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Anecdotal evidence suggests that casting actors with similar facial features in a movie can pose challenges in foreign markets, hindering the audience's ability to recognize and remember characters. Extending developments in the literature on the cross-race effect, we hypothesize that facial similarity – the extent to which the actors starring in a movie share similar facial features – will reduce the country-level box-office performance of US movies in East and South-East Asia (ESEA) countries.

We assembled data from various secondary data sources on US non-animation movies (2012–2021) and their releases in ESEA countries. Combining the data resulted in a cross-section of 2,616 movie-country observations.

Actors' facial similarity in a US movie's cast reduces its box-office performance in ESEA countries. This effect is weakened as immigration in the country, internet penetration in the country and star power increase and strengthened as cast size increases.

This first study on the effects of cast's facial similarity on box-office performance represents a novel extension to the growing literature on the antecedents of movies' box-office performance by being at the intersection of the two literature streams on (1) the box-office effects of cast characteristics and (2) the antecedents, in general, of box-office performance in the ESEA region.

There is lack of knowledge about how movements and interaction within offices are related to the work activities and the premises. This paper aims to develop such knowledge and to develop analytic methods for differentiating office buildings regarding their usefulness to different kind of office activities and sectors.

The empirical data were collected from several comparative case studies. The spatial configuration of each office is analysed with Space syntax‐methods. The organisation and work activities of each office and the use of the spatial system are surveyed by means of interviews, observations and private logbooks and questionnaires.

The spatial configuration influences the relation between movements and actual interaction, and, as most interaction occurs at one's workstation, which people will be interacting with whom. The building's spatial influence is largest on intra‐group movement. The spatial behaviour – the pattern of occupation and movement of the office workers – is on an average level quite the same for different organisations.

The project is so far concentrated on the main work category in many large organisations, the handling officer, a clerk handling tasks individually more or less routinely. The sample of office concepts, or spatial forms, is also restricted so far.

The findings are of great interest for architects in designing offices in order to be both well functioning for a specific organisation and robust in permitting changes of different kind. For the real estate owners the knowledge will facilitate defining the market and for the users this will strengthen the potential to express the demands.

This research project is focused on spatial configuration and interaction, unlike the most of the studies about the individual workstations.

Workspace is no longer defined by opaque surfaces. Transparency, through the extensive use of glazed facades and partitions, is a common ingredient in today’s office buildings. In some cases, this can lead to a loss of physical borders for the employee. For the end‐user, this implies that the experience of the building and the interaction with the organisation seen from a visual point of view might be different from those seen from an acoustical point of view. This paper outlines how controlled transparency can bring value to office environments and proposes a set of guidelines for accommodating and managing office facilities where visual and acoustic interaction are in balance. In this way, transparency will not overrule the personal integrity and needs of each of employee.

The available evidence is partly consistent and partly inconsistent with a negative association of branching restrictions and the number of banking offices. In this paper, I present evidence that the failure to consistently find such a negative association of branching restrictions and banking offices is quite robust. I suggest that the endogeneity of the banking restrictions and regulators' unmodeled behavior are the basic source of the inconsistency. I conclude that there is no evidence that suggests substantial changes in the number of banking offices with the introduction of interstate branching.

This paper presents a set of step‐wise regression models which can incorporate multiple factors in modelling the costs of office buildings. The models appeared to be more accurate than the traditional method.

The data were collected from historical office building projects, which were then, adjusted using the construction price index. The step‐wise regression was conducted to produce the linear cost models.

Seven RC office buildings and 11 steel office buildings in Hong Kong completed in different years were selected randomly to verify the accuracy of the regression models developed. The data of these buildings were not used in the development of the cost models. The result shows that the variability of percentage difference is ranging from −4.11 per cent (4.11 per cent underestimate) to +2.74 per cent (2.74 per cent overestimate) for RC office buildings. For steel office buildings, it ranges from −6.65 per cent (6.65 per cent underestimate) to +2.78 per cent (2.78 per cent overestimate).

