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Improving buildability of building designs with the aid of buildability assessment is essential because of the effect of designs on construction. Despite the plethora of research into buildability reported over the years, a review of the literature shown a dearth of research into the factors supporting the implementation of buildability assessment. Because buildability assessment has been confirmed to be highly beneficial to construction business, this study aims to investigate the factors supporting the implementation of buildability assessment as a tool for buildability improvement using Nigeria as a representative case.

Survey research method was adopted for the study. Questionnaires were administered to a purposively selected group of architects, engineers, builders and quantity surveyors involved in construction project delivery within client, consulting and contracting organisations in Nigeria. A total of 368 questionnaires were distributed among the sampled participants, out of which, a total of 219 representing 60% were sufficiently filled and returned. Data collected were analysed using inferential and descriptive statistics.

The results revealed owner’s commitment, clients’ awareness of the benefits of conducting buildability assessment on building design, unity amongst different professionals in the construction industry, designers consider buildability important, adequate coordination amongst different design disciplines, adequate channel for co-ordination and communication between designers and constructors at the design stage and adequate support from the government as the top most seven factors supporting buildability assessment implementation in construction sector of Nigeria. Secondly, the results from the research revealed that there is no statistically significant difference in factors supporting buildability assessment implementation in construction between clients and consulting and contracting construction organisations in Nigeria.

The findings provide in-depth insight of the factors supporting the implementation of buildability assessment in construction that can help principal stakeholders in construction to facilitate development of strategies required in supporting the adoption and implementation of buildability assessment tool for buildability improvement.

Due to the need to enhance the buildability of building designs in building construction industry, a buildability assessment framework was developed for use in Nigeria. This paper aims to investigate and determine the factors influencing buildability assessment implementation in the Nigerian construction industry with the view to improving buildability of building designs. To address the aim, this study will provide answers to the following research question: what are the factors hindering and supporting the implementation of buildability assessment in the Nigerian construction industry?

Survey research method was adopted for the study. Questionnaires were administered to purposively selected group of architects, engineers, builders and quantity surveyors involved in construction project delivery within the client, consulting and contracting organisations in Nigeria. A total of 368 questionnaires were distributed among the sampled participants, out of which a total of 219 representing 60% were sufficiently filled and returned. Data collected were analysed using inferential and descriptive statistics.

The results revealed owner’s commitment, clients’ awareness of the benefits of conducting buildability assessment on building design, unity among different professionals in the construction industry, designers consider buildability important, adequate coordination among different design disciplines, adequate channel for coordination and communication between designers and constructors at the design stage and adequate support from the government as the topmost seven factors supporting buildability assessment implementation in the construction sector of Nigeria. Second, the study revealed that poor coordination among different design disciplines, lack of buildability assessment awareness, design review pattern where construction personnel (builders) are invited to assess the building production information, unwillingness to invest extra money and effort during the early stage of project and designers value aesthetics and functionalities more than buildability in their designs are the topmost five factors hindering buildability assessment implementation in the Nigerian construction industry.

The study provides detailed insights into the factors supporting and hindering buildability assessment implementation in the Nigerian construction industry. The findings indicate the need to enlighten principal stakeholders in construction about buildability and the outcome of the buildability assessment tool. This information can motivate principal stakeholders in implementing and practising buildability assessment.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and analyse the barriers entrepreneurs with disabilities (EWD) face when establishing their own enterprises, as well as the supporting factors in starting and running a business.

This is an explorative study. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews with ten Hungarian entrepreneurs with physical disabilities or sight-loss, during the summer of 2018.

The paper classifies the barriers and supporting factors, as personal, economic and social. Based on the perceptions of the entrepreneurs, personal characteristics, identity and various types of family support play an important role in becoming entrepreneurs, but the entrepreneurial ecosystem generally is not favourable in Hungary, and there are no special support programmes focussing on EWD.

Sample size is a serious limitation: the ten entrepreneurs do not represent in any sense the entire EWD community in Hungary, so the patterns found cannot be considered a generally valid picture.

