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The architectural profession faces an increasingly complex ethical landscape. In recent decades, the ethical foundations for architecture – formally defined in professional codes of conduct and reflected in regulatory frameworks – have expanded to incorporate imperatives derived from environmental and social responsibilities. The present research examines how these expanding ethical expectations are reflected in, and supported by, recent research about architectural ethics.

Analysis is based on a systematic review of recent research (2002–2023) focussing on ethical values and associated behaviours in the architectural profession. The review identifies 37 research articles (from a starting set of 2,483 articles), which are analysed empirically and then qualitatively to draw out views around three types of ethical behaviour. The paper then discusses how these findings align thematically with the evolving ethical needs of architectural practitioners (as defined in the professional codes of ethics and conduct of the RIBA in the UK, AIA in Australia and the AIA in the USA).

While business ethics remains the focus of past research, there has been a rise in research about ethics and social and environmental factors. The content of professional codes reflects this shift, setting the conditions for architects to aspire to increased expectations of environmental and social responsibility.

This article undertakes the first systematic review of recent research about architectural ethics and its alignment with the content of contemporary professional codes. Organised thematically, recent research about ethical values and associated behaviours can offer guidance for the evolving ethical needs of architects.

Complying with the code of conduct by professionals in the construction industry worldwide has become a significant issue over the years. This has led to projects' failure, leading to losses to both the client and contractors. The study's objective is to identify the challenges of construction professionals in complying with their code of conduct and preventing corrupt practices.

Quantitative approach was used to collect empirical data by sending questionnaires to 56 construction professionals in South Africa. Data gathered were analysed through Excel statistical tool. Mean values were calculated for the quantitative data, whilst thematic content analyses were used to generate frequencies and percentages for qualitative data.

The findings indicate that construction professionals experience many unethical issues in their work duties such as inflated tender prices, overpricing the rates, tender-based kickbacks, bribes for projects, unethical methods of project execution, use of lower grade materials than specified, discrimination, among others. However, issues such as greediness, acceptance of corruption as usual practice, lack of knowledge about the code of conduct, the only way to get contracts, part of the process, and peer pressure create a challenge in complying with the code of conduct and preventing corrupt practices among construction professionals.

Construction professionals face many unethical and corrupt practices in their project management and execution, which they cannot overcome due to many factors. Therefore, there is the need to sensitise the professionals in the construction industry regarding their code of conduct as well as the danger associated with engaging in corrupt practices in their work and their implication on project performance.

The findings give an insight into the critical factors curtailing the construction professional's ability to comply with their code of conduct and be corrupt-free in their line of duty. Thus, professional associations can use the findings in guiding their members.

Commercial property development builds floor space in anticipation of potential, but unknown, future demand, making it particularly prone to risk and uncertainty. The research explores the degree to which property developer decision-making is objective and rational and the degree to which it relies on behavioural instincts and intuition. Decision-making theory, including heuristics, is considered and its prevalence in the field of commercial property development is examined.

A “dual-processing” decision-making model, comprising intuitive System 1 and objective System 2 processing, is proposed and tested. Inductive research using template analysis of interviews, with “high status” commercial property developers, explored whether the model offers an accurate representation of developers' behaviour and effective lens through which to examine decisions made under conditions of risk and uncertainty.

Participants believed they adopted objective and rational approaches to complex commercial property development decisions. Analysis of interviews reveals that System 1 heuristics and intuition play significant roles in decision-making behaviour, leading to potential bias and systematic error. The research concludes that the dual-processing model provides a useful lens through which to better understand the decision-making approach adopted by commercial property developers.

The research represents the rare application of behavioural theory to the realm of commercial property development and provides new and original insight as to how important investment decisions are made under conditions of risk and uncertainty, with implications for professional practice.

This study aims to develop an overall project success (OPS) model by investigating the mediation impact of value management (VM) implementation between VM critical success factors (CSFs) and OPS as well as the moderation impact of VM CSFs between VM implementation and OPS.

In total, 335 structured questionnaires were administered to relevant stakeholders in the study area. The research used a partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to model the relationship among VM implementation, CSFs and OPS.

The results revealed that there is an indirect positive and significant correlation among the variables. The model prediction analysis also significantly impacted with 59.9% on OPS by setting VM implementation as a mediator variable and 61% by setting VM CSFs as a moderation variable.

This research work will serve as a guide or benchmark for decision-makers who want to use VM to improve the success of their building projects.

