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The number of construction dispute cases has maintained a high growth trend in recent years. The effective exploration and management of construction contract risk can directly promote the overall performance of the project life cycle. The miss of clauses may result in a failure to match with standard contracts. If the contract, modified by the owner, omits key clauses, potential disputes may lead to contractors paying substantial compensation. Therefore, the identification of construction project contract missing clauses has heavily relied on the manual review technique, which is inefficient and highly restricted by personnel experience. The existing intelligent means only work for the contract query and storage. It is urgent to raise the level of intelligence for contract clause management. Therefore, this paper aims to propose an intelligent method to detect construction project contract missing clauses based on Natural Language Processing (NLP) and deep learning technology.

A complete classification scheme of contract clauses is designed based on NLP. First, construction contract texts are pre-processed and converted from unstructured natural language into structured digital vector form. Following the initial categorization, a multi-label classification of long text construction contract clauses is designed to preliminary identify whether the clause labels are missing. After the multi-label clause missing detection, the authors implement a clause similarity algorithm by creatively integrating the image detection thought, MatchPyramid model, with BERT to identify missing substantial content in the contract clauses.

1,322 construction project contracts were tested. Results showed that the accuracy of multi-label classification could reach 93%, the accuracy of similarity matching can reach 83%, and the recall rate and F1 mean of both can reach more than 0.7. The experimental results verify the feasibility of intelligently detecting contract risk through the NLP-based method to some extent.

NLP is adept at recognizing textual content and has shown promising results in some contract processing applications. However, the mostly used approaches of its utilization for risk detection in construction contract clauses predominantly are rule-based, which encounter challenges when handling intricate and lengthy engineering contracts. This paper introduces an NLP technique based on deep learning which reduces manual intervention and can autonomously identify and tag types of contractual deficiencies, aligning with the evolving complexities anticipated in future construction contracts. Moreover, this method achieves the recognition of extended contract clause texts. Ultimately, this approach boasts versatility; users simply need to adjust parameters such as segmentation based on language categories to detect omissions in contract clauses of diverse languages.

It has been demonstrated that AI-powered, data-driven tools’ usage is not universal, but deeply linked to socio-cultural contexts. The purpose of this paper is to display the need of adopting situated lenses, relating to specific personal and professional learning about data protection and privacy.

The authors introduce the results of a case study based on a large educational intervention at a fully online university. The views of the participants from degrees representing different knowledge areas and contexts of technology adoption (work, education and leisure) were explored after engaging in the analysis of the terms and conditions of use about privacy and data usage. After consultation, 27 course instructors (CIs) integrated the activity and worked with 823 students (702 of whom were complete and correct for analytical purposes).

The results of this study indicated that the intervention increased privacy-conscious online behaviour among most participants. Results were more contradictory when looking at the tools’ daily usage, with overall positive considerations around the tools being mostly needed or “indispensable”.

Though appliable only to the authors’ case study and not generalisable, the authors’ results show both the complexity of privacy views and the presence of forms of renunciation in the trade-off between data protection and the need of using a specific software into a personal and professional context.

This study provides an example of teaching and learning activities that supports the development of data literacy, with a focus on data privacy. Therefore, beyond the research findings, any educator can build over the authors’ proposal to produce materials and interventions aimed at developing awareness on data privacy issues.

Developing awareness, understanding and skills relating to data privacy is crucial to live in a society where digital technologies are used in any area of our personal and professional life. Well-informed citizens will be able to obscure, resist or claim for their rights whenever a violation of their privacy takes place. Also, they will be able to support (through adoption) better quality apps and platforms, instead of passively accepting what is evident or easy to use.

The authors specifically spot how students and educators, as part of a specific learning and cultural ecosystem, need tailored opportunities to keep on reflecting on their degrees of freedom and their possibilities to act regarding evolving data systems and their alternatives.

The agricultural sector is a critical component of global economic development, and its significance has grown significantly in recent years. The risks associated with agriculture and the behaviors of farmers in handling these risks are becoming increasingly important, given the sector’s increasing dependence worldwide. Various activities related to agriculture are vulnerable to multiple risks, which can have severe consequences for farmers’ livelihoods. The purpose of this systematic review is to present a comprehensive analysis of the sources of risk faced by farmers and their choices in adopting risk management strategies worldwide.

The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses protocol was utilized to select relevant literature, and a total of 102 studies were analyzed. Through the use of Venn diagrams and graphical methods, the authors provide a transparent overview of the risks faced by farmers and the adoption of risk management strategies in developed and developing countries.

From the analysis, the authors found that, in terms of risk management strategies, diversification, reserve credit and accumulated assets are frequently used in developing countries, while developed countries tend to rely on future/forward contracts, crop insurance and hedging. Diversification is the most widely used risk management strategy across both developed and developing countries. Our study also highlights the different perceptions of weather-related risks among growers in developed and developing countries.

