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Sports facilities can play a vital role in encouraging physical activity and sport. Also, just the distribution of sports facilities is very important for better access to these facilities. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to evaluate spatial justice in the distribution of built outdoor sports facilities in the city of Isfahan, Iran and provide insight for planning in terms of equitable accessibility.

All facilities located in the 15 areas of the city, whether private or public, built for the purpose of physical activity and sports programs were considered in this study (107 cases). To obtain information on the locations of the outdoor sports facilities, Isfahan Atlas data, which has been compiled by Isfahan Municipality was used. Arc geographic information systems environment and its different algorithms were also used to perform different calculations and prepare maps.

The results indicated the unfair distribution of built outdoor sports facilities in the city of Isfahan in terms of spatial justice based on the number of built outdoor sports facilities in each area, the population, land area, population density and the spatial pattern of the facilities.

In this regard, urban authorities and sport managers should make an effort to decrease or obviate inequity in access to outdoor sports facilities for the purpose of promoting participation in physical activity and sport and providing residents with numerous other benefits.

This paper has concluded that spatial justice in the distribution of built outdoor sports facilities for the improvement of access to these facilities is very important.

Social, spatial and environmental justice are inseparable, and key for sustainable urban development. The city is the cradle of innovation and production. Also, the city is the site of riots, where protesters demand their right to access services and resources. The purpose of this paper is to answer the question: Why do plans to resolve urban ills in developing countries fail to deliver and achieve social justice?

This paper investigates weaknesses, limitations and outcomes of planning processes in a developing country. The author used two qualitative research tools: document analysis augmented with informal interviews. The author uses Egypt as a case study in an attempt to answer this question. The author reviewed two types of documents: official reports that the Egyptian authorities produced and donor agencies prepared plus both published and unpublished research. Interviewees are those who participated in elaborating and executing urban plans and policies.

Achieving social, spatial and environmental justice is amongst the reasons for planning metropolitan areas and their regions. Unfortunately, rarely plans accomplish social, spatial or environmental justice. Institutional setup is the reason for failed urban planning – institutional failures lead to both policy and market failures, thus complicating urban problems.

Approved plans must have the power of legislation, and planners need to reclaim their authority and autonomy, which requires regulating the profession. Planning education must be at the graduate level and available to other disciplines, such as economics, public administration, law and the like. Planners must acquire the following competencies: technical competencies for analytical actions; hermeneutic competencies for communicative actions; and critical competencies to observe professional ethics. They must emancipate themselves from their bias to enlighten and empower their constituents.

Housing policy is a key tool in urban development and has multiple functions that directly affect human welfare. This study aims to review housing policies in Iran from a critical perspective. In fact, the study and pathology of housing policies are considered in this research.

To advance this research, a quantitative (fuzzy TOPSIS and fuzzy AHP) method was used to rank the policies and the qualitative method (interview and literature review) was used for the pathology of housing policies.

The failure of policies to provide housing in Iran is decisive, but social housing policy has a relative superiority to other policies. Causes of failure of Iranian housing policies are as follows in a pathological perspective: commodification and speculative approach to housing; lake of social and physical sustainability; social stratification and classification; inconsistency with environmental conditions; non-indigenous nature of housing policies; exclusion of local institutions in the decision-making process; and the dominance of a populist perspective on housing.

This study is a comprehensive study because it has been extracted from the dissertation. By reading this study, the reader will be aware of the general conditions of the Iranian housing sector.

Physical education (PE) and PE teacher education have great potential to target goals that are important from an education for sustainable development (ESD) perspective. However, ESD has not been studied extensively in the PE context. The purpose of this paper is to explore subjective theories of PE teacher educators about the concepts of sustainability and ESD because they are important precursors of implementing ESD in PE teacher education.

This study was conducted using a qualitative cross-sectional design. Subjective theories about sustainability and ESD from N = 9 PE teacher educators from a university in Germany were assessed in a multistage process, including semistructured interviews and the structure-formation technique. Subsequently, subjective theories were analyzed using qualitative content analysis.

