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Although there has been a surge in the adoption of building information modelling (BIM) in the construction industry, the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are still struggling and perceive its adoption as risky. The SMEs in developing economies are especially on the disadvantaged side of the digital divide. Extant studies have focused on large firms and there are scanty studies on the influence of the external environments on BIM adoption in SMEs. Thus, this study espouses institutional theory (INT) to examine the influence of coercive, mimetic, and normative pressures on BIM awareness and adoption in SMEs.

A quantitative approach was employed, and data were collected from the Nigerian construction SMEs via an empirical questionnaire survey using a sequential stratified and convenient sampling method. Hypothesized relationships between the coercive, mimetic, and normative pressure and BIM in SMEs were empirically tested using the partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) technique and the model was validated with the “PLSpredict” procedure.

The results revealed that coercive and mimetic pressures significantly influence BIM adoption in SMEs while normative pressures have the strongest influence on BIM in SMEs. Also, BIM awareness is an important predictor of BIM adoption. The findings also shed light on the influence of firmographics on BIM awareness and adoption in Nigerian SMEs.

The study empirically validates the applicability of INT and highlights that BIM adoption is not only influenced by internal responses to the need for efficiency but also by external pressures. It implies a clear need for intentional isomorphic pressures in driving BIM adoption in SMEs. The study employs the INT to explain a phenomenon that has not been theoretically explored in the context of SMEs in developing economies. Lastly, the study provided valuable insights into driving BIM adoption, together with the effective practical implications for implementation and potential research areas for further studies.

Cost overruns have been identified as the most significant challenge for construction sector stakeholders. Like many developing countries, the Iranian construction industry suffers from poor cost performance. So, the current research aims to investigate the causes of cost overrun in Iranian construction projects. This paper also reviews the findings of similar studies conducted in several Asian countries.

This paper includes a literature review and a quantitative method with a questionnaire survey. The review is limited to the studies investigating the causes of cost overrun in an Asian country in the last decade. Moreover, the current research was conducted through a questionnaire prepared based on 43 common factors identified through the literature review. The required data were gathered from the representatives involved in handling construction activities in Iran. The collected data were analyzed based on relative importance index (RII), using the SPSS software package.

The results showed that poor site management, improper planning, fluctuation of prices of materials, lack of experience, and poor economic condition are the critical reasons for cost overrun in Iranian construction projects. The findings also indicated that among the studies conducted in Asian countries, the first three factors have the highest frequency.

This paper highlighted most studies concerning the cost overrun factors in construction projects in different Asian countries in recent years. Up-to-date knowledge helps to understand the complexity of this field in various periods and therefore minimizes the risk of cost overrun. This research can also be used as a benchmark for further studies to clarify similar issues in other developing countries.

The authors explore the entanglement of smartphone technology and power in this paper. This paper explores the following question: In what ways does the actualization of smartphone affordances result in empowering outcomes (i.e. increase or reduce oppression) in the daily lives of refugees? Leveraging both affordance and feminist theories, the authors develop a hybrid lens bringing attention to the contextualized relationship between social process goals and affordances for sociality, upon which the authors introduce the notion of “goal-affordance interrelations”. The authors then trace how the actualization of these interrelations increases or reduces oppression.

Using an abductive approach, the authors analyze 32 semi-structured interview transcriptions conducted with Syrian refugees in Lebanon.

The analysis in this study reveals four categories of social process goals (meet financial needs, satisfy security needs, communicate and learn and maintain pre-existing social ties) that are intimate components of contextually meaningful affordances. When actualized, the goal–affordance interrelations fundamentally shape refugee experiences of power outcomes. The findings suggest forms of empowerment where powerlessness, marginalization, violence and exploitation are perceived to be reduced. Actualization outcomes are also found to increase perceived oppression. Additionally, the findings reveal that not all interrelations are actualized, such that the anticipation of an oppressive power outcome may limit the actualization of affordances for sociality.

This research raises considerations concerning technology and oppression, and that efforts to empower refugees through technology should critically question whether the lived experiences of oppression will be reduced. The findings of this study reveal various forms of less empowering (i.e. oppressive) outcomes for the refugees sampled, they also point to the potential politicization of the actualization of goal–affordance interrelations.

Blockchain technology (BT) is a relatively new technological innovation in all industries, including the construction industry, that is used to improve supply chain management. Therefore, this study assesses the drivers for the implementation of BT in the construction supply chain management in Nigeria.

