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Previous studies have postulated that an advance payment system (APS) positively impacts the contractor's working capital and is paramount to ensuring an efficient and effective project cash flow process. However, scant research has been undertaken to empirically establish the cash flow performance and domino effect of APS on project and organisational performance.

The epistemological design adopted a positivist philosophical stance augmented by deductive reasoning to explore the phenomena under investigation. Primary quantitative data were collected from 504 Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) registered contractors (within the grade bandings 1–9) in South Africa. A five-point Likert scale was utilised, and subsequent data accrued were analysed using structural equation modelling (SEM).

Emergent findings reveal that the mandatory use of an APS does not guarantee a positive project cash flow, an improvement in organisational performance or an improvement in project performance.

The ensuing discussion reveals the contributory influence of APS on positive cash flow and organisational performance, although APS implementation alone will not achieve these objectives. Practically, the research accentuates the need for various measures to be concurrently adopted (including APS) towards ensuring a positive project cash flow and improved organisational and project performance.

There is limited empirical research on cash flow performance and the domino effect of APS on project and organisational performance in South Africa, nor indeed, the wider geographical location of Africa as a continent. This study addresses this gap in the prevailing body of knowledge.

A boom in e-commerce in Korea has sparked off high daily-volume demand for small-sized home delivery services, which poses a great challenge to distribution networks, especially in urban areas where traffic congestion, accessibility, and pollution are serious problems. In addition, security issues for people who live in small townhouses and detached houses without security systems and guards have received increasing attention from the government and society. Thus, the introduction of a new alternative for home delivery services, unmanned parcel lockers, is urgent for residents living in these areas. This paper examines and compares potential socio-economic impacts in terms of costs and benefits when such lockers are installed at selected locations in residential areas. The results show that this policy is worthy of adoption, with several undeniable benefits to local communities. In addition, sensitivity analyses estimate the economic performance of this project at different social discount rates, and they check the sensitivity of economic performance based on variations in the variables. The value of travel time savings was identified as a critical and dominating factor directly affecting economic performance.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of human resource (HR) management practices on achieving competitive advantage through studying the mediating role of employee satisfaction in the context of five-star hotels in Northern Cyprus.

To produce numeric data as well as to test the hypothesis, the researchers employed structural equation modeling and AMOS. The testing included (n=439) questionnaires. The model suggested by the authors examined the tourism sector, and in particular, five-star hotels located in Northern Cyprus.

The main research findings revealed that HR practices had a significant effect on competitive advantage. By comparison, the research findings revealed that the mediator variable had no effect on achieving competitive advantage for five-star hotels in Northern Cyprus.

This study demonstrates originality by responding to the recommendations of prior studies conducted on HR in Northern Cyprus Island. This makes a theoretical contribution to the field, since only Turkey recognizes Northern Cyprus, which makes conducting research on this country a challenge for researchers worldwide. Based on this study’s outcomes, this paper discusses its theoretical and practical implications, as well as recommendations for future research.

The purpose of this paper is to make a conceptual argument for considering interactive work – i.e. work made up of micro-level exchanges or social interactions with third parties such as customers, patients or citizens – as a distinct analytical category in employment-related research. The argument is underpinned by the core role played by interactive work in valorisation.

This is a conceptual paper, with its argument based on key findings from the debates on symbolic interactionism, service work and interaction work. These are merged and combined with a valorisation perspective.

“Social interactions” and “work” have mostly been considered separately by theoretical sociology and the sociology of work. The author contends however that the two concepts should be viewed together, as social interactions at work are a constitutive feature of many occupations, jobs and tasks. This implies studying both exchange and social relationships between the different parties and their embeddedness in specific (multi-level) contexts. Moreover, there are two reasons why interactive work relates to specific working conditions: first, it involves customers or similar groups as third parties; second, it is key to valorisation. To systematically study interactive work, context-sensitive approaches spanning multiple (analytical) levels are recommended.

The article contributes to advancing the understanding of interactive work as a distinct form of work as yet under-theorised but deserving to be considered as a separate analytical category.