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The paper aims to investigate the prevailing institutional logics that underpin the organisational behaviours of Chinese contractors and the institutional complexity they face across several strategic areas when they undertake projects abroad.

The paper draws mainly on industry literature, reports and government websites to develop a typology of two ideal types of institutional logics that prevail among Chinese international contractors. The configurations of institutional complexity in different strategic areas are analysed through pattern-matching.

Two main logics are identified, namely, construction and investment logics. These logics in turn lead to patterns of volatile complexity in the strategic areas of business, technology, human resources and marketing; patterns of aligned complexity in operational and information technology strategic areas; and patterns of segregated complexity in financial strategic area.

The paper presents an ongoing doctoral research. It provides a preliminary understanding of the institutional logics affecting Chinese international contractors and sets out the first step to understand the relationship between complex institutional environments and organisational responses.

Chinese international contractors commonly face resistance, and at times resentment, from the local industries in the countries they operate. The findings of this paper are a first step towards a better understanding of why this is the case and what can be done to rectify the situation and improve long and short-term project performance.

This paper provides practical implications for Chinese contractors to understand their internal context of institutional complexity and provides the basis for further understanding of Chinese contractors’ strategic responses.

This chapter examines how implementation of SDG solutions can be improved through adaptive strategies. Many so-called blueprint strategies are inflexible during implementation and underestimate the importance fitting general goals and plans to shifting local needs and contexts. The chapter emphasizes the importance of identifying the specific types of dynamic challenges that will prompt the need for adaptation when implementing sustainability strategies. Adaptive cocreation provides a valuable framework for overcoming traps of various sorts that may block implementation. The problem-driven iterative adaptation (PDIA) model is introduced as one approach to adaptation. PDIA is particularly valuable for achieving bottom-up integration of SDGs and projects. Finally, the chapter considers the importance of social learning as a strategy for collaborative adaptation.

Identify what kind of research we need to reach extraordinary performance in value chains in construction projects.

Theory and qualitative case study (document study and interviews in the Bispevika project).

To change the collaborative game and transform the construction industry, there is a need for research on projects with extraordinary ambitions. The research needs to bridge from strategic level down into specific details in operations. We need contributions that do not follow the general tendency to limit perspectives and focus small, isolated questions. Research must be designed in a multidisciplinary fashion that includes aspects on all levels from individuals to across organisations in the project and even the industry itself. Research also needs to define a new “business model”. If not, research can become irrelevant rather than being a relevant partner producing knowledge and insights in the transformation of the construction industry.

For researchers, this result indicates that there is a need for more complex, interdisciplinary research to be able to cover both the strategic and fundamental levels.

The Bispevika project shows that both strategic direction and fundamental issues need attention and practical action.

The research raises important aspects of a research agenda for the industry. This paper argues how research can contribute with relevant insights and will help define a more ambitious research agenda where the construction industries’ challenges can become the catalyst for also transforming future research design.

The sustainable transition towards the circular economy requires the effective use of artificial intelligence (AI) and information technology (IT) techniques. As the sustainability targets for 2030–2050 increasingly become a tougher challenge, society, company managers and policymakers require more support from AI and IT in general. How can the AI-based and IT-based smart decision-support tools help implementation of circular economy principles from micro to macro scales?

This chapter provides a conceptual framework about the current status and future development of smart decision-support tools for facilitating the circular transition of smart industry, focussing on the implementation of the industrial symbiosis (IS) practice. IS, which is aimed at replacing production inputs of one company with wastes generated by a different company, is considered as a promising strategy towards closing the material, energy and waste loops. Based on the principles of a circular economy, the utility of such practices to close resource loops is analyzed from a functional and operational perspective. For each life cycle phase of IS businesses – e.g., opportunity identification for symbiotic business, assessment of the symbiotic business and sustainable operations of the business – the role played by decision-support tools is described and embedding smartness in these tools is discussed.

Based on the review of available tools and theoretical contributions in the field of IS, the characteristics, functionalities and utilities of smart decision-support tools are discussed within a circular economy transition framework. Tools based on recommender algorithms, machine learning techniques, multi-agent systems and life cycle analysis are critically assessed. Potential improvements are suggested for the resilience and sustainability of a smart circular transition.

Cross-docking is a supply chain distribution and logistics strategy for which less-than-truckload shipments are consolidated into full-truckload shipments. Goods are stored up to a maximum of 24 hours in a cross-docking terminal. In this chapter, we build on the literature review by Ladier and Alpan (2016), who reviewed cross-docking research and conducted interviews with cross-docking managers to find research gaps and provide recommendations for future research. We conduct a systematic literature review, following the framework by Ladier and Alpan (2016), on cross-docking literature from 2015 up to 2020. We focus on papers that consider the intersection of research and industry, e.g., case studies or studies presenting real-world data. We investigate whether the research has changed according to the recommendations of Ladier and Alpan (2016). Additionally, we examine the adoption of Industry 4.0 practices in cross-docking research, e.g., related to features of the physical internet, the Internet of Things and cyber-physical systems in cross-docking methodologies or case studies. We conclude that only small adaptations have been done based on the recommendations of Ladier and Alpan (2016), but we see growing attention for Industry 4.0 concepts in cross-docking, especially for physical internet hubs.