This systematic review provides valuable insights into the risks associated with agriculture and farmers' strategies in managing these risks, which could inform policy decisions and promote sustainable agricultural practices. For instance, understanding the individualistic nature of farmers' risk perception and the varying risk sources and management strategies depending on the locality and provide assistance to the farmers accordingly.

The paper explains how farmers behave during uncertainty in terms of risk perception and their decision to adopt risk management strategies in developed and developing countries.

This study investigates whether prolonged durations of work from home (WFH) leads to workplace ostracism (WO), and whether such relationship is moderated by perceived organizational support (POS). The context of this research is based on the post-COVID-19 pandemic period, when most organizations have either recalled their employees back to their physical workplaces, or in other cases employees are relegated to continued WFH or to a hybrid model that combines both in-office and remote work. The importance of this study is the spotlight it brings to employees who feel ostracized from their workplace due the continued practice of WFH.

A conceptual model is developed, by leveraging the conservation of resources (COR) theory. The hypotheses are tested by using cross-sectional survey data collected from 240 employees working in various organizations in the Sultanate of Oman from both public and private sectors. The data are analyzed using R Core Team software.

The findings of the study reveal that WFH does not have any direct impact on WO. However, when POS is applied as moderator, the results indicate that at low levels of POS, the relationship between WFH and WO becomes significant, but not at moderate to high levels of POS.

This study provides insights into how the phenomenon of WFH is likely to influence perceptions of employees in terms of feeling excluded from the organization by being asked to continue to work remotely, while many of their colleagues have returned to their prepandemic workplaces. The implications of the findings are relevant to the growing literature on employee experiences in the realm of emerging work models being introduced by organizations. Among the limitations of this study is the fact that there may be missing mediators that link WFH with WO, and the possibility that such a study if replicated in other cultural contexts may yield different results.

This study presents evidence to managers on leveraging the power of organizational support to ensure that negative emotions among employees such as WO are mitigated.

This appears to be among the first studies that attempts to provide insights into employee perceptions about WO in the postpandemic period, especially with regards to the emerging work arrangements that are primarily based on WFH that are being widely adopted by many organizations around the world. The results of this study provide useful information about how WFH and POS come together to influence emotions of individuals who have been longing to get back to their normal workplace once the social distancing guidelines of the pandemic were lifted.

This paper aims to examine the current quality of work-life (QWL) situation and the effectiveness of labor laws for promoting QWL in the context of Nepalese workplaces.

It uses a descriptive-interpretative-qualitative approach to analyze the responses. Information is gathered through discussions with 85 higher- and middle-level managers of large and medium-sized organizations.

The majority of Nepalese organizations accept safe and healthy working conditions, social relevance of work-life, social integration in the work organization, and work and total life space as the key aspects of QWL. They have become even more critical as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, they face challenges in providing employees with opportunities for continued growth and security, immediate opportunity to use and develop human capacities, adequate and fair compensation and constitutionalism in the work organization. QWL-related provisions in Labour Act, 2017, play a vital role in promoting the QWL situation. The QWL programs offer many benefits to employees’ private and working lives. The lack of such programs would undoubtedly have negative consequences for Nepalese companies. Compliance with labor laws will promote a better QWL situation at Nepalese workplaces.

Only managerial perspectives are considered for examining the current situation of QWL and the effectiveness of QWL-related provisions of the Labour Act, 2017. It excludes the views of union leaders.

This paper indicates that labor laws’ QWL-related provisions are effective. It also provides several policy measures for promoting a better QWL in Nepalese workplaces.

This study presents QWL-related legal provisions and the actual situation at the workplaces of Nepal. It also presents the key aspects of QWL in the context of Nepal.

This study aims to examine the moderating effect of cultural conditions on the relationship between environmental performance and environmental disclosure.

The authors used meta-analysis technique to examine 100 effect sizes from 43 studies published between 1982 and 2023 to integrate the existing results and to detect causes contributing to variability of results across studies.

There is a significant positive relationship between environmental performance and environmental disclosure. Further, the authors found that cultures with long-term orientation positively moderated the relationship, whereas cultures with high uncertainty avoidance and indulgence negatively moderated it.

This study did not account for the problem of endogeneity between environmental performance and environmental disclosure because most of the already published studies included in the authors’ meta-analysis did not address this issue.

This research provides regulators and policymakers insights on the influence of cultural factors on environmental disclosure and performance, critical information to consider when adopting, or revising social and environmental policy and regulations within a country.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first meta-analysis study examining different cultural dimensions influencing the relationship between environmental performance and environmental disclosure and contributes new knowledge to the literature on determinants of environmental disclosure.

This article aims to examine the role of boundaryless career orientation in influencing Internet professionals' strategies toward workplace problems in China's Internet companies, which feature prominent problems including excessive overwork. It addresses one question: how do Chinese Internet professionals make grievance strategies?