The results reveal a wide range of subjective theories about the concept of sustainability. PE teacher educators described the dimensions of the sustainability concept (ecological, economic, social and political) to different depths and placed different emphases in terms of the levels of action needed to reach sustainable development. The subjective theories regarding the concept of ESD mostly include instrumental and emancipatory aspects of ESD. These subjective theories differ in that they emphasize different forms of ESD.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first of its kind to examine subjective theories regarding the concepts of sustainability and ESD in the context of PE teacher education. This study is one of only a few studies to provide detailed insights into the subjective theories of teacher educators in the area of sustainability and ESD.

This paper aims to explore the role of migrants in the process of place making, through case studies of migrant engagement with municipal planning in five South African municipalities.

This study draws on empirical research carried out over two years, using mixed methods research in each municipal case study. Data come from key stakeholder interviews, participant observation, focus groups and demographic data to understand the perceptions and practices of local government officials and migrants within the community.

This research demonstrated that local government officials are assuming a population that is sedentary and geographically bounded, while migration is actively shaping communities. This mobility provides an opportunity for management practices to become more inclusive and effective.

By examining systems of local governance through the lens of a mobile population, new possibilities emerge about the ways migrant participation can contribute to the definitions of a place.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the conceptualisation of the Smart Sustainable City (SSC) with new concepts of resilience thinking in relation to urgent societal challenges facing the built environment. The paper aims to identify novel methodologies for smart reuse of heritage sites with a pluralist past as integral to inclusive urban development.

SSC concepts in the global literature are studied to define a new reference framework for integrated urban planning strategies in which cultural resilience and co-creation matter. This framework, augmented by UNESCO’s holistic recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL), was tested in two investigative projects: the historic centre of South Africa’s capital Tshwane and the proximate former Westfort leprosy colony.

The research confirms that SSC concepts need enlargement to become more inclusive in acknowledging “cultural diversity” of communities and engaging “chrono-diversity” of extant fabric. A paradigm shift in the discourse on integrated urban (re)development and adaptive reuse of built heritage is identified, influenced by resilience and sustainability thinking. Both projects show that different architectural intervention strategies are required to modulate built fabric and its emergent qualities and to unlock embedded cultural energy.

Together with a critical review of SSC concepts and the HUL in relation to urban (re)development, this paper provides innovative methodologies on creative adaptation of urban heritage, reconciling “hard” and “soft” issues, tested in the highly resilient systems of Tshwane.

This paper aims to examine the influence of two organizational factors, namely, organizational justice and organizational culture, on organizational identification as perceived by employees following merger and acquisition (M&A) in Malaysia.

The study, which adopts the Social Identity Theory as its theoretical foundation, was conducted among employees from selected Malaysian organizations that had undergone M&A from 2009 to 2016. Data were obtained from 302 respondents and analysed using Structural Equation Modelling procedures.

The results reveal that interactional justice and four dimensions of organizational culture contribute significantly to organizational identification, with a determination power of 61 per cent.

The study offers practical insights to human resource managers in strengthening organizational identification as perceived by employees after an M&A by considering the crucial role of interactional justice and organizational culture.

There have been few investigations that link employees’ perceptions of organizational justice and culture with post-merger organizational identity. This study theorizes on human issues in M&A and enriches the Western literature on organizational identification by providing insights from an Asian (Malaysian) perspective.

The research is limited in terms of respondents who were employed in M&A organizations in the Klang Valley areas in Malaysia. The scope is also limited to an examination of two groups of organizational factors, namely, justice and culture, that lead to organizational identification. Implications to managing human resources from the perspective of organizational development are discussed.

Can we always expect that service recovery justice leads to satisfaction? Literature has shown that a number of moderating factors impact the recovery justice-satisfaction link in different cultures. However, there is a dearth of research that has indicated the key cultural variables that play a moderating role. This study aims to attempt to fill the research gap by investigating the moderating role of concern for face, belief in fate and brand equity in the relationship between perceived justice and satisfaction in Chinese culture during service recovery.