This study used a quantitative research approach, with a questionnaire survey administered to professionals in the Nigerian construction industry using the snowball sampling method, yielding 155 respondents. The collected data were analysed using descriptive and exploratory factor analysis (EFA) while Cronbach’s alpha was used to evaluate the reliability.

The analysis revealed that all the identified drivers ranked higher than the average mean item score, with level of awareness of the new technology and data management ranking topmost. The identified drivers were clustered into five categories using EFA: technological driver, social-economic driver, management driver, transparency and security driver and information driver.

This research was carried out in the Southwestern region which is one of the six geo-political zones in Nigeria using a cross-sectional survey method.

The findings will be extremely useful to both professionals and practitioners in the Nigerian construction industry in gaining knowledge about the potential drivers to the implementation of BT in construction supply chain management.

The research categorized the drivers into technological, social-economic, management, transparency and security and information driver. It also identified that level of awareness of BT as the major driver in the implementation of BT in construction supply chain management.

Although previous studies have studied the impact of spiritual leadership (SL) on employees’ innovation, the research on mechanisms and the boundary conditions for stimulating this relationship is scant. This paper aims to follow the idea of social capital theory (SCT), which contends that social relationships are resources that lead toward the development of intellectual capital, important for innovative work behavior (IWB) of employees; the mediating role of knowledge sharing self-efficacy (KSSE) and moderating role of innovation climate (IC) are considered.

The authors collected the data from the foreign and local employees working in multinational companies in China. The quantitative analysis was performed using Smart-PLS 3.0.

The results indicated that employee high-ranking of SL is positively related to KSSE. Moreover, SL is significant to enhance IWB, whereas KSSE explained this relationship. The authors also suggest that an employee’s KSSE is significant to form important behavior at work (IWB). However, IC did not play its moderating role in the SL – IWB link.

This study explores the influence of the leadership style (SL) on employees’ KSSE and the effect of KSSE on IWB, which have not been studied previously. The current study confirms the relationship between SL and IWB in the multicultural workplace and reveals the deeper influence of an individual’s belief (KSSE) mechanism between them. SCT was applied to explain the proposed relationships.

The world is confronted by various current development challenges, including global health security and climate change. The rapid growth of these challenges warned all nations regardless of their development or geographical position. As an emerging international power, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) was among these nations and is viewed as a proactive key actor.

This review was conducted as a thematic synthesis from 27 studies, reports and publications along with authors' insights. Using MS Word and Excel programs, three stages of data exploration, extraction and synthesis and analysis were applied. Data gathering, analysis and thematization and compilation.

The UAE is giving significant attention to global health and climate change. Over the past 20 years, multipolicies, strategies and bodies were developed to lead the national, regional and global SDGs. Global health and climate change became the most two notable priorities on the government agenda and its strategic thinking is that both priorities can no longer be overlooked. Nationally, the UAE has made significant economic, scientific, social and health growth. Building a resilient and world-class healthcare system was one of six national priorities of the achieved UAE National Agenda 2021. Globally, UAE has proved its global health leadership by ensuring lasting and collective multilateral partnerships and collaborations that led to remarkable achievements in global health and climate change. Examples on the global scale: partnership with the World Health Organization (WHO) to target billions of people of the world's population and ensure they get Universal Healthcare Coverage (UHC) without financial hardship, the partnership between UAE and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to establish the Global Institute for Disease Elimination (GLIDE) to fight diseases and put an end to polio. Additionally, the state's role in the COVID-19 global efforts such as vaccine development, supply chain and distribution targeted low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). The UAE has shown a constant commitment to climate change mitigation and building a sustainable ecosystem by hosting global organizations, leading initiatives, supporting countries and is now organizing the 28th Conference of the Parties (COP28) this year. Great opportunities can be exploited to promote the country's contributions through further investment in cooperation, research and technology for better knowledge, sound policies, and innovative solutions for all regional and global health and climate change challenges.

This review is a fresh evidence-synthesizing attempt to document the role of the UAE. This role is well placed to play an additional major role with all partners to address these pressing challenges by boosting its role, especially in the Middle East region and advancing a new regional-oriented revolutionary expanded developmental plan that centered on low-resource countries empowerment, multilateralism, intersectionality and lasting collaborations.

Consumer animosity in the wake of Russia–Ukraine war has gained significance in consumer behavior research. In this line, this study aims to examine the critical influence of consumer animosity in developing brand attitude and its ensuing outcomes – brand boycott behavior and brand-country image – the moderating role of perceived intrusiveness on the relationship between consumer animosity and brand attitude and the moderating role of altruism between brand attitude and behavioral outcomes.