This article draws on qualitative data based on semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 134 employees from 6 representative Chinese Internet companies. The data were collected during 2018-2021 and analyzed with a grounded theory approach.

This article highlights the role of boundaryless career orientation in explaining Chinese Internet professionals' strategies toward workplace grievances. The author develops a comprehensive model to illustrate how boundaryless career orientation influences four grievance strategies namely, strategic compliance, exit, dissent expression and resistance that correspond to four different motives to advance the professionals' boundaryless career: learning, transferring, relieving and resolving. Internet professionals choose different grievance strategies based on how each option can benefit their boundaryless career goals.

This article is one of the first to bring in boundaryless career orientation as a key factor in explaining Chinese Internet professionals' grievance strategies. It provides a fuller picture than previous studies by showing wide varieties of professionals' grievance behaviors. The finding of high-level boundaryless career orientation among Internet professionals offers insights on how companies can improve employment relations by improving career management practices.

The article considers the utility of a pluralist perspective in the context of current debates around UK corporate governance reform. Oxford School pluralism advanced both a description of how industrial relations (IR) operated in practice plus a prescription for how it should operate. Whilst economic conditions are different today, a pluralist framing provides not only a useful way of understanding interests in firm governance (description) but also a solid grounding for a pragmatic reform agenda (prescription).

Drawing from key texts in the field, the article considers core concepts within pluralist discourse and discusses their relevance to contemporary policy debates.

The article provides a short outline of recent economic and political developments and considers how a pluralist framing helps explain firm-level interests, challenging the dominant narrative of shareholder primacy. It then asks what policy interventions might flow from this analysis of capital and labour investments, and how feasible they are in the current UK context. This allows a discussion of levels of analysis (evident in materialist theories such as “radical pluralism” and the “disconnected capitalism thesis”). Finally, it reflects briefly on the links between corporate governance and wider patterns of inequality, suggesting the pluralist position is consistent with a Durkheimian sociology focusing on the potential in state-led regulatory interventions to tackle anomie and strengthen social solidarity.

The article brings together literature from what are often treated as relatively discrete areas of enquiry (employment relations and corporate governance) and also considers the public policy implications of these connections.

The Recast Energy Efficiency Directive 2023 has defined the concept of “split incentive,” also known as “tenant-owner dilemma.” This dilemma refers to the situation where neither landlords nor tenants have incentives to invest in energy efficiency upgrades. Although the Energy Efficiency Directive calls Member States to overcome legal barriers to remove split incentives and to encourage retrofits, the list of possible measures is too vague. This paper aims to discuss tenancy law measures designed to increase the energy efficiency of residential housing and to detect which Member States have already addressed this phenomenon.

This paper analyses, from a civil legal perspective, the possible private law barriers arising from the tenant-owner dilemma when performing energy efficiency works in selected countries and proposes legal reforms in tenancy law and related policies to overcome them. To do so, this paper follows a legal-dogmatic and comparative law methodology.

This paper concludes that some tenancy law provisions, such as the possibility to increase the rent after energy efficiency renovations and long-term leases, may challenge the tenant-owner dilemma in private rented markets, thus promoting renovations and retrofitting for energy efficiency purposes. It also proposes other policies intended to increase parties’ willingness to undertake works.

More research on the economic and legal efficiency to regulate some of the civil law measures to challenge the tenant-owner dilemma should be necessary.

The civil law measures included in this paper may help national policymakers meet the energy efficiency targets, according to what is established in the Recast Energy Efficiency Directive 2023.

Based on the economic theory of the tenant-owner dilemma, this paper investigates the elements of tenancy law that may contribute to less energy-efficient homes, proposing policies for those countries interested in addressing the energy-efficiency challenge from a private law point of view.

The construction industry has arrived at a crossroads of rapid technological progress. While it is foreseen that the advent of new construction technologies will disrupt the construction industry’s future, such disruptions often create the ideal environment for innovation. As poor payment practices continue to plague the construction industry, the advent of smart contracts has created an opportunity to rectify the inherent flaws in the mitigation of payment problems in traditional construction contracts. Given the intrinsic resistance of construction firms to such revolutionary changes, this study aims to understand the various factors influencing the adoption of smart contracts in the Singapore construction industry.

A mixed method was adopted involving quantifying respondents’ perceptions of the factors influencing smart contract adoption, and validation from a group of interviewees on the matter. Out of 461 registered quantity surveyor members contacted via the Singapore institute of surveyors and valuers website, 55 respondents took part in the survey. This is followed by semi-structured interviews to validate the survey results.

The findings indicate that construction firms have neither a significant knowledge of nor willingness to adopt smart contracts. A total of 29 institutional factors were also identified that significantly influence the adoption of smart contracts. The quantitative findings were further reinforced by qualitative interviews with five industry experts.

With recognition of and the successful formulation of the significant institutional drivers and barriers, the key findings of this study will be integral in driving the commercial adoption of smart contracts within the construction industry.