The hypothesized relationships are tested using data from interviews with 600 persons who have recently complained about their telecommunications services. Structural equation modeling is applied in analyzing their responses.

Concern for face is found to strengthen the relationship between interactional justice perceptions and satisfaction, but to weaken the relationship between distributive justice perceptions and satisfaction. Belief in fate weakens the link between perceptions of interactional justice and satisfaction. Brand equity positively moderates the relationship between perceptions of interactional justice and satisfaction, but it negatively moderates the relationship between perceptions of distributive justice and satisfaction.

The cultural variables, namely, face, fate and brand equity, are found to serve as a moderating role in the relationship between recovery justice dimensions and satisfaction. They are more salient when it is related to social element. Face and brand equity, as interpersonal constructs, aggravate the impact of interactional justice on satisfaction. Fate, as non-social factor, weakens the impact of interactional justice on satisfaction. It is argued that managers should provide staff training in product knowledge and customer service as a preventive measure against damage to the brand. Regular customer satisfaction research and benchmarking exercises should be conducted to understand how customers perceive interactional justice.

This has been the first research to examine the impact of concern for face, belief in fate and brand equity in the relationship between justice perceptions and post-recovery satisfaction during service recovery.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors affecting quality of work life (QWL) of teachers working in Higher Education Institutions.

A cross-sectional study was conducted by sampling 347 teaching faculty members through questionnaires.

Fair communication plays the strongest role and social networks have the weakest role in shaping the QWL in higher educational institutions (HEIs) of Pakistan. The relationship of social networks and QWL negates the Hofstede’s view of Pakistan society to a great extent.

A cross-sectional data set is used for tapping a small sample size. The direct effects of four factors were considered for examination. The examination of indirect effects for the factors having weak effects is recommended.

Decision makers having intentions to improve QWL in HEIs must adopt procedural justice and effective communication channels; they should have high respect for employees and should help them to develop networks within the HEIs.

Inter-relationships at workplace are hampering due to weak social networks.

The study is an important landmark in highlighting the factors that must be available for higher QWL of faculty members of public sector HEIs.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the direct and indirect effects of demographic factors on employee compensation, job satisfaction and organizational commitment in private higher educational institutes in Bangladesh. Specifically, how do compensation structure and job satisfaction mediate in the link between demographic factors and organizational commitment? To answer this question, a theoretical framework using the theory of employee retention provided by Martin and Kaufman, as its basis was established.

Data (n = 515) were collected from faculty members of the private universities in Bangladesh. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data.

Findings indicate that though demographic factors have no direct impact on organizational commitment, they have indirect impacts on organizational commitment through the mediation of compensation structure and faculty job satisfaction. Besides, compensation structure also has a significant mediating role in the link between demographic structure and faculty job satisfaction.

One possible drawback is the number of private universities from which the data were collected. In the sample used here, only 20 private universities were selected to conduct the survey. Besides, the study could not include public universities that are also a significant part and parcel of higher education in the country. So, if more private and public universities were taken into consideration to collect the data, the results might be improved. Thus, the usual cautions about overgeneralizing findings from this sample, to populations for which it is not strictly representative, apply.

From a practical perspective, as a cumulative body of work on organizational commitment, we will be better able to advise policymakers and educators on the elements they need to address to increase the longer engagement of the faculty members in their institutes. In this study, the one area of findings that may help policymakers and educators the most concerns compensation package that affects job satisfaction and organizational commitment. We found that demographic factors and compensation packages are the most important factors for the faculty members to impact on organizational commitment in this study.

The social implication is that policymakers of the private universities can focus on fair justice in terms of demographic factors and compensation package for job satisfaction, motivation and organizational commitment of the faculty members in their universities.

The findings of the study are important for the policymakers of the higher education institutes.