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In large-scale group decision-making (LSGDM) situations, existing TODIM group decision-making methods often fail to account for the influence of social network relationships and the bounded rationality of decision-makers (DMs). To address this issue, a new TODIM-based group decision-making method is proposed that considers the current trust relationships among DMs in a large-scale trust relationship network.

This method consists of two main stages. In the first stage, the large-scale group is partitioned into several sub-clusters based on trust relationships among DMs. The dominance degree matrix of each sub-cluster is then aggregated into the large-scale group dominance degree. In the second stage, after aggregating the large-scale group dominance degree, the consensus index is calculated to identify any inconsistent sub-clusters. Feedback adjustments are made based on trust relationships until a consensus is reached. The TODIM method is then applied to calculate the corresponding ranking results. Finally, an illustrative example is applied to show the feasibility of the proposed model.

The proposed method is practical and effective which is verified by the real case study. By taking into account the trust relationships among DMs in the core process of LSGDM, it indeed has an impact on the decision outcomes. We also specifically address this issue in Chapter Five. The proposed method fully incorporates the bounded rationality of DMs, namely their tendency to accept the opinions of trusted experts, which aligns more with their psychology. The two-stage consensus model proposed in this paper effectively addresses the limitations of traditional assessment-based methods.

This study establishes a two-stage consensus model based on trust relationships among DMs, which can assist DMs in better understanding trust issues in complex decision-making, enhancing the accuracy and efficiency of decisions, and providing more scientific decision support for organizations such as businesses and governments.

The main goal of this research work is the optimization of the purchasing business process in the Moroccan public sector in terms of transparency and budgetary optimization. The authors have worked on the public university as an implementation field.

The design of the research work followed the design science research (DSR) methodology for information systems. DSR is a research paradigm wherein a designer answers questions relevant to human problems through the creation of innovative artifacts, thereby contributing new knowledge to the body of scientific evidence. The authors have adopted a techno-functional approach. The technical part consists of the development of an intelligent recommendation system that supports the choice of optimal information technology (IT) equipment for decision-makers. This intelligent recommendation system relies on a set of functional and business concepts, namely the Moroccan normative laws and Control Objectives for Information and Related Technology's (COBIT) guidelines in information system governance.

The modeling of business processes in public universities is established using business process model and notation (BPMN) in accordance with official regulations. The set of BPMN models constitute a powerful repository not only for business process execution but also for further optimization. Governance generally aims to reduce budgetary wastes, and the authors' recommendation system demonstrates a technical and methodological approach enabling this feature. Implementation of artificial intelligence techniques can bring great value in terms of transparency and fluidity in purchasing business process execution.

Business limitations: First, the proposed system was modeled to handle one type products, which are computer-related equipment. Hence, the authors intend to extend the model to other types of products in future works. Conversely, the system proposes optimal purchasing order and assumes that decision makers will rely on this optimal purchasing order to choose between offers. In fact, as a perspective, the authors plan to work on a complete automation of the workflow to also include vendor selection and offer validation. Technical limitations: Natural language processing (NLP) is a widely used sentiment analysis (SA) technique that enabled the authors to validate the proposed system. Even working on samples of datasets, the authors noticed NLP dependency on huge computing power. The authors intend to experiment with learning and knowledge-based SA and assess the' computing power consumption and accuracy of the analysis compared to NLP. Another technical limitation is related to the web scraping technique; in fact, the users' reviews are crucial for the authors' system. To guarantee timeliness and reliable reviews, the system has to look automatically in websites, which confront the authors with the limitations of the web scraping like the permanent changing of website structure and scraping restrictions.

The modeling of business processes in public universities is established using BPMN in accordance with official regulations. The set of BPMN models constitute a powerful repository not only for business process execution but also for further optimization. Governance generally aims to reduce budgetary wastes, and the authors' recommendation system demonstrates a technical and methodological approach enabling this feature.

The adopted techno-functional approach enabled the authors to bring information system governance from a highly abstract level to a practical implementation where the theoretical best practices and guidelines are transformed to a tangible application.

This research paper generates new insights into the challenges of implementation in women’s enterprise policy. It argues that organisations involved in policy implementation need to be understood as operating in a context of institutional pluralism and answers: How do organisations involved in the implementation of women’s enterprise policy manage the challenges of institutional pluralism?

