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The purpose of this paper is to explore the black box between high-performance work systems (HPWS) and innovation performance in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Through application of the ability, motivation and opportunity (AMO) framework, the study examines the mediating roles of innovation-specific ability, motivation and voice behaviors between HPWS and SMEs’ innovation performance.

The hypotheses are tested on data collected through a self-administered questionnaire from 237 SMEs in Pakistan.

Findings indicate that human capital, motivation and employee voice fully mediate the relationship between HPWS and innovation performance in SMEs.

The cross-sectional research design and self-reported measures warrant caution for the interpretation of findings. Future research may consider a longitudinal research design and objective measures.

SMEs need to invest in the adoption and implementation of HPWS that will develop innovation-specific abilities, motivation and voice behaviors simultaneously among employees that will lead to higher innovation performance.

This is the first study of its kind utilizing an AMO framework to investigate the underlying mechanism through which HPWS affect innovation performance in SMEs.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the critical risk factors affecting mining projects in Ghana.

A purposive sampling approach was used in selecting the respondents for the study. These were practitioners working on mining projects in Ghana.

The study identified 22 risk factors contributing to mining project failure in Ghana. The five most critical mining project risk factors based on both probability of occurrence and impact were unstable commodity prices, inflation/exchange rate, land degradation, high cost of living and government bureaucracy for obtaining licenses. Mitigation measures for addressing the identified risk factors were identified.

This paper is limited to data collected from practitioners working on mining projects. Due to geographic and logistical constraints, the study did not include the perception of local communities in quantifying the risk factors.

This paper has documented the critical risk factor affecting the mining industry in Ghana. Though the identified risk types are also prevalent in other sectors of the construction industry, the key findings of this paper emphasize the need for a comprehensive risk management culture in the mining sector. From an academic research perspective, the paper contributes to a conceptual risk assessment framework.

The information gathered through this research can be utilized in identifying and understanding risks during the early stages of mining project implementation.

The allocation of risk among project participants is an important determinant of innovation success in construction projects. The purpose of this paper is to examine the capacity of risk allocation to encourage the implementation of environmental innovation, particularly sustainable energy innovation (SEI), within the private finance initiative (PFI) project delivery model.

A four-case qualitative research methodology is adopted within the context of the UK government’s building schools for the future programme.

The findings identify that SEIs are encouraged on the innovative projects by the perceived clarity, appropriateness, and manageability of the risks associated with the project’s energy performance on the PFI contract. The main SEIs were largely developed as strategies to manage long-term energy performance risks allocated to private sector actors and safeguard their long-term commitment to the project. However, the findings indicate that excessive perceived innovation-related risks, particularly capital cost risk, may restrict further SEIs to be implemented.

The qualitative case study approach adopted may limit the generalisability of the findings.

The study and provides practical guidance to policymakers and project managers in developing strategies to support the implementation of SEI in PFI projects.

The study attends to a significant gap in knowledge as there is a lack of conceptual and empirical work on managing innovative processes for sustainable energy in PFI projects.

The literature related to knowledge management (KM) is robust with respect to insights regarding firms in general. However, less is known about the KM of family firms despite these firms being the most common form of business organization worldwide. Further, even though the number of studies examining family-firm KM has increased in recent years, the insights gained remain fragmented. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to help coalesce and advance the study of family-firm KM.

In pursuit of these goals, a systematic literature review was conducted. Using a 6-step, systematic literature review protocol, 74 articles focused on family-firm KM published in 23 journals were identified and reviewed.

This literature review contributes to the synthesis and advancement of family-firm KM scholarship in several ways. First, key factors and relationships are identified and integrated into a robust framework. Second, scholarly insights are synthesized, and a review of the primary antecedents, outcomes and moderating factors associated with family-firm KM processes is presented. Third, promising opportunities for future research are highlighted to advance family-firm KM scholarship.

