Search results

The purpose of this paper is two‐fold: to discuss the key factors determining foreign direct investment (FDI) intra‐industry spillovers and to examine the presence and the extent of these spillovers in Switzerland, by testing them for the services/construction industry, where there is currently a scarcity of evidence.

The assessment of spillovers calls for a detailed analysis of these effects according to the mechanisms by which they occur (namely, the increase in competition, demonstration effects, and worker mobility), and whether the size and the extent of spillovers depend on the interaction between their mechanisms and the existing technological capacities of domestic firms.

The regression results are affirmative, in that domestic firms with high technological capacities appear to gain spillover benefits from FDI heightening competition, while mid‐ and low‐technology firms benefit a lot from demonstration effects. In addition, spillovers for high‐ and mid‐technology firms appear to be largely co‐determined by the level of their human capital. Only domestic firms that invested heavily in absorptive capacity benefit from spillovers.

The evidence on spillover effects has not yet been conclusive. Hence, this paper proposes some components for a research agenda on FDI and intra‐industry spillovers.

The study provides insights for Swiss policy makers about how to promote the beneficial spillover effects of FDI.

The process of spilling over is correctly described in a more satisfactory model and then the impact of this process is accurately identified.

The purpose of this paper is to study the influence of intrapreneurship on the performance of companies.

The study develops and tests a theoretical model where the intrapreneurship is supported on the factors innovation, risk/uncertainty, risk/challenges, competitive energy, proactivity and autonomy, and the performance on the factors financial performance, growth and improvement and on the variable productivity. Based on a questionnaire, data from a sample of 217 medium‐sized Portuguese companies were obtained. The study used the confirmatory analysis method based on structural equation modeling (SEM).

The intrapreneurship has a multidimensional structure. This model proves its influence on the growth and improvement and the importance and explanatory power of this latent variable.

The techniques used to verify the effect of firm size and the age periods has not been sufficiently explored and the direct effect of latent variables of intrapreneurship on performance was not assessed. This work contributes to the theory highlighting the importance of factors in intrapreneurship and the influence of the context in the model.

It was verified that the intrapreneurship has obvious effects on the measures of qualitative performance – growth and improvement. This is helpful for researchers looking for appropriate performance measures and for intrapreneurs aiming to get support for their decisions and evaluate their performance.

This study considers the separation of the propensity for risk in two latent variables and includes the autonomy to characterize intrapreneurship and demonstrates the importance of qualitative measures of performance perceived in the perspective of medium and long term.

The Construction Industry Training Board has found itself in quite an unusual and interesting role in meeting new demands for the training of demolition workers at all levels. For a Board that has in scope to it some 31 occupations ranging from bricklayer to plumber to plant operator to site agent, it has rarely had such an opportunity to initiate training in an area which is virtually virgin territory. This is because until November this year there has been practically no training done at all in the hazardous demolition and dismantling industry.

Organizational innovation is critical for firm competitive advantage. Yet, we do not know enough about the relationship between leadership and organizational innovation. The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of chief executive officer (CEO) transformational and transactional leadership on organizational innovation. The authors examine the moderating role of environmental dynamism.

The authors collected survey-based data from top management team members in 163 companies in services, construction, manufacturing and other industries in the USA. The authors used multiple regression analyses to test the study hypotheses.

The empirical findings indicate that CEO transformational and transactional leadership behaviors positively influence organizational innovation. However, organizations benefit more from transformational leadership in dynamic environments.

This study highlights the role of CEO leadership behavior in the pursuit of organizational innovation. Significantly, the study shows that both transformational and transactional leadership can enhance organizational innovation. However, their effectiveness is contingent on environmental dynamism. This contributes to the firm innovation literature by clarifying how specific types of CEO leadership influence organizational innovation in different environmental conditions.

The aim of this paper is to present part of continuing research on the challenges of entrepreneurial business ventures to commercialize innovative construction products in the residential construction industry.

The authors use workshop and survey data on the role of the developer/builder to further develop the domain‐specific commercialization model for residential construction products. The authors propose a cross‐functional system to better facilitate innovation.

Successful concurrent commercialization requires risk sharing among all members of a product's supply chain. The authors advocate concurrent management in commercialization, which requires information sharing and knowledge transfer among supply‐chain members early in a commercialization project and a special form of concurrent engineering for construction products, which is called concurrent commercialization (CC).

The research indicates that addressing the developer/builder risk along the entire supply chain is one key determinant to a successful commercialization project. It also indicates that commercialization involves more than just technical product design; commercialization cuts across all functional areas.

The research data, along with the review of the literature on product innovation and commercialization, lead one to advocate concurrent engineering for construction products termed concurrent commercialization (CC). Since the research clearly indicates that the developer/builder is the most reluctant customer in the supply chain, CC applied to construction products emphasizes the influence of mitigating developer/builder risks in the design of a commercialization project.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship of separation of cash flow rights (CFR) and control rights (CR) and debt policy of Malaysian listed family firms.

The sample of this study consists of 256 observations from companies listed in the Main Board of Bursa Malaysia for the period between year 2005 and 2009. The multivariate ordinary least square regressions have been conducted in order to examine the relationships between separation of CFR and CR and debt.

