual users.

This study has contributed to the increasingly growing empirical literature on cloud computing adoption and demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed theoretical framework in identifying the potential reasons for the slow growth of cloud computing services adoption in the developing world.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to identify the soft skills of construction project management; and second, to investigate the influence of these soft skills on project success factors in the Vietnamese construction industry.

A questionnaire survey was conducted with 108 project management professionals from the Vietnamese construction industry. Partial least square structural equation modelling was employed in data analysis.

Four-dimensional structure of project success factors was confirmed in this study. Results also showed that soft skills of project managers significantly contributed to project success factors and hence the project success.

There may be geographical limitation on the conclusions drawn from the findings. Similarly, the sample size was still small, despite a relatively high response rate. In addition, the majority of the respondents were contractors and clients as other project players were reluctant to respond to the survey.

This study provides an understanding of the relationship between soft skills and project success factors.

Although there have been studies focused on soft skills of project management and project success factors, few have attempted to analyse the effects of these soft skills on critical success factors. Thus, this study adds significantly to the existing research on both project management skills and project success factors.

Saudi academic libraries (SALs) have been moving towards using electronic resources since 1992. This study aims to investigate the changes in electronic journal (EJ) (bibliographic and full‐text databases) and printed journal (PJ) collection and acquisition in terms of number of titles, type of provisions and acquisition budgets and costs, between the years 1995 and 2000. The survey method was used to obtain the data. The instruments used in this study were questionnaires that were distributed to six academic libraries in Saudi Arabia. The percentages were used to show the differences between the increase and the decrease of EJ and PJ collections and budgets. The most important findings show that the percentage of EJ collections sharply increased in 1996 by 98 percent, which corresponds to a high increase in their budget of 125 percent.