With a focus on reducing the fragmentation in the literature, this review synthesizes insights related to the most commonly studied antecedents, outcomes and moderators associated with family-firm KM. Additionally, antecedents are organized and reviewed according to the nature of their influence on family-firm KM processes, highlighting the simultaneous opposite effects of some influences. Further, key outcomes are synthesized based on their family versus firm-centric orientation. Even further, insights and opportunities focused on advancing the theory, antecedents, outcomes, moderators and other issues related to family-firm KM are presented in an effort to support the continued progress of scholarship in this area.

This study aims to focus on identifying the business risks that cause a delay in the oil and gas projects and suggest the way forward toward the better development of the city gas distribution (CGD) sector in India by suggesting the appropriate mitigation strategies.

The study is a systematic review of literature on risks causing a delay in oil and gas projects. Comprehensive literature was carried out following a seven-step model to develop an exhaustive list of risk classifications and factors, risk identification methods and strategies to mitigate the risks. Weighted average ranking method is used to identify the top ten risks affecting oil and gas projects.

This research identifies the top ten risks frequently impacting the oil and gas projects, which are project cost, improper project management, change in economic parameters, currency exchange rate, government regulations and laws, contractor and subcontractors issues, lack of skilled labor, delay in approvals, health and safety issues and force majeure. These risks are primarily responsible for cost overrun and project delay. Additionally, this study recommends the implementation of joint risk management to avoid CGD project delay.

The CGD industry is in the growing stage with many projects under construction. However, there is a lack of research to manage risks in the CGD project. This study contributes to the limited literature available on risk management in oil and gas projects. Additionally, it highlights the need for further research to explore the different risks factors affecting the CGD business and its operations and subsequently develop appropriate mitigation strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the use of 802.11e MAC to resolve the transmission control protocol (TCP) unfairness.

The paper shows how a TCP sender may adapt its transmission rate using the number of hops and the standard deviation of recently measured round‐trip times to address the TCP unfairness.

Simulation results show that the proposed techniques provide even throughput by providing TCP fairness as the number of hops increases over a wireless mesh network (WMN).

Future work will examine the performance of TCP over routing protocols, which use different routing metrics. Other future work is scalability over WMNs. Since scalability is a problem with communication in multi‐hop, carrier sense multiple access (CSMA) will be compared with time division multiple access (TDMA) and a hybrid of TDMA and code division multiple access (CDMA) will be designed that works with TCP and other traffic. Finally, to further improve network performance and also increase network capacity of TCP for WMNs, the usage of multiple channels instead of only a single fixed channel will be exploited.

By allowing the tuning of the 802.11e MAC parameters that have previously been constant in 802.11 MAC, the paper proposes the usage of 802.11e MAC on a per class basis by collecting the TCP ACK into a single class and a novel congestion control method for TCP over a WMN. The key feature of the proposed TCP algorithm is the detection of congestion by measuring the fluctuation of RTT of the TCP ACK samples via the standard deviation, plus the combined the 802.11e AIFS and CW_min allowing the TCP ACK to be prioritised which allows the TCP ACKs will match the volume of the TCP data packets. While 802.11e MAC provides flexibility and flow/congestion control mechanism, the challenge is to take advantage of these features in 802.11e MAC.

With 802.11 MAC not having flexibility and flow/congestion control mechanisms implemented with TCP, these contribute to TCP unfairness with competing flows.

This study aims to identify the operational and financial risks associated with the city gas distribution project in India and suggest appropriate strategies to mitigate them.

This study aims to identify the operational and financial risks associated with the city gas distribution project in India and suggest appropriate strategies to mitigate them. The survey data is evaluated using factor analysis to understand the latent structure of the critical risk factors. Second, the author uses Situation, Actor and Process–Learning, Action and Performance framework to suggest the mitigation strategies for the identified operational and financial risk factors.

The research identified five critical risk factors and suggested 39 mitigation strategies to address operational and risk factors impacting CGD projects. The findings of this research will enable the CGD companies to formulate long-term strategies for their business and adopt proactive measures to mitigate the operational and financial risks causing delay and increasing project costs. This study also highlights the importance of government support in developing a conducive environment for CGD industry to thrive.