This study fills the knowledge gap by identifying and emphasizing the impact of VM CSFs and activities on OPS.

The construction industry is an industry which has gained notoriety when it comes to both physical and mental health problems. Compared to other industries, the construction sector has a higher prevalence of many stressors and mental health concerns. This calls for mechanisms to cope with these concerns. One coping mechanism propounded to help cope and adapt in the face of pressures and challenges is “Mental Toughness (MT)”. While mental toughness has been widely studied in various fields, there is a paucity of comprehensive research examining its significance among construction professionals. Thus, the motivation of this study is to establish the mental toughness characteristics among construction professionals in Ghana.

The construction industry is an industry which has gained notoriety when it comes to both physical and mental health problems. Compared to other industries, the construction sector has a higher prevalence of mental health concerns. One coping mechanism propounded to help cope and adapt in the face of pressures and challenges is “Mental Toughness (MT)”. While mental toughness has been widely studied in various fields, there is a paucity of comprehensive research examining its significance among construction professionals. Thus, the motivation of this study is to establish the mental toughness characteristics among construction professionals.

the study's findings revealed 13-factor model characteristics of mental toughness with 43 variables for mentally tough performers in the construction environment. These 13-factor models include Pressure Management (PM), Motivation (M), Emotional Intelligence (EI), Interpersonal self-belief (SB), Tough Attitude (TA), Job-related self-belief (SBB), Ethical Values (EV), Commitment (C), Focus (F), Optimism (OP), Expertise and Competence (EC), Imagery Control (IC) and Resilient (R).

The outcome of this study has significant practical implications for various stakeholders. For construction professionals the identified factors provide valuable insights into the psychological attributes and behaviours that contribute to mental toughness among construction professionals. Understanding these characteristics can empower professionals to develop strategies for coping with stress, maintaining focus, and fostering resilience in challenging construction environments to achieve optimum performance levels consistently.

The originality of this study's findings stems from the fact that it is among the first to provide greater insight into mental toughness characteristics considered by professionals (quantity surveyors, construction managers, engineers, project managers, architects, estate managers) in the construction industry.

Studies showed that construction consultants' ethical negligence is a contributing factor to the time and cost over-run of projects. There is limited research on the issues that may have hindered construction consultants' ethical responsiveness during contract administration. Studies regarding influencing factors in the context of Nigeria's quantity surveyors' (QS) ethical responsiveness are rare. Thus, the study aims to investigate the perceived issues and proffers initiatives to promote QSs' ethical responsiveness on construction projects in Nigeria.

To determine the perceptions of QS regarding ethical responsiveness, a phenomenologically driven perspective via face-to-face interviews was conducted with 12 senior professionals in Lagos and Abuja that showed interest in participating in the study and were interviewed. A thematic approach was adopted to analyse the collated data.

Economic, societal and professional issues emerged as the three groups of issues that hindered QS's ethical responsiveness on construction projects in a developing country setting such as Nigeria. Findings show that for ethical responsiveness to be expressed on projects, key stakeholders should be ethically responsible. This is currently missing, especially in public construction projects. Initiatives that can promote key stakeholders' ethical responsiveness on construction projects are examined in this paper.

The paper embraces an important practical implication because practices associated with QS's unethical responsiveness and behavioural impacts on construction projects were identified. This will stir both the regulatory professional bodies and policymakers to enforce and implement feasible initiatives that can promote key stakeholders' collaborative ethical responsiveness on construction projects.

This paper is amongst the few papers that attempted to uncover issues that hinder QS's ethical responsiveness on construction projects in a developing country setting via a qualitative approach. Since these issues are rampant in developing countries, findings from this paper can be used to promote QS's ethical responsiveness in other nations with similar unethical issues.

This paper aims to understand employees’ propensity to blow the whistle in two East African countries. This study develops a model of ethical decision-making (EDM) to assist management in predicting the probability of whistleblowing in Kenya and Uganda. It also seeks to find the moderating effect of perceived retaliation on whistleblowing intention.

This study administers a standardized questionnaire to employees in Kenya and Uganda to measure their perceptions about whistleblowing in their organizations. This study uses partial least square structural equation modeling to test the hypotheses. This study uses four constructs, namely, awareness, judgment, retaliation and likelihood, of blowing the whistle. These constructs are measured with multiple-item scales.