Whilst nations have overall responsibility for policies to protect and serve their populations, in many countries, health policy and policies for children are delegated to regions or other local administrations, which make it a challenging subject to explore at a national level. We sought to establish which countries had specific strategies for child and adolescent health care, and whether primary care, social care and the school–healthcare interface was described and planned for, within any policies that exist. In addition, we established the extent to which a child health strategy and meaningful reference to children’s records and care delivery exist in an e-health context. Of concern in the Models of Child Health Appraised (MOCHA) context is that 40% of European Union and European Economic Area countries had reported no health strategy for children, and more than a half had no reference to supporting delivery of children’s health in their e-health strategy.

We investigated the differences in ownership and leadership of children’s policy, which was a range of ministry input (health, education, labour, welfare or ministries of youth and family); as well as cross-ministerial involvement. In terms of national policy planning and provider planning, we investigated the level of discussion, consultation and interaction between national healthcare bodies (including insurance bodies), providers and the public in policy implementation. The MOCHA project scrutinised the way countries aim to harness the latest technologies by means of e-health strategies, to support health services for children, and found that some had no explicit plans whereas a few were implementing significant innovation. Given that children are a key sector of the population, who by very nature have a need to rely on government and formally governed services for their well-being in the years when they cannot themselves seek or advocate for services, our findings are particularly worrying.

Low productivity in construction is typically blamed on the seemingly complex and chaotic nature of construction, which emerges as the stakeholders do not have an adequate picture of the evolving situation. The ever-increasing volume of situation data owing to the recent advances in IoT devices and reality capture platforms provide a unique opportunity to capture the actual situation data of construction projects accurately at a fraction of the cost compared to manual status tracking and reporting. This paper aims to investigate the concept of a situation picture, challenges in collecting situation data and its benefits.

Empirical data is collected through interviews in California and Finland, and by organizing workshops.

We contribute to literature on managing operational information by defining the concept of a situation picture in the context of construction, specifically from the blue-collar’s perspective during on-site activities. We present the key components of a conceptual information model that represents a situation picture in construction.

The applicability of conceptual information model of situation picture is not tested in practice, but the model will provide a starting point for research to comprehensively integrate social and digital information exchange for improving workflow.

The paper claims that designing and building comprehensive information management infrastructure would contribute to solving the problems of low productivity, quality and safety in construction projects.

Research on situation picture and situation awareness is scarce in the context of construction. The study links various information management technologies and practices to actual construction productivity.

This chapter goes into more detail about how experimentation can be used as a strategy of innovation and how cocreation can support this strategy. It first draws out lessons from research on sustainability transitions, design thinking, and grassroots innovation for the development of experimentation. Prototyping is found to be a particularly valuable strategy for cocreating experimentation because it allows stakeholders to develop low-cost designs and to quickly improve them based on group feedback. A range of prototyping strategies are available to cocreators, ranging from mock ups to pilot projects. Finally, the chapter examines how to support, scale and diffuse cocreated experiments.

Purpose – This paper is intended to test for the model of commodities export performance (EP) in Aceh Province, Indonesia.

Design/Methodology/Approach – This research will focus on approach model of firms competency variable, customer relation, foreign environmental factor, and moderating variable of export competitive strategy which aims to improve firm performance in the export context.

Findings – The research framework models will give a new perspective to export activities conducted by exporting commodities in an emergent nation such as Indonesia and more specifically in Aceh.

Originality/Value – The improvement of EP.

The study aims to investigate the concept of strategy-as-practice in construction management literature has been investigated. The focus is on the link between strategizing practices and project management.

An exploratory literature review is carried out based on fifteen journal articles on strategizing practices in the construction industry.

The analysis shows how strategy-as-practice questions and contradicts project management practices as depicted in the dominant deterministic perspective. Strategy-as-practice has a focus on reacting and adapting to a chaotic and changing environment, while project management is concerned with creating and maintaining a stable working environment. The findings point to the necessity of considering the organizational and institutional context of project management practices, and hence the values the strategy-as-practice lens, when considering new avenues for improving the industry.

As the study is based on an exploratory literature review of only 15 articles, generalizations should be made with caution. The identified literature is restricted by search words and choice of database.

The differences between strategizing and project management practices are very clear, and a focus on both may offer insights into how the construction industry could improve its productivity by developing more robust management practices.

The paper illustrates the benefit of applying a strategizing perspective, which hitherto has been under-investigated in construction management research.