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Due to significant differences between urban and rural areas in terms of geographical environment, building scale, resident culture, social organization and other aspects, the post-disaster recovery and reconstruction models for both exhibit substantial variation. This study identifies critical strategic issues that must be addressed in housing reconstruction in the context of different social structures of urban–rural “integration” and urban–rural “dualization” to achieve the goal of “building back better” in the future.

By taking the experience of the 5.12 Wenchuan earthquake and the Taiwan 9.21 earthquake as a reference, this study provides a thematic analysis and systematic summary of the entire process of post-disaster housing reconstruction.

A successful housing reconstruction process should actively engage disaster-affected populations through participatory institutional design. Providing a diverse housing reconstruction model can coordinate the interests of the government, the market and affected individuals, promoting harmony of residential, productive and ecological functions. However, it can also lead to the division of existing communities.

This research relies on existing literature, government publications, academic studies and news reports, which may carry inherent biases or omissions. Future research can benefit from conducting more extensive and long-term post-reconstruction surveys to assess the sustained impact of recovery efforts while also considering additional data sources to ensure comprehensive and unbiased analyses.

With the support of post-disaster reconstruction policies, diverse changes in land use can lead to urban and rural spatial pattern reform and sustainable regional development, providing a reference for formulating optimal strategies.

This study carries significant societal implications by addressing critical strategic issues in housing reconstruction within varying urban–rural social structures. It highlights the importance of engaging affected populations through participatory design and harmonizing government, market and individual interests. The research introduces strategies for activating rural construction land quotas and creating new funding sources, promoting sustainable regional development. Its findings contribute to post-disaster reconstruction models, offering valuable insights for policymakers and stakeholders, ultimately leading to more effective and inclusive recovery efforts and benefiting disaster-prone areas worldwide.

This research primarily investigates the market circulation patterns of urban and rural land under different social structures, delves into the strategies for sources of housing reconstruction funding, along with an assessment of their effectiveness.

This research examined the accountability measures put into practice during the housing reconstruction following the 2015 Nepal earthquakes. Additionally, it aimed to identify gaps in accountability practices and suggest approaches for improving their efficacy.

The research methodology encompassed a qualitative approach. Around 30 research participants were selected for in-depth interviews using a purposive sampling strategy to ensure data richness and relevance. The interviews were recorded, transcribed and then iteratively analysed using thematic framework analysis. This analytical technique involved identifying recurrent themes and patterns within the transcriptions of the participants' articulation.

The study showed the pivotal role of meetings and interactive forums in promoting transparency and disseminating vital information during housing reconstruction. Additionally, it underscored the contributions of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and community-based organizations (CBOs) in information dissemination within affected communities. Policy challenges centre on identifying vulnerable populations, local support mechanisms and contextualizing reconstruction policies, specifically focusing on urban heritage settlements. Strengthening local service delivery and complaint mechanisms, capacity building and defining the roles and responsibilities of actors and beneficiaries are suggestive measures for a participatory and inclusive reconstruction process.

Research holds distinctive value due to its recent inception and its focus on both the subject matter and the specific geographical context. It contributes novel insights into the principles and practices of accountability mechanisms during the housing reconstruction process following a major disaster.

Post-merger integration (PMI) is driven by coevolving processes. This paper examines the coevolution of dynamic integration strategy and network reconstruction and explores how these processes systematically enable emerging market acquirers to upgrade innovation capabilities.

This paper conducts a multi-case study based on four Chinese overseas acquisitions of manufacturing firms. The data were collected from interviews and archival documentation.

This study develops a coevolutionary framework of dynamic integration strategy and network reconstruction to explain processes and mechanisms of an acquirer’s innovation capability upgrading. This framework identifies three network motivations, namely, network access, network connection and network synergy. Under different network motivations, dynamic transitions of the acquirer’s integration strategy coevolve with multi-level reconstruction of its networks. Collectively, they are important mechanisms driving innovation capability moves from imitation innovation to asportation and reimitation innovation and then to independent innovation.