The study reveals that the separation of CFR and CR does not lead to the increase of debt policy among Malaysian listed family-owned firms. Thus, the results suggest there is no expropriation of minority interests in Malaysian family-owned firms. The plausible reason is that Malaysia has better investor or shareholder protection laws compared to other emerging markets such as Indonesia, Thailand and Philippines.

The first limitation is the underestimation of CFR and CR because the affiliated business of unlisted firms and foreign companies are excluded. The second limitation is the presence of 100 percent ownership in firms controlled by family-owned firms or in firms that are controlled by another firms which are under the controlled of family-owned firms, or both, will lead to equal proportion of CFR and CR. Thus, the degree of separation of CFR and CR of such firms are indeterminable.

This paper investigates the expropriation of minority interests by Malaysian family-owned firms on which has not been explored.

This paper aims to explore to what extent the total quality management (TQM) is practised by Hong Kong large‐sized public listed building contractors (PLC) and non‐listed building contractors (NLC), and what management areas need more attention in order to achieve the TQM spirit of continuous improvement.

This paper reports the investigation results of the six TQM practices (X1‐X6) by Hong Kong large‐sized building contractors via a self‐assessment questionnaire survey, which is modified from the contents of the self‐assessment questionnaire designed by the Baldrige National Quality Program. Descriptive statistics, one‐way ANOVA, multivariate tests and correlation matrix were employed to analyze the results.

The survey results show that there is a significant difference in the six TQM practices between the PLC and the NLC through one‐way ANOVA. PLC out‐performed NLC in strategic planning (X2), particularly the practice of development and deployment of strategy. Moreover, strong correlations existed between the TQM practices of X1 (leadership) and X2, X2, and X5 (human resource focus), and X6 (process management) and X5. Therefore, PLC should pay more attention to the management areas of X1, X2, X5, and X6. Furthermore, NLC should enhance and balance their TQM practices as suggested by the tests of between‐subjects effects.

Hong Kong building contractors should pay more attention to the strategic planning, human resources management and process management in order to attain the goal of continuous improvement and thus the business excellence of TQM.

The study shows that there is a significant difference in practising the six TQM (Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award) criteria between PLC and NLC in strategic planning (X2).

To identify the management tools and variables that impact briefing, assess the nature of current briefing practices, review the need for more structured techniques and determine the place of facilities management in briefing.

A detailed literature review to analyse and critique the briefing process was followed by a brainstorming session to explore relevant technical frameworks. A questionnaire survey investigated opinions of structured approaches to briefing.

The facilities manager operating within the strategic framework of the client organisation and having the necessary skills is a natural choice as brief writer. Facilities managers’ involvement is not strongly reflected in this research, indicating perhaps that they do not consider briefing a natural role or that they do not possess the skills for its undertaking. It is concluded that while briefing remains an unstructured investigative process, the skills for which are learned through experience, then architects and project managers will continue to dominate the activity.

Currently, briefing is unstructured, iterative, and uses a variety of media for its exposition. More formalised processes recognising strategic and project briefing are advocated in the literature. Options for improvement include a structured approach to investigative briefing and facilitated value management.

The limited involvement of facilities managers in briefing prompted this research. This paper identifies the structure and variables impacting the briefing process and concludes with options for formalised approaches to briefing.

The construction industry, being one of the main activities in the ever-demanding need for technology developments, sometimes falls short of other industries in terms of implementation. The adoption of Big Data (BD) in industries such as health and retail has had positive impacts in aspects such as decision-making processes and forecasting trends that allow planning some future business movements. Hence, the question of whether these results can be imitated in the construction industry. Therefore, this paper aims to address the level of awareness identified as a first step towards implementation of the BD concept within the construction industry in the Dominican Republic (DR).

As little to no information exist on the subject; the selected approach to perform this research was qualitative methodology; 21 semi-structured interviews were studied using situational awareness. Four levels of awareness were developed based on the Endsley’s Situation Awareness model.

The results showed that nearly 95% of the interviewees had either no knowledge or very basic awareness of the BD requirements or intermediate awareness, but only 5% had applied BD concepts in the construction industry.

This study shows the gaps that exist in the understanding and implementation of BD concepts in the DR construction industry. This paper establishes the need to develop continuous professional development programmes for construction professionals and a need to update curriculum in construction-related education.

Despite the extensive adoption of radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology across many industry supply chains, the extent of adoption in healthcare is far behind the earlier expectation. The purpose of this study is to better understand the current RFID adoption in healthcare by looking beyond the existing body of work using both the task-technology fit (TTF) framework and network externalities theories.

A survey is employed in this study, and the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique is used to test the hypotheses of the proposed model.

The findings are twofold. First, both TTF and network externalities exert a positive impact on the RFID adoption in the healthcare sector; and second, no synergistic effect can be found between these two for further increasing the adoption. This is different from what the extant research found on other technology adoptions across various supply chains.

This paper provides contributions to both researchers and practitioners. For researchers, this study enriches the body of knowledge of RFID adoption by being the first to apply the network externalities and TTF theories to predict the adoption of RFID in healthcare. For healthcare practitioners, to make the RFID adoption easier and more effective, any initial applications of RFID tools should be centered on those for which there is a more natural application. Further, for those who propose an RFID adoption should start with a product that has a sizable adoption community; this may help persuade senior management to make the adoption decision.