The article contributes to the literature on entrepreneurship and disabilities, especially through the systematic review of the possible barriers and supporting factors and to the existing empirical body of knowledge by shedding light on the barriers and supporting factors in a rarely investigated region, in Central Europe: Hungary.

In today's complex and highly competitive marketplace, universities and colleges, realizing a need to develop sustainable strategies, have turned to branding as a solution. However, because of unique service characteristics, universities’ branding attempts may not always result in success. The purpose of this paper, utilizing the concept of brand equity as a foundation of understanding, is to present a framework and scale measurements of university brand equity and its dimensions.

Because no prior measurement scales for university branding have existed, the scale measures for this study are compiled from the literature on brand equity measurements identifying the core and supporting value-creation factors for higher education. For this exploratory study, several pretests and exploratory factor analyses were conducted to ensure that the scale items are comprehensible and clearly measure the intended constructs. Students are considered as the target population for this study. Data for the main study were collected at a comprehensive university in the Midwestern USA. A total of 30 classes with varying sizes provided 439 usable surveys.

Empirical results from the survey research suggest that some of the brand equity dimensions are more important in developing strong university brands. Of the core dimensions, perceived quality of faculty is the most important brand equity dimension, followed by university reputation and emotional environment, brand loyalty, and brand awareness dimensions for creating a strong university brand. Among the supporting brand equity dimensions, library services was the most important for creating a strong university brand, followed by student living (residence halls and dining services), career development, and physical facilities (e.g. gym, classrooms, labs).

Although the target population was students, as a first step, the survey was administered to students at one university. Administering surveys to students at different universities and comparing the results would improve the reliability of the brand equity scales. The significant correlations found among the brand equity dimensions suggest the interconnectedness of these dimensions. The findings have implications for developing and implementing university brand strategies. The authors suggest serious consideration to be given to a holistic approach to branding efforts.

The branding literature offers no prior research that develops and tests a scale or examines the issues and factors that are important for developing strong university brands and brand equity for higher education institutions. This study develops the scale measurements through a comprehensive literature review, tests the validity of the measurements, and takes the brand equity theory one step further by identifying the core and supporting-value creation factors suggested sporadically in the literature. The framework suggests that both core and supporting value-creating activities are dynamically interrelated and work jointly in creating student learning experiences, and ultimately, a strong university brand.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the personal factors for both the students and the lecturers that support intercultural communication in library and information science (LIS) e-learning. Research was conducted to explore the factors supporting intercultural communication in LIS e-learning.

Using case study, the opinion of students of two LIS curricula about the factors that support intercultural communication in e-learning has been determined. The data have been collected using e-interviews and document analysis. Document analysis and constant comparative analysis method were used for analysing collected data.

Intercultural communication in the e-learning of LIS curriculum was supported by pedagogical, personal, cultural and technological factors. In this paper, the personal factors are emphasised. These factors are the supporting characteristics of the students and lecturers, their motivation, similarities between co-students and the competence of the students.

Results of the research project are necessary to improve the curricula and to plan and conduct learning process. The results explain possibilities for supporting the students in international e-learning.

The results of the present study concerning the personal factors and their respective support differed – when compared to previous studies – in the following aspects: LIS students brought forward the characteristics that support intercultural communication in e-learning, were willing to gain extra knowledge and skills and considered information literacy and knowledge about written communication important but, at the same time, less-often mentioned the problems emerging from lags.

In recent years, the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has gained recognition and importance in both business and political settings. While considerable research has been conducted on CSR in developed countries, the extant literature on CSR in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is scant and CSR is seen in terms of philanthropy. This paper aims to examine CSR from a broader perspective and in particular to identify the factors that hinder and promote CSR activities in SSA using the Smit (2009) CSR Value Chain Model.

This paper is based on data obtained from a survey conducted by GTZ (now GIZ) on factors promoting and hindering CSR in SSA. The study surveyed 85 companies from six countries, namely; South Africa, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique and Namibia. The study essentially examined the internal and external CSR environments of the companies in the participating countries.