This study presents a methodology that can be used in cost estimation of office buildings in Hong Kong at early stage of construction project. The regression cost models developed above are based on, in total, historical data of 30 completed office buildings in Hong Kong. The reliability of the cost models can be further improved by including more office buildings to develop the cost models. Furthermore, the application of cost modelling by regression analysis is not limited to office buildings. The same approach can be applied to residential and other non‐residential buildings as well. Regression cost modelling, with sufficient updating for new cost data available, can provide economic, quick and accurate cost estimation at early stage of construction projects. It will become rational guide supplementing judgmental forecast of cost advisors in near future.

Step‐wise regression procedure was applied to develop the cost models. Jackknife re‐sampling was carried out and both of the models show stability. Cross‐validation shows that the developed regression models performed satisfactorily. The paper considers that it can provide economic, quick and accurate cost estimation at the early stage of construction project. In addition, the approach of this study can be adopted to develop cost models of other types of buildings in other locations.

It is costly to sample all air pollutants of a general community for continuous indoor air quality (IAQ) assessments. To optimize the resources for IAQ baseline monitoring for general facilities management, this study aims to investigate the feasibility of using a simple IAQ index as a screening parameter of a screening test to identify an asymptomatic air‐conditioned office with probable unsatisfactory IAQ.

The IAQ index is determined from the fractional dose of some representative common indoor air pollutants of unsatisfactory IAQ, either by taking equal importance of the pollutants as a weighting factor or weighted by the regional failure rates with respect to the corresponding air pollutants. Specifically, a database of regional IAQ assessment results of 422 air‐conditioned offices was employed to justify the selected screening levels for the IAQ index.

The proposed IAQ index of a screening assessment was used for verifying, respectively, 58 and seven air‐conditioned offices of Hong Kong with satisfactory and unsatisfactory IAQ. The results showed that 57 satisfactory offices and two unsatisfactory offices were correctly identified by the unweighted and weighted IAQ indices respectively. Evaluation of the proposed index in further IAQ improvements of some offices showed that it would be a practical tool for preliminary IAQ screening assessment.

The screening test itself could not identify all the IAQ problems but could identify the office groups with higher risk of unsatisfactory IAQ with reduced effort.

The study shows the usefulness of the proposed IAQ index to identify the unrecognized IAQ problems for air‐conditioned office environments. It could be adopted as a routine screening measure in facility management of which a wide‐ranging set of IAQ measurement is undesired.

This study presents a useful reference for policymakers, building owners and professionals for indoor environmental assessments.

This research sought to test the existence of fragmentation between home office and overseas management and its potential impact on the planning and control of social responsiveness programs. Results indicate that fragmentation does exist between home office and overseas management especially in the perceived impact of environmental factors on strategic planning. The findings reveal that home office management appears to have a strategic orientation to management while overseas management takes a more operational approach.

Between 1983 and 1985 an international study into the nature of office quality was conducted by a team of researchers from Britain, the United States and Germany. The four‐volume report of the study, which was supported by the Anglo‐German Foundation for the Study of Industrial Society, has recently been published, and this article describes its main conclusions.

Reports findings of a study of 15 countries on: the global perspective; how office workers feel about their work; how office workers work; environmental, health and safety issues; employee health concerns; how the physical environment supports the office worker; and how the professional office environment community responds.

Lack of depth is the usual price paid for breadth of ambition. However, in order to make sense of the current enthusiasm for intelligent office building it is necessary not only to investigate what is happening in countries as widely dispersed as Japan, Sweden and the United States but also to indulge in a rather liberal interpretation of what office buildings actually are. The first benefit of this point of view is that a great deal can be learned from contrasts between offices built in different countries (and for different organisations) particularly about values held by the individuals and about the social structures which make up the modern office organisation. The second benefit is that a better understanding of how offices are built and serviced, through time, is of great practical advantage to those who must manage rapidly changing organisations.