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Responding to the continuing separation of participants and researchers in LIS participatory research, a new methodology is proposed: action partnership research design (APRD). It is asserted that APRD can mitigate or remove the hierarchical structures often inherent in the research process, thus allowing for equal contribution from all.

Building on the bonded design (BD) methodology and informed by a scoping literature review conducted by the same authors, APRD is a human-centered research approach with the goal of empowering and valuing community partnerships. APRD originates from research investigating the use of participatory design methods to foster collaboration between two potentially disparate groups, firstly with adult researchers/designers and elementary school children, and secondly with university faculty and IT professionals.

To achieve this goal, in addition to BD techniques, APRD draws inspiration from elements of indigenous and decolonization research methodologies, particularly those with an emphasis on destabilizing power hierarchies and involving research participants as full partners.

APRD, which emerged from findings from previous participatory design studies, especially those of BD, is based on the premise of partnership, recognizing that each member of a design team, whether researcher or participant/user, has unique expertise to contribute. By considering participants/users as full research partners, APRD aims to flatten the hierarchies exhibited in some LIS participatory research methodologies, where participants are treated more like research subjects than partners.

Offsite construction (OC) is an efficient method to reduce waste in the construction industry from a circular economy perspective. Yet, its uptake is subdued by the ambiguities around its supply chain. Hence, the purpose of this study is twofold: to identify the OC project delivery models, the limitations in their procurement approach to facilitate the resilience of the supply chain and interventions to promote supply chain resilience (SCR) and to identify the gaps in the existing procurement process and propose further research areas that implement strategies to improve SCR.

The study was conducted as a systematic literature review. In total, 41 peer-reviewed research papers published between 2013 and 2023 were shortlisted through the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analysis guidelines. A descriptive analysis was conducted, followed by a thematic analysis.

The descriptive analysis reveals that the emphasis on digitising OC has shifted to transforming the business model, procurement and supply chain with a human-centric view. In thematic analysis, the predictability of the SC partners and the probabilities of evaluating the prospects are revealed as arbitrary characteristics in the current procurement strategies. Rewarding collaborative relationships among SC partners and incorporating provisions to postpone the module delivery are some interventions to promote flexibility. Drafting comprehensive and effective contracts that address transparency issues and facilitating the need for continuous development of capabilities through procurement are among the further research avenues proposed.

This study is a precursor demonstrating the potential of the procurement process to implement the decrees of SCR for better goal congruence of the OC supply chain.

The purpose of this study is to ascertain which competences are seen by employers as important for accounting students in an emerging economy, to triangulate this list with the experiences of working students and compare with those work competencies acquired during the period of study.

This study employs a novel mixed-method approach, with interviews of employers (n = 11) to identify key work competencies, and then with a quantitative study of working students (n = 184) to examine the work competency gap, using paired T-tests and mean weight discrepancy scores. The study was undertaken between September and December 2022.

The paper provides empirical insights into key work competencies in an emerging economy. There is a focus on technical skills at the university, whilst soft skills are preferred by employers. New key work competencies were uncovered relating to intuition, innovation and communicating in a foreign language. The key personal characteristics required for the job relate to change and uncertainty.

A qualitative assessment of key work competencies of employers and the use of mean weighted discrepancy scores is recommended in further studies in this field.

Practical approaches for educators, government and employers are offered to address the increasing demand for soft skills and other work competencies specific to an emerging economy.

The study is set in an emerging economy, which is underdeveloped in this field. The findings inform key stakeholders with a vested interest in reducing the work competency gap.

The uptake of reprocessed construction materials (RCMs) derived from demolition waste (DW) is limited, which questions the long-term sustainability of DW reverse logistics (RL). To address this gap, the current study focused on identifying informational and structural interventions to promote the uptake of RCMs among Australian construction professionals (CPs).

Following a qualitative research approach with thirty-one semi-structured interviews, the study explored potential interventions that can drive broader RCM usage. The study's strength lies in the in-depth qualitative insights gathered through extensive interviews with CPs experienced in using RCMs.