The study revealed that there are nine key promoting and hindering factors of CSR for businesses in SSA. These include: leadership and governance, policy framework, project management, monitoring, evaluation and reporting, stakeholder engagement, staff engagement, government, funding and beneficiation. The study recommends a systemic and context-sensitive approach that relies on the potential of organisations and communities to design and implement their own solution within global frameworks in order to further develop CSR in the region.

There are a number of limitations in this study. First, this study did not include any informants from the responding organisations’ stakeholder groups, but relied mainly on information obtained from single respondents from organisations. Further research should include responses from other stakeholder groups.

To promote or achieve the successful implementation of CSR and broaden its scope within the region beyond its current focus on philanthropy, managers must build bridges with their stakeholders through both formal and informal dialogues and engagement practices. Additionally, firms may enhance and maximise both social and economic value created when managers link their CSR activities to areas that improve firms’ long-term competitive potential by collectively and systematically applying their distinctive strengths to such activities in accordance with the value chain model.

The finding in this study is novel and adds an important contribution to the developing CSR literature in the SSA region.

The purpose of this study was to explore and identify factors affecting adoption and implementation of information and communication technology (ICT) in large ICT‐experienced Australian construction organizations. During 2002 the researchers undertook an online survey, supplemented by a hardcopy collection option, to gather data from three major construction organizations with many years experience with implementing and adopting IT. The analysis concentrated on a common class of ICT adopted across the three organizations so that factor analysis could be validly undertaken. Results identified 11 factors that were found to influence ICT diffusion and adoption by the organizations that were grouped into management, individual, technology and workplace environment categories. These concurred with theory from the change management, innovation diffusion and organizational learning literature. Further, in‐depth qualitative analysis through case studies (beyond the scope of this paper) also helped to explain and make sense of the results. The results help to better explain human related factors in particular in terms of the broader and emerging literature of organizational learning and innovation adoption with a clear focus on how the people‐side of ICT diffusion and adoption is undertaken. This ICT diffusion and adoption study is undertaken at the firm‐level (micro analysis) as opposed to the industry level (macro analysis) and so provides insights into the interplay between diffusion and adoption concepts.

This study aims at determining the factors that favor a systematic approach to deal with complex operational and strategic problems. Management literature on problem-solving makes a clear distinction between either fixing a problem temporarily by eliminating its symptoms or solving it by diagnosing and altering underlying causes. Adopting a cognitive perspective of the dual-processing theory, this study labels these two approaches intuitive problem-solving and systematic problem-solving (SPS). While the superior effectiveness of SPS in fostering organizational learning is widely documented, existing literature fails to provide an overview of the conditions that support the adoption of SPS.

This paper presents a systematic literature review to shed light on the main supporting factors of SPS in operational as well as strategic domains.

Seven supporting factors of SPS (namely, nature of the problem, time availability, information availability, collaborative culture, transformational leadership, organizational learning infrastructure and environmental dynamism) are first identified and then discussed in an integrative model.

This work is an original attempt to inclusively address organizational, environmental and problem nature-related factors that favor SPS adoption. By determining the SPS supporting factors, this study highlights why many organizations fail or struggle to implement and sustain SPS over time.

This paper aims to explore the effect of three destination competitiveness attributes: core resources and attractors, supporting factors and destination management on the tourist perceived behavioral control, perceived value, trust and tourists’ intention to visit halal tourism destination in Indonesia.

Quantitative data is collected by conducting an online survey. Using data from 244 Muslim respondents in Indonesia, this study applies a partial least square-structural equation modeling to test and estimate relationships among variables.

The results show that perceived behavioral control, perceived value and trust directly influences the intention to visit halal tourism. Subsequently, supporting factors also directly affect the intention to visit halal tourism, whereas the other attributes of destination competitiveness that is core resources and attractors and destination management have an indirect relationship or act as mediating variable to the intention. Destination management performs as a driving force of intention to visit halal tourism through the three variables, namely, perceived behavioral control, perceived value and trust. Meanwhile, core resources and attractors only have an indirect relationship through trust.