Addressing the need for women’s enterprise policy to learn from the past, the research adopts a historical approach to the study of policy implementation through examination of the UK’s Phoenix Development Fund (1999–2008). It analyses a wide range of secondary sources to examine 34 projects funded and supported by the Phoenix Development Fund that targeted women entrepreneurs.

Potentially conflicting institutional logics associated with central government, mainstream business support and local communities were managed through four key processes: dominance; integration; constellation and bridging. The management of institutional pluralism was effective in delivering support to communities but not in providing an effective platform for learning in government or establishing sustainable, long-term mechanisms.

The paper develops an empirical contribution to practice through identification of processes to manage the challenges of institutional pluralism and lessons for community-engaged policy implementation. A theoretical contribution to academic debates is provided by the conceptualisation of these challenges in terms of institutional pluralism and the novel concept of institutional bridging. The study also demonstrates the value of historical methods for women’s enterprise policy to learn the lessons of the past.

As an important part of national governance, the online communication of education policies usually attracts the attention of many subjects, including the public and the media. Existing research mainly focuses on analysing communication behaviour of a single subject. However, with the rapid development of social media, policy information communication is often accompanied by the participation of multiple subjects and forms diversified communication behaviours and interaction patterns. The comprehensive identification of multiple subjects and their interactions can accurately depict the communication process and effectively support the efficient communication of policies. Therefore, this paper aims to conduct fine-grained analysis on the multiple subjects in information communication of the education policy.

This paper explored the communication and interaction process of the education policy via multidimensional analysis. Specifically, the authors firstly obtained multi-source communication data to identify key communication subjects. Secondly, the authors mined the communication contents generated by communication subjects to measure the diversified correlations between subjects. Finally, the authors depicted the interaction of subjects in policy information communication.

The experimental results reveal that there are multiple key subjects in the policy information communication, and the communication roles of the subjects change with the communication process, including dominance role, one-way or two-way effect role. This further indicates the need to allocate resources dynamically in the process of policy communication.

Analysing the process of policy communication and identifying the dynamic interaction between communication subjects can provide more a comprehensive and detailed decision-making basis for policy formulation and implementation. In addition, the research ideas and methods presented in this paper expand the perspective of information communication research.

The energy performance gap (EPG) in building construction has been one of the major barriers to the realization of environmental and economic sustainability in the built environment. Although there have been a few studies addressing this issue, studying this topic with a special focus on the project delivery process has been almost overlooked. Hence, this study aims to address the EPG in building construction through the lens of collaborative and life cycle-based project delivery.

In order to realize the objective of this study, the development of a theoretical framework based on the literature review was followed by a qualitative study in which 21 semi-structured interviews were conducted with Finnish project professionals representing clients, design/planning experts, constructors and building operation/maintenance experts to explore their views on the topic under study.

The findings reveal the project delivery-related causes of EPG in building construction. Moreover, the obtained results present a collaborative and life cycle-based delivery model that integrates project and product (i.e. building) life cycles, and it is compatible with all types of contractual frameworks in building construction projects.

Although the findings of this study significantly contribute to theory and practice in the field of collaborative and sustainable construction project delivery, it is acknowledged that these findings are based on Finnish professionals’ input, and expanding this research to other regions is a potential area for further studies. Moreover, the developed model, although validated in Finland, needs to be tested in a broader context as well to gain wider generalizability.

The obtained results reveal the significance and impact of collaborative and life cycle-based project development and delivery on the realization of environmentally sustainable building construction.

The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of organizational identification on employee work engagement (EWE) and to what extent this relationship strengthens/weakens when moderated by gender and leader social dominance orientation (SDO).

To test the hypothesized relationships, the authors collected data from supervisors (n = 101) and their subordinates (n = 478) working in medium and large organizations in the service industry. To test the hypothesized model, the authors used structural equation modeling in MPlus.

The data revealed that organizational identification is positively associated with EWE. Interestingly, the effects were stronger on female EWE than male EWE. Furthermore, the findings of this study displayed that leader SDO negatively moderated the relationship between organizational identification and EWE. The results of this study were more potent when the leader SDO was low versus high.