This paper responds to a recent call for more insights into the dynamics of PMI and contributes to the research on emerging market multinational corporations’ post-acquisition integration. By integrating the M&A and networks literature, the paper provides evidence of unexplored mechanism of network changes during PMI. It reveals that how acquirers manage the dynamics of PMI to gradually achieve multi-level reconstruction of their networks. Based on a coevolutionary framework, the paper provides a process perspective on how the coevolution of PMI and network reconstruction promotes the upgrading of innovation capabilities.

Cities lying within conflict zones have continually faced hardships of both war aftermath and long-term sustainable reconstruction. Challenges have surpassed the typical question of recovery from post-conflict trauma, preserving urban heritage and iconic elements of the built environment, to face issues of critical decision making, rebuilding effectiveness and funding mechanisms, leading to time-consuming processes that lack adequate consistent long-term management. Some approaches have explored methods of effective long-term city reconstruction management but have not fully developed comprehensive approaches that alleviate the management of such complex processes. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The authors devise an approach for the smart management of post-conflict city reconstruction. The authors focus on evaluation, strategic planning, reconstruction projects and implementation. The authors integrate building information modeling and geographic/geospatial information systems in a platform that allows for real-time analysis, reporting, strategic planning and decision making for managing reconstruction operations and projects among involved stakeholders including government agencies, funding organizations, city managers and public participants.

The approach suggested a smart management system for the reconstruction process of post-conflict cities. Implementing this system was shown to provide a multi-objective solution for post-conflict city reconstruction based on its interlinked modules.

Results may lack generalizability and require testing on several cases to provide rigorous findings for different case studies.

Implications include developing smart management systems for use by city managers and government authorities in post-conflict zones, as well as bottom-up decision making by including participant citizens especially populations in the diaspora.

The approach offers an integrated platform that informs city reconstruction decision makers, allowing for strategic planning tools for efficient planning, monitoring tools for continuous management during and after reconstruction, and effective platforms for communication among all stakeholders.

The politically laden nature of postdisaster recovery calls for more research on its governance, especially at the micro-scale. Apart from engineering-oriented frameworks, researchers need new theoretical underpinnings. This paper aims to review the development of the evolutionary resilience theory and use it as an analytical framework to evaluate the governance of post-earthquake reconstruction planning in China.

This paper examines how reconstruction planning is governed in the epicenter town of the 2008 Great Sichuan Earthquake, highlighting three key qualities of evolutionary resilience. The authors draw on site investigations, semistructured interviews and analysis of official and unpublished documents from various sources.

This paper finds that despite the absence of specific resilience statements in reconstruction plans of the time, qualities of evolutionary resilience, including social connectedness, flexibility and innovation, were evident in a hybrid and contradictory reconstruction planning system. In this respect, resilience thinking appears in Chinese planning earlier than generally assumed. This paper suggests that this manifestation of resilience was the result of an instrumental utility in addressing socioeconomic uncertainties in the postdisaster environment and, thus, may not be systematic.

This work enriches the understanding of recovery governance from an evolutionary resilience perspective where existing research is insufficient. It also offers ample practical guidance for similar cases in China and elsewhere.

Post-merger integration (PMI) is driven by coevolving processes. By integrating the literature on acquisitions with that of knowledge networks, this paper highlights different reconstruction mechanisms for dual knowledge networks during PMI – namely, internal knowledge network coupling and external knowledge network embeddedness. This paper aims to examine their coevolutionary relationships with PMI.

A coevolutionary framework is tested using a latent growth model and cross-lagged models. The analysis is based on longitudinal data collected from 116 Chinese technology-sourcing overseas merger and acquisition firms.

This paper unearths a novel idea that variations in post-merger reconstruction of dual knowledge networks can explain why some acquirers increase the degree of integration faster than the others. The results show that the internal knowledge network coupling leads to more knowledge similarity and, in turn, causes a higher degree of integration. The external knowledge network embeddedness also causes higher relative network status of the acquirer, which consequently leads to a higher degree of integration. Furthermore, results from cross-lagged models confirm that an increase in the degree of integration positively influences subsequent changes in the internal knowledge network coupling and external knowledge network embeddedness, thus forming a coevolutionary relationship over time.