Using the data obtained from 411 European consumers, data analysis was performed using structural equation modeling to examine the proposed relationships.

The findings revealed a strong negative influence of consumer animosity on brand attitude, which eventually leads to brand boycott behavior and a negative brand-country image. This work also confirmed the boundary condition of perceived intrusiveness on the effect of consumers’ animosity on brand attitude. Furthermore, the authors validated the moderating effects of altruistic behavior on the relationships between brand attitude and boycott behavior and brand-country image.

This study offers theoretical, practical and policy implications in international marketing domain. The authors acknowledged a few shortcomings and made some recommendations for future research.

In the context of the Russian–Ukraine war, this study creates a novel conceptual framework based on consumer animosity. In the current scenario, provide critical perspective on how European customers’ animosity to Russian brands develops their adverse attitudes. This study also highlighted the alternatives to Russian brands when they were boycotted during the Russia–Ukraine war.

There is no innovation without ideas. More than ever before, these ideas are increasingly difficult to express in a changing environment ripe with emotions. Today's organizations need to understand why their employees may or may not develop, voice and implement innovative ideas in the face of this emotional tension. Current literature focuses on external factors that empower employees to innovate. This research attempts to shift the focus to the individual by investigating the relationship between emotional intelligence, openness to experience and innovation voicing behavior.

This study employs a quantitative survey among 288 US-based workers to test a mediated model of emotional intelligence, openness to experience and innovation-focused promotive voice. The authors assessed both the measurement and structural models through partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), while controlling for a range of variables with the potential to confound construct measurements.

The findings validated the positive effect of emotional intelligence on openness to experience, while also finding a significant impact of openness to experience on innovation-focused promotive voice. More importantly, evidence suggests that openness to experience mediates the relationship between emotional intelligence and innovation focused promotive voice.

These findings shed new light on why employees might start the innovation process by developing and, ultimately, voicing innovative ideas. Further, this new insight focuses on the impact of intrapersonal factors as it relates to innovation and attempts to fill a gap in what is known about innovative behavior.

Nurses who are more engaged in their work, and have the right job characteristics and positive organizational factors, are expected to perform better. The purpose of this study is to improve the performance in the healthcare sector in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), thus this study explored the job characteristics and organizational factors that affect work engagement and job performance of nurses.

Nurses (N = 2,369) working in the public healthcare sector in the UAE were asked to provide their perceptions on work engagement and its antecedents, their performance and how they perceive justice in their workplace.

Regardless of job demands, nurses’ job performance remained unaffected by demographic factors, which was a striking finding: nurses provide quality services and manage to accomplish their tasks, at any level of demand. Justice acted as a moderator of the relationship between job resources and work engagement, which was a new addition to the literature. Nurses with low overall perceptions of justice had stronger links between job resources and work engagement. Even if the level of justice was perceived as low, work engagement remained unaffected.

Work engagement is a critical issue, but has received little attention, with most focusing on its relationship with performance as the outcome variable. This paper has therefore enriched the literature and is significant in both country and sector.

This paper investigates whether democracy plays a mediating role in the relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI) and inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

The empirical analysis is conducted using fixed effects and system GMM (Generalised Method of Moments) on a panel of 38 Sub-Saharan African countries covering the period of 1990–2018.

The results find that FDI has no direct effect on inequality whereas democracy reduces inequality directly in both the short run and the long run. The sensitivity analyses find that democracy improves equality regardless of the magnitude of FDI, resource endowment or democratic deepening whereas FDI only reduces inequality once a moderate level of democracy has been achieved.

The results discussed above thus have four policy implications. First, these results show that although democracy has inequality reducing benefits, SSA is unlikely to significantly reduce inequality unless the region purposefully diversifies its trade and FDI away from natural resources. Second, the region should continue to expand credit access to reduce inequality and attract FDI. Third, policymakers should undertake reforms that will reduce youth inequality. Lastly, the region should focus on long-run democratic reforms rather than on short-run democratization to improve governance and investor confidence.

Although there are existing studies that examine the association between FDI and inequality, FDI and democracy and democracy and inequality, this is the first study to explicitly examine the effect of democracy on the association between FDI and inequality in SSA, and the first study to separately consider the possible varied effects of contemporaneous democratization versus the long-run accumulation of democratic capital. In addition, rather than measure inequality by income alone, this study uses the more appropriate Human Development Index to account for SSA's sociological, education and income disparities.