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This paper aims to report on several initiatives towards formation of national consortium among academic libraries in Malaysia. The consortium focused on subscription of online databases.

In July 2004, CDC on behalf of PERPUN members made several initiatives towards formation of national consortium of Malaysian academic libraries. Proposal paper on the formation of the consortium has been submitted to the Ministry of Higher Education. Through “loose consortia” formed, CDC and later known as Malaysian Online E-Resources Consortium (MOLEC) succeeded in negotiating for subscription of online databases and was able to get financial aid from the Ministry of Education to subscribe several databases since 2002.

A commercial databases committee (CDC) was formed in year 2000 as a platform for academic libraries to evaluate, select, negotiate and manage the online databases. Complications involved in online databases subscriptions such as cost increase, license agreement, various formats of usage statistics, merger and takeover of publishers have made PERPUN (Malaysian Standing Conference of National and University Libraries) realize that there is a need for a formal consortium to be formed.

An improved service was established for the benefit of the academic libraries in Malaysia.

A more coordinated approach to consortial dealings is being established in Malaysia.

This is a report on the process and outcomes.

As a result of the increasing challenges of time overrun, several companies regularly set up delay assessment procedures for performance improvement and profit maximization. In the construction industry, projects are enormously complicated and involve significant budgets, and therefore optimizing project performance through the root cause analysis should be imperative for every project manager. Typically issues of delays in projects are generally discussed and problematized separately, yet a comprehensive framework for systematic analysis and grouping of delays is rarely contended. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the 4P concept (project related, practices, participants, and procurement) for identifying, analyzing, and classifying delays in the internal environment of the project development process.

The 4P conceptual framework was validated through the synthesis of the existing literature.

Interestingly, despite the increasing concerns about delays in the construction industry, most research on delays are project and/or country specific, thus no consensus about the sources of delays. The application of the proposed concept as a theoretical framework would provide an understanding of the available delay sources, their risks and use for project delay assessment and classification.

This study grouped delays based on the shared characteristics and four main sources were identified and analyzed. There may be other sources or factors, yet would be dependent or aspect of the 4P.

The study informs project teams to reduce delays in the construction industry.

The paper is an application of risk assessment tool to conceptualize delays in the internal project environment.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate consensus formation among the top and middle managers during the strategy process. Specifically, the paper seeks to gain insight into the role of strategic consensus during the transition between strategy formulation and implementation.

Adopting a social practice perspective and a single case study approach, we undertook semi-structured interviews of twenty-seven managers working in a Kuwaiti Ministry. Data collected were analyzed using thematic analysis.

We found that social interaction among individuals with similar characteristics and shared understanding fosters consensus. Factors such as alignment of strategic priorities, managerial flux and centralized control contribute to the extent to which strategic consensus is achievable. Additionally, managerial turnover and lack of empowerment hamper the development of shared understanding. Finally, that consensus on strategy content is insufficient for effective intergroup communications.

The research contributes to the strategic consensus literature from a social practice perspective as it provides new insights into the dynamics between top managers and middle managers. Significantly, it highlights the importance and need for common understanding, as well as communications prioritization among managers for consensus development and successful implementation of organization strategy.

Failure in engaging shop floor employees (including supervisory staff) in lean, lacking of supervisory skills in leading workers and lacking of lean technical knowhow among the shop floor employees are some of the major obstacles in lean transformation. One of the reasons of inefficient lean transformation is the shortages in frameworks or plans in implementing lean. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the shortfalls in the current lean implementation frameworks.

The frameworks were analysed according to the following criteria: first, “What” is the approach of lean implementation, i.e. top-down or bottom-up; second, “How” to implement lean (description of steps or sequences of lean implementation along the lean journey); third, “Why” – the reason of adoption of the proposed lean tools, techniques or practices (thereafter TTPs) in each phase of lean implementation; and fourth, “Who” are the targeted internal stakeholders to use or apply the lean TTPs that were proposed in the frameworks.

Most of the current available lean frameworks were prone to top-down approach but not bottom-up. Improvement initiatives from the shop floor employees were often overlooked by researchers. In proposing their frameworks, most of the researchers have neglected the importance of “Why” aspect in the adoption of TTPs or the framework itself without giving the “reason” for each of the elements in lean implementation. Besides the aspects of “What” and “How”, the mentioned “Why” aspect is important in contributing to capability building among the shop floor employees in carrying out improvement, problem-solving or waste elimination activities. The aspect of “Who should carry out which lean TTP” was somewhat not emphasised by most of the lean researchers. In addition, the current frameworks were prone to “one-best-way” approach with lacking of contingency sense, which is one of the common criticisms against Lean Production System.

This paper provides a critical view on the shortfalls of current lean implementation frameworks, and proposes an insight of new criteria for future research in analysing and proposing new lean implementation framework towards lean transformation.