The results show that ethical awareness and judgment significantly increase willingness to engage in whistleblowing in East Africa. However, this study does not find a significant retaliation effect on whistleblowing intention. Instead, this study finds that awareness and judgment mediate between retaliation and willingness to engage in whistleblowing.

This study contributes to EDM topics. It advances the understanding of the whistleblowing concept, the retaliation effect and the reasons to encourage blowing the whistle in Africa. However, this study did not consider cultural factors, such as nationality, patriotism and ethnicity. Moreover, the results are only based on data from Uganda and Kenya and may not apply to other sub-Saharan nations.

These findings are particularly significant for managers and policymakers in East Africa, where fear of retaliation and lack of awareness are the main barriers to whistleblowing. The results may help managers develop human resource practices to include policies to support moral behavior. It may also provide insights to the policymakers to understand the factors that facilitate whistleblowing practices and help them to adopt new strategies or policies to stimulate whistleblowing culture.

This study is one of the initial empirical studies in the East Africa context to explore the EDM predictors and the impact of retaliation on the whistleblowing intention.

Establishing a more sustainable built environment is an increasing global concern for the construction industry. Despite the intrinsic and extrinsic obstacles the stakeholders face, huge efforts are required to transition to a smooth, sustainable construction (SC) practice. This study identifies and discusses cogent obstacles to SC in developing nations.

The Preferred Reporting Item for systematic reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) approach was employed to establish research work in SC for developing countries. The databases used were Scopus and Web of Science. Meta-analysis of keywords was analysed thematically. The initial broad search returned 8,420 publications which were filtered and reviewed in-depth to fit the aim of the study, produced only 21 relevant publications from the years 2000–2021.

The four identified themes of obstacles to SC in developing countries are as follows: construction professional training and education, clients' attitudes and awareness, construction industries' culture and capacity and governments' regulation, policies and economy. The key barriers identified from the meta-analysis include inadequate training and education amongst construction professionals, poor execution of sustainability ethics, poor populace attitude towards sustainability, poor awareness and understanding, dearth of precise data and integrated study and inappropriate priorities about sustainability.

The originality in this study are themes drawn from millennium development goals (MDGs) and sustainable development goals (SDGs) publications related to SC. Consequently, the final framework presented a holistic approach to surmounting the established limitations and aided recommendations for future studies. Thus, setting a background for developing strategies to overcome the limitations and further attain sustainable development (SD).

This study investigates the drivers of CSR practices among construction companies in Lagos, Nigeria.

This research adopted a questionnaire survey to achieve the aim. A purposefully chosen group of managing directors, directors, other senior construction experts or management personnel working for small, medium and large-sized construction enterprises in Nigeria were given questionnaires to complete. 196 questionnaires were issued, out of which 103 were properly completed and returned, with a return percentage of 61% which served as the basis for this study. Utilizing both descriptive and inferential statistics, the collected data were examined.

The results from the study revealed that “vision of the founder”, “creating public attention”, “competitive advantage” and “business strategy” were the top most four drivers of CSR initiatives among construction companies in Lagos, Nigeria. The results also showed that, there is a statistically significant degree of agreement between various categories of construction companies in Lagos, Nigeria regarding the drivers of CSR initiatives.

The study contributes more effectively to CSR studies by highlighting the drivers of CSR initiatives in construction companies. The finding would facilitate the adoption and implementation of CSR initiatives in construction organizations. The adoption of best CSR practices fosters strong relationship among construction companies, project stakeholders and communities.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the applicability of cloud computing (CC) and the challenges that contribute to more successful projects with a major sustainable construction development.

The previous studies provided information on CC implementation barriers, which were then evaluated by 104 construction stakeholders through a questionnaire survey. As a result, the exploratory factor analysis (EFA) approach was used to investigate these barriers. Furthermore, a partial least square structural equation model was used to build a model of these barriers (PLS-SEM).

The EFA results revealed that the above-noted factors are in a close relation with three key components, i.e. social, economic and communication. In addition, the proposed model results found the social barrier a key challenge to the implementation of CC.

The results from this study can help decision-makers to improve the approaches regarding data fragmentation that has great effects on the execution of all construction projects. The focus of the paper is to enhance the data fragmentation processes. In addition, the results would be useful to strengthen the sustainability of existing construction projects by enhancing the implementation of CC.

The novelty of this research work will provide a solid foundation for critically assessing and appreciating the different barriers affecting the adoption of CC.