Sixteen informational and structural interventions to promote the uptake of RCMs were identified and mapped against the industry levels at which they should be implemented. RCM suppliers should focus on improving material quality, supply and marketing while minimising material costs. Governments should encourage using RCMs through incentivisation, supportive legislation and approval processes. The significance of awareness building and research was also recognised, which requires the collective efforts of suppliers, governmental and non-governmental bodies and educational institutes.

Despite the talk around sustainable consumption, the actual walk towards this is limited from a construction perspective, as seen through the low uptake of RCMs. This study attempts to bridge this mismatch by outlining informational and structural interventions that would drive CPs to walk the talk and use RCMs for construction applications. While most studies on DW RL have focused on improving waste recovery processes, this study takes a less-trodden path and explores the potential for developing markets for RCMs.

This paper describes the development of a digital role play game (RPG) designed to help construction apprentices to better communicate with their supervisors about issues with the potential to impact on their physical and psychological health and safety.

A participatory approach was adopted to utilise the knowledge and insights of the target users to inform the digital RPG development. Apprentices and supervisors were interviewed to identify characteristics of effective supervisor-apprentice communication, which became the RPG’s learning objectives. The scenarios constructed in the RPG were drawn from lived experiences shared by the apprentices in the interviews. During the development process, consultations were conducted with an advisory committee comprising of apprentices and supervisors to improve the realism of the RPG scenarios.

Three scenarios were developed for the RPG. In each scenario, players are asked to make decisions at various interaction points about how the characters should respond to the unfolding and challenging situations. Scripts were developed for the game, which were acted out and motion captured to animate digital MetaHuman characters embedded in a virtual construction site. Two example situations are introduced in this paper to illustrate the development process.

To our knowledge, the RPG introduced is one of the first applications of digital game-based training in the construction industry. The adoption of a participatory design approach ensures that the game content relates to real-world experiences. The digital RPG is highly interactive and engaging in nature and presents a novel approach to developing “soft” skills in construction.

The increasing complexity of civil engineering projects necessitates focusing on new competencies of project participants. Based on the research on team performance and design processes that are more closely linked to the relevance of the project context, it is hypothesised that empathic abilities could play an important role in the performance of civil engineering projects. Therefore, this study aims to investigate whether performance can be improved by focusing on empathic abilities during the integrated design phase.

Semi-structured in-depth interviews with experts were conducted to explore the relevance of empathic abilities and their interaction with performance in a real-life infrastructure project. The project team’s empathy level was measured by means of a survey using Davis’ Interpersonal Reactivity Index method. Finally, differences between expected and measured levels of empathy were analysed.

The results provide insights into how empathic abilities interact with performance. The measurement indicates that, on average, professionals in the civil engineering industry score relatively low on empathy. In addition, differences were identified between the expected distribution and the measured empathy levels of the team, implying a potential for improvement, in particular by increasing the empathic abilities of the project management and increasing gender diversity.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to investigate a relationship between empathy and the performance of civil engineering projects. The results provide initial insights into the empathic ability of civil engineering project teams and the potential of empathy to improve performance. Furthermore, from an empathy perspective, this study advocates increasing the gender diversity of project teams to improve performance.

This study aims to explore customer perceived value (CPV) dimensions in the context of free mobile educational applications (EduApps) which are paramount in learning-based digital start-ups and are essential for the implementation of circular economy (CE). The purpose of the present study is to identify dimensions of CPV specifically for EduApps and propose a conceptual model that would assist the digital start-up decisions which in turn can be a catalyst in navigating to a CE.

The study uses the Netnography approach by analyzing online user-generated content. A total of 13,147 reviews posted on the Google play store after using top free education apps were coded using ATLAS.ti 9 software.

Major dimensions of context-specific CPV are identified as technical value, content value, pedagogical value, gamification value and learning value. Subdimensions and items are extracted for each of these dimensions.

The larger subscriber base drives sponsorships, advertisements and donations which underpin the business model of free EduApps. This can be obtained through an attractive value proposition. Identifying context-specific value dimensions would aid entrepreneurs in optimal value mix development decisions. The proposed framework can be utilized by both researchers (for scale creation, comparative studies and quantitative studies) and practitioners (for entrepreneurial decisions on better value propositions).