This paper responds to recent calls for more insights into the dynamics of PMI. By highlighting different reconstruction mechanisms for internal and external knowledge networks during PMI, this paper explains why it is important to understand PMI dynamics from a dual knowledge network perspective. This paper is the first to adopt a coevolutionary perspective and provide a more comprehensive dynamic framework between PMI and reconstruction of dual knowledge networks. Besides, this paper contributes to the research on emerging market multinational corporations’ cross-border merger and acquisition integration from a dynamic perspective, revealing the time effects of traditionally favored light-touch integration.

The paper aims to integrate relevant “people” into public-private partnerships (PPP) to establish a public–private–people partnership (4P) approach that targets more sustainable and better value for money post-disaster infrastructure projects. This recognises “people” as major stakeholders apart from the public and private sectors. This paper also draws on a parallel study of relationship management (RM) to counteract problems arising from multiple participants and to synergise the public, private and “people” groupings.

Semi-structured interviews, questionnaire surveys, a case study and a validation exercise through a focus group meeting were adopted to obtain empirical data and develop the 4P framework. Triangulation research strategy combining literature review, interviews and questionnaire survey were adopted in the parallel study of RM.

It is concluded that 4P has great potential to achieve the targets of enhanced sustainability and value of money in post-disaster scenarios. In addition, “people” can provide the “missing link” in traditional PPP to further cement the partnership and achieve effective and integrated partnership between multiple participants.

This paper adds a new dimension to PPP in proposing the integration of “people” into PPP to address prevalent gaps in identifying overall sustainable value. It also develops a practical 4P framework to guide practitioners who may wish to test it, to whatever extent possible. In parallel, it provides a methodological and theoretical foundation for such public, private and people partnerships in post-disaster infrastructure development.

Rural building practices, especially in developing communities, are often plagued by inadequate local construction knowledge and a limited understanding of the best building practice guidelines. This has contributed significantly to compounding the effect of significant catastrophic events. The purpose of this paper is to examine the potential impact of disaster knowledge management (DKM) on improving housing resilience and makes particular reference to the 2005 earthquake in rural Pakistan.

Our research uses a comprehensive literature review that involves a qualitative approach to research aimed at understanding the 2005 earthquakes, their impacts, reconstruction challenges and DKM. Conventional published journals, articles, previous case studies and books were included. But importantly, to take in relevant local information, the review also took in published government reports, disaster mitigation policy documents, national and international NGOs publications, conference proceedings and news articles. More than 80 research papers and conference proceedings over 21 years, from 2001 to 2021, were analyzed in eight major online databases. These include Google Scholar, Science Direct, Research Gate, Scopus, Jstor, Springer, Emerald and Semantic Scholar.

The investigation identified that DKM has an important role to play in capacity building and technical knowledge transmission relating to seismic guidelines aimed at improving housing resilience. Consequently, a theoretical framework was developed, focused primarily on the post-2005 rural reconstruction mechanism and the identification of key challenges to disseminating seismic guidelines effectively in relation to rural construction practices.

This paper makes an original contribution by developing a DKM framework via the identification of key challenges that need to be addressed, in relation to rural construction practices, generally, but particularly in the Pakistan context.

This paper aims to detail how consumers can harness the power of brands to reconstruct their lives.

The authors followed five brand devotees over several years, using various data collection methods (long interviews, observations, videos, photographs and secondary data) to study how they reconstructed their lives with a brand.

Consumers transform their existence through a distinctive form of brand appropriation that the authors call brand magnification, which unfolds: materially, narratively and socially. First, brand devotees scatter brand incarnations around themselves to remain in touch with the brand because the brand has become an especially positive dimension of their lives. Second, brand devotees mobilize the brand to craft a completely new life story. Finally, they build a branded clan of family and friends that socially validates their reconstructed identity.

The research extends more muted depictions of brands as soothing balms calming consumer anxieties; the authors document the mechanism through which consumers remake their lives with a brand.

The research helps rehabilitate the role of brands in contemporary consumer culture. Organizations can use the findings to help stimulate and engage employees by unveiling the brand’s life-transforming potential for consumers.

The authors characterize a distinctive, extreme and unique form of brand appropriation that positively transforms consumer lives.