Search results

This study explores how factors arising from supply chain (SC) network and complexity work together in supply chain learning (SCL) behavior.

Fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis, which is an emerging configurational analysis method, was adopted to examine the complex combination of five influencing factors. The data were collected using a two-stage survey. First, the authors selected seven typical firms with an awareness of SCL. Second, questionnaires were sent to the partners of the seven selected firms, and 156 valid questionnaires were obtained from 76 firms.

Drawing on emergent insights from the initiative, the authors find that multiple configurations of SC network and complexity lead to high SCL. Specifically, weak ties are necessary conditions of such learning, while strong ties are also conducive to this. Moreover, a moderate SC complexity is conducive to SCL.

This study enriches the understanding of SCL and provides new insights for SC management practitioners to take measures to improve it.

This study addresses the lack of in-depth understanding of the antecedent conditions of SCL in the literature. It establishes an integrated and comprehensive theoretical framework of such learning based on contingency theory. Additionally, this study incorporates ambidextrous SCL (i.e. creation capability and dispersion capacity). An overall prototype of SCL capability is proposed on SC network and complexity theory.

This paper aims to explore the influence of social support and the repatriation intention of expatriates in international constructions in the postpandemic era of COVID-19. Furthermore, test the mediation effect of team climate and individual resilience in this relationship.

A survey of 347 expatriates in international construction projects was conducted. A cross-level chain mediation model was employed to test the moderating effect of social support and repatriation intention. Then, statistical analysis with a bootstrap sample was used to test the mediation effect of the model.

The empirical results support that team climate, individual resilience and the chain mediating effect of team climate to individual resilience is significant among the influences of social support on repatriation intention. Social support can enhance the team climate of construction expatriates, promoting their resilience to reduce the repatriation intention further.

This study provides guidelines for international construction enterprises and managers to decide when and which expatriates should return home and formulate a series of policies to support expatriates and maintain a good team climate.

This study contributes to expatriate management literature by establishing the relationship between social support and repatriation intention. It provides a better understanding of how team-level factors impact individual thought. It takes team climate as one of the protective factors affecting individual psychological resilience. Also it takes social support as the antecedents of team atmosphere in case of emergencies.

The operation of water environment treatment Public-Private Partnership projects (WETP-PPP) is crucial to the project effectiveness. However, there are often problems in projects that attach importance to construction and neglect operation management, which seriously affect the project operation effect. To ensure the good operation effect of the WETP-PPP, an evolutionary game model of the regulation strategy during the operation period of WETP-PPP is constructed.

An evolutionary game model of regulation is established which considers the government, the project company and the public in water environment treatment Public-Private Partnership projects (WETP-PPP). Five scenarios of equilibriums and the game's evolutionary stable strategies are analyzed, and the corresponding stability conditions are then obtained. Finally, through the simulation, the influence of different factors on the choice of the three-party strategy is analyzed.

First, the key factors that affect the evolution game are the regulation costs and performance rewards of the government, the project company's operation costs and penalties for opportunism and the public supervision costs and rewards. Second, in order to ensure the operation effect, the government needs the performance incentive from the superior government. Third, the public's supervision enthusiasm needs to be mobilized by the government. Last, the penalty strength of speculative operation should be strong enough to play a deterrent role.

The theoretical research in this paper has some limitations. Initially, due to the large number of participants in WETP-PPP, in addition to the government department, the project company and the public studied in this paper, it also involves the consulting industry and financial institutions. In the future, more participants can be added to form four-party interest relationships and conduct four-party evolutionary game research. Second, the operation environment of WETP-PPP is complex and changeable, and various influencing factors are intertwined, the number of parameters involved in this paper is limited, and further detailed research is needed in the future.

Based on the evolutionary game theory, this article discusses the evolution law of the tripartite game behavior of the government department, the project company and the public, which is helpful to clarify the strategy evolution path of the tripartite in the WETP-PPP, and the generation condition and evolution mechanism of the equilibrium strategy of the tripartite game. The key parameters affecting the tripartite strategy selection are analyzed through simulation, which can provide reference for the government department to formulate relevant measures. At the same time, it broadens the application field of evolutionary games and supplements the research on the management mechanism of WETP-PPP during the operation period.

Based on the evolutionary game theory, this paper introduces the supervision behavior of the public, which can provide a new perspective for researchers to conduct relevant research. Secondly, for the regulation during the operation of WETP-PPP, this paper can provide reference for the government department to establish a scientific public supervision system, improve the government supervision mechanism and other relevant measures, which can help promote the public supervision willingness, improve the regulation efficiency of the government and guide the project company to reduce speculation, so as to ensure the effect of water environment management.

This paper focuses on the regulation of WETP-PPP during the operation period to research interactions among the government, the project company and the public. Based on the analysis of the evolutionary game, some suggestions are put forward, such as perfecting the government regulation mechanism, optimizing the reward and punishment system for the project company and broadening the channels of public supervision. The research results of this paper can provide support for the government's regulation of WETP-PPP and ensure the project operation effect.

The need for infrastructure is growing as urbanization picks up speed, and the infrastructure REITs financing model has been crucial in reviving the vast infrastructure stock, alleviating the pressure on government funds and diversifying investment entities. This study aims to propose a framework to better assess the risks of infrastructure REITs, which can serve for the researchers and the policy makers to propose risk mitigation strategies and policy recommendations more purposively to facilitate successful implementation and long-term development of infrastructure REITs.

The infrastructure REITs risk evaluation index system is established through literature review and factor analysis, and the optimal comprehensive weight of the index is calculated using the combination weight. Then, a risk evaluation cloud model of infrastructure REITs is constructed, and experts quantify the qualitative language of infrastructure REITs risks. This paper verifies the feasibility and effectiveness of the model by taking a basic REITs project in China as an example. This paper takes infrastructure REITs project in China as an example, to verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the cloud evaluation method.

The research outcome shows that infrastructure REITs risks manifest in the risk of policy and legal, underlying asset, market, operational and credit. The main influencing factors in terms of their weights are tax policy risk, operation and management risk, liquidity risk, termination risk and default risk. The financing project is at a higher risk, and the probability of risk is 64.2%.

This research contributes to the existing body of knowledge by supplementing a set of scientific and practical risk evaluation methods to assess the potential risks of infrastructure REITs project, which contributes the infrastructure financing risk management system. Identify key risk factors for infrastructure REITs with underlying assets, which contributes to infrastructure REITs project management. This research can help relevant stakeholders to control risks throughout the infrastructure investment and financing life cycle, provide them with reference for investment and financing decision-making and promote more sustainable and healthy development of infrastructure REITs in developing countries.

Given the increasing importance of engineering insurance, it is still unclear which specific factors can enhance the role of engineering insurance as a risk transfer tool. This study aims to propose a hybrid approach to identify and analyze the key determinants influencing the consumption of engineering insurance in mainland China.

The empirical analysis utilizes provincial data from mainland China from 2008 to 2019. The research framework is a novel amalgamation of the generalized method of moments (GMM) model, the quantile regression (QR) technique and the random forest (RF) algorithm. This innovative hybrid approach provides a comprehensive exploration of the driving factors while also allowing for an examination across different quantiles of insurance consumption.

The study identifies several driving factors that significantly impact engineering insurance consumption. Income, financial development, inflation, price, risk aversion, market structure and the social security system have a positive and significant influence on engineering insurance consumption. However, urbanization exhibits a negative and significant effect on the consumption of engineering insurance. QR techniques reveal variations in the effects of