CPV successfully describes consumer decision-making, but less attention is paid to linking the theory to the setting of mobile learning apps, where the bulk of research is focused on techniques like TAM, UTAUT, etc. In addition, studies identifying CPV from mobile apps with a specific focus on EduApps are sparse. Extant literature in this context is either based on a foundation of in-store business value dimensions or dominated by technical aspects when focused on the context of mobile apps. The current study bridges this gap.

This study aims to look into and evaluate a sustainability-based destination loyalty model that takes into account how people perceive the urban destination in alignment with represented concept of sustainable tourism.

Using a convenience sampling technique, 414 questionnaires were sent out to nonresident tourists (outside Bandung city) in Indonesia using online survey platforms and analyzed with the structural equation model method.

Socioeconomic image, cultural image and environmental image all have a beneficial effect on tourists’ satisfaction levels. Furthermore, tourist satisfaction has a direct impact on destination loyalty. When it comes to tourists’ loyalty to a particular destination, only the degree to which they were satisfied moderated the influence of socioeconomic, cultural and environmental images.

The research sample exclusively comprised tourists hailing from Indonesia, a developing nation. Subsequent studies may evaluate tourists from various nations to obtain a more precise comprehension of the tourist population.

Authorities and destination organizations should periodically examine tourists to get a feel for how they feel about a destination’s sustainability, so they can adjust policies as needed to keep tourism there viable over the long term.

This study aims to fill a significant gap in the existing literature by examining the impact of sustainable practices and initiatives on tourists’ satisfaction to an urban destination. The examination of the relationship between efforts to promote sustainability and destination loyalty can offer valuable insights for destination managers and policymakers who aim to improve long-term tourist relationships.

Non-verbal communication (NVC) remains largely understudied despite its importance in today's fast-paced and cross-cultural management and research landscape. This article is significant because it reveals valuable insights into NVC, which represents 65–93% (Mehrabian, 1981) of communication and has the potential to considerably increase management effectiveness and efficiency by providing leaders and researchers with the knowledge they need to understand and handle diversity with competence.

This article draws on social identity theory (SIT) (Tajfel and Turner, 1979) and rapport management theory (RMT) (Brown and Levinson, 1987) to analyse illustrative interview extracts of co-occurring verbal and NVC from an interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) study focussed on understanding how London-based Romanian migrant entrepreneurs experience acculturation.

Romanian migrant entrepreneurs use a variety of verbal and non-verbal communication approaches in their acculturation narratives, providing depth and occasionally shifting meaning. These tactics include repeating verbal discourse with non-verbal clues, replacing verbal communication with non-verbal gestures, complementing verbal communication and juxtaposing non-verbal cues with verbal descriptions.

This study makes a valuable contribution to the fields of qualitative organisational management and entrepreneurial studies by addressing the lack of methodological tools available for analysing non-verbal language in interpretative research. This study presents a systematic technique for assessing non-verbal language symbols that has been developed through face-to-face interviews. The article utilises the first-hand interview experience of a Romanian co-researcher to demonstrate the significance of NVC in the transmission of meaning and the formation of identities amongst Romanian migrant entrepreneurs. These findings contribute to a better understanding of organisational management and research practices, particularly about this understudied entrepreneurial minority of Romanian businesses in London, by helping researchers and managers better grasp the cultural and contextual meanings communicated non-verbally. The article holds significance in the context of cross-cultural and organisational management practices.

The objective of this study is to explore the level of understanding and actions taken by the people of Gurugram (erstwhile Gurgaon) to mitigate the impact of climate change, given its critical importance as a global issue.

Using a qualitative approach, primary data were collected through in-depth interviews by means of semi-structured interview methods.

The findings indicate that while people are aware of climate change, the information is deficient for them to translate their knowledge into effective action. Some of the major challenges identified are lack of appropriate understanding, resources, education, motivation and government initiatives, as well as the old habits, peer influence, feeling of incapability and limited media exposure. To bridge the intention-action gap, it is recommended that people should be empowered to act desirably. There is a change need for awareness and education on ways to mitigate the effects of climate change. The study has implications for researchers, environmentalists, policymakers, non-government organizations and local residents of Gurugram.

This study provides unique insights into the understanding of climate change by the general public and challenges faced in taking pro-environment actions. It emphasizes the urgent need to create awareness and educate individuals about ways to mitigate the impact of climate change.