The CGD projects are critical for natural gas growth in India’s energy mix. The project delay leads to a rise in the total cost involved and increases the payback period for the CGD companies. To the best of authors’ knowledge, this research is first of its kind that identifies the critical operational and financial risks affecting CGD projects in India and suggests the mitigating strategies for them.

The purpose of this paper is to extend the body of knowledge on health care facilities management (FM) by investigating the extent to which public hospitals in Nigeria have fared in terms of outsourced FM services.

The paper relied on two strands of methodology common with pragmatic research. Questionnaire survey (QS) used data from 74 respondents representing 74 hospitals, while 3 of the 74 hospitals involved in the QS were selected based on their willingness to enter the case study interview. Data collected were analysed using descriptive statistics (QS) and using narrative techniques by discussing themes, sub-themes and interconnecting themes through a chronology of events, as in grounded theory.

Findings revealed that most public hospitals do not have a policy framework for outsourcing in general and FM services in particular, giving room for duplication of functions and non-establishment of functional FM units to handle FM activities, while six FM services are outsourced in all the hospitals. Cleaning, security and catering services received the highest satisfaction ratings, while plant maintenance services, however, received the least satisfaction rating.

The paper provides the first ever survey based on empirical evidence about the state of FM services outsourced in Nigeria’s public hospitals. The survey suggests a relatively low level of usage of outsourcing for its services, as only a handful of FM services are outsourced in most of the hospitals.

This study aims to investigate the historical antecedent of baranda practice, marketing strategies of Onibaranda, as well as the benefits and challenges associated with baranda practice.

Using exploratory research design, primary data were collected from 27 interviewees in two purposively selected markets in Ibadan. Responses were audio-taped, transcribed, proofread, categorized into themes and, finally, content analyzed to decrypt the underlying thought patterns and processes.

The findings showed that the origin of the age-long practice of baranda was unknown. It was also discovered that Onibaranda used various, dynamic and situational marketing strategies to carve a niche for themselves, in response to the demand of the markets in which they operate. Lastly, the results showed that while some stakeholders see Onibaranda as useful and necessary marketing agents that uniquely connect sellers and buyers, others outline the ignoble role that Onibaranda play in their bid to create valuable exchanges between sellers and buyers.

Knowledge of this study is germane to informal market stakeholders both in Yorubaland and across the globe.

Unless baranda practice is properly regulated, various ills associated with it might discredit the numerous benefits inherent in the practice. Concerted effort by all market stakeholders is, therefore, highly imperative so as to provide rules and regulations that will guide and check the excess practices of Onibaranda in the study locations, as this will enhance customer satisfaction, sellers’ profits and smooth continued operation of Onibaranda.

This empirical study represents the first attempt to examine the structure and praxis of Onibaranda in Ibadan.

Lean healthcare is highlighted in the literature as an approach to quality improvement and operational efficiency. The purpose of this paper is to study how Lean healthcare has been implemented by analyzing empirical outcomes.

The authors used a literature review as the primary research method, following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses process. Peer-reviewed journals were analyzed – searching for Lean healthcare implementation, tools used, wastes addressed, outcomes and sustainability.

Evidence suggests that Lean can improve healthcare operational effectiveness. However, empirical studies show implementation is still highly localized with small successes. Most transformations are focused on implementing one or two Lean tools that primarily target patient waiting times and there is minimal evidence about sustainability. Establishing clear definitions for healthcare-related Lean terminology may improve practice, especially episodic care and service quality.

This work provides a Lean healthcare case review. The research makes a significant contribution to Lean healthcare by increasing understanding (scale, scope and sustainability). From a theory building perspective, the authors suggest that barriers to adoption include a common healthcare-specific Lean terminology, and a need to expand implementation beyond small successes. This understanding will help identify key areas for further research in Lean healthcare management.