The findings mainly contribute to the social identity theory by examining the moderating role of gender and leader SDO on the link between organizational identification and EWE. This study offers practitioners insights into the importance of gender in EWE and the type of leadership. Conducting this study in a developing economy provided a unique contextual finding, which will be helpful for the practitioners who want to improve the work engagement of female employees.

High-tech start-up creation is associated with complex challenges originating from quick transformations in technologies and markets. To raise start-up survival and success chances, founders need to ensure a rapid conversion of a venture idea into a working business. This paper aims to explore how identity-related characteristics of founders influence the speed of the start-up creation process.

For this study, a longitudinal multiple-case-study design was selected to identify a vivid flow of decisions and actions taken by high-tech start-ups for analysis in depth. Over 20 months, a series of interviews were organized with founders of six start-ups located in the same business incubator in Russia. Also, a set of additional data sources was engaged, including publicly available data and internal documents provided by businesses.

The findings reveal contrasting dynamics of start-up creation processes among founders with differing role identities. Identity fit and identity misfit are suggested to be serious pull and push factors in the process of organizational becoming through the impact they have on the situational regulatory focus of founders.

The current research contributes to the entrepreneurship stream of research by extending the knowledge of how cognition affects the process of new venture creation.

This research analyses the searching, interacting and purchasing behavior of shoppers seeking semidurable and fast-moving consumer goods in an immersive virtual reality (VR) store, showing how physical examinations and visual inspections relate to purchases.

Around 60 participants completed two forced-purchase tasks using a head-mounted display with visual and motor-tracking systems. A second study using a pictorial display of the products complemented the VR study.

The findings indicate differences in shopping behavior for the two product categories, with semidurable goods requiring greater inspection and deliberation than fast-moving consumer goods. In addition, visual inspection of the shelf and products was greater than a physical examination through virtual handling for both product categories. The paper also presents relationships between visual inspections and product interactions during the searching stage of purchase decisions.

The research consists of two types of implicit measures in this study: eye-tracking and hand-product interactions. This study reveals the suitability of implicit measures for evaluating consumer behavior in VR stores.

This study aims to dissect firm knowledge into two main types: internal firm knowledge (knowledge workers) and external firm knowledge (relational knowledge with other firms). This study aims to investigate how each type affects the productivity of the firms. This study also examines how this effect differs among Egyptian firms in the agriculture, manufacturing and service sectors.

The authors use firm-level data in Egypt on the sectoral level. The properties of instrumental variables regression using two-stage least-squares estimation are adopted to overcome endogeneity and omitted variable bias in the empirical estimations.

The study’s findings reveal that the effects of internal and external knowledge on the firm productivity are sector-specific; knowledge-workers and relational knowledge are two times more effective for agriculture than manufacturing and service firms; external knowledge plays a vital role in increasing productivity relative to internal knowledge for the manufacturing sector; finally, internal and external knowledge has the same effect on the service firms.

This research adds to the body knowledge-based theory of the firm by examining the effects of internal and external knowledge on the firms’ productivity. In particular, the paper differentiates this effect across three sectors: agriculture, manufacturing and services. This paper also suggests a novel empirical methodology to address endogeneity and omitted variable bias in this literature of firm knowledge and productivity.

This study aims to examine performance assessment of organizational units through psychological empowerment (PE) and employee engagement (EE) approach and whether this relationship differs among efficient and inefficient organization units.

This study drew on merging the principal component analysis (PCA), data envelopment analysis (DEA) and partial least square-multigroup analysis (PLS-MGA) to benchmark the performance of organizational units affiliated with Zagazig University in Egypt using PE dimensions as inputs and EE as output. Besides investigating whether PE inputs have the same effect among efficient and inefficient units.

Performance assessment based on independent data showed that all the investigated organizational units are not at the same efficiency level. The results revealed that there are eight efficient units versus seven inefficient ones. Moreover, PLS-MGA results demonstrated that no significant differences concerning the impact of PE inputs on EE between efficient and inefficient units groups. Nevertheless, the effect of these inputs was slightly higher in the former.

Studies on EE performance in the service sector are scarce in the literature, this study is a novel contribution of exploring EE efficiency in Egypt as a developing economy. Specifically, using the PCA-DEA-structural equation modeling approach.