There are limitations of the data collection, the respondent of the survey in this study is Muslim tourist, for wider range of region the study should also be conduct not only for Muslim respondent but also non-Muslim respondent to get comprehensive data of halal tourism market in Indonesia.

This study provides insights to the government and stakeholders about domestic tourist intentions toward halal tourism destinations. This study also makes some recommendations for elements that can be used to increase tourist acknowledgement of halal tourism, acquire the domestic tourist market and increase state revenue through halal tourism.

This study has substantial implications; halal tourism in Indonesia has a promising economic future. The tourism industry is not only intended to increase government revenue but has also contributed to environmental sustainability. The study reveals the significance of destination management in halal tourism. Hence, to make Indonesia a leading country in halal tourism, Indonesia needs to fulfill the tourism destination competitiveness among others to implement sustainable tourism and enhance the infrastructure, promotion, services and environmental aspects.

This study offers a framework model related to halal tourism focus on destination competitiveness as part of the knowledge contributions. Besides, the findings of the study can be the references for the stakeholders to take any strategic decision with regards to attract tourists’ intention to visit halal tourism destinations.

Library quality assurance systems are collaborative governances that facilitate the presentation of data on international accreditation of departments, which contains data on services, human resources, library facilities and infrastructure. This research analyzes the supporting and inhibiting factors and the advantages of the library quality assurance system in supporting international accreditation of departments at Sebelas Maret University (UNS) Surakarta, Indonesia using Talcott Persons' theory of structural functionalism.

Primary data in exploratory research and action research obtained from the Quality Assurance Team at the university level under the Educational Quality Assurance and Development Institute (LPPMP), the Quality Assurance Unit (UPM) at the faculty level and the Quality Control Group (GKM) at the department, librarian and academic community levels. Supporting informants are international assessor practitioners. Data validation using source triangulation, namely information obtained through different sources, and method triangulation through different methods. Data obtained from library studies, observations, Focus Group Discussions (FGD), documentation and interviews with staff, library leaders, lecturers from departments that have and will carry out international accreditation and UNS students and analyzed interactive analysis models, namely data reduction, data presentation and concluding.

The research results show that the UNS Library quality assurance system facilitates higher education organizations, such as bachelor's, master's and doctoral departments at UNS; search and presentation of international accreditation data. Supporting factors include the availability of digital library systems, online catalogs (UNSLA), e-journal and e-book databases, library websites and library data links for accreditation; facilities and infrastructure consist of indoor-outdoor study rooms; library social media; Self Access Terminal room; facilities for international students; involvement of librarians in international internships/conferences, librarians who have had competency tests and certification; librarians pursuing doctoral degree and support for student interns in system development. Inhibiting factors include the unavailability of programmers and dependence on UNS Information and Communication of Technology Unit. The benefits of the department quality assurance system include accelerating and improving the organization's quality and presentation of international accreditation data for departments at UNS.

This type of qualitative research with an exploratory approach takes library study data, observations and in-depth interviews with library staff and quality assurance of departments. The informants were selected using purposive sampling, which was adjusted to the needs and interests of the research. It also uses the action research method, a collaboration between the quality assurance unit, librarians and academics. Action research is a form of collective self-reflection that involves a series of daily activities, which include the processes of research, diagnosis, planning, implementation, monitoring and establishing the necessary relationships between evaluation and self-development. The research object is something that will be subject to conclusions resulting from something that will be discussed in the research. The object of this research is the quality assurance of the UNS Library. Primary data was obtained from the Quality Assurance Team at the university level under the LPPMP, the Quality Assurance Unit (UPM) at the faculty level and the Quality Control Group (GKM) at the department, librarian and academic community levels. Supporting informants are international assessor practitioners. Data will be collected using observation, in-depth interviews, Focus Group Discussion (FGD) and documentation. To ensure the validity of the data, source triangulation is used, namely, information obtained through different sources, as well as method triangulation through different methods, for example, interviews with observation or FGD. Data analysis using an interactive analysis model, namely data reduction, data presentation and concluding. This research was conducted at the UNS Library, with the research object being all departments at Sebelas Maret University, which have and will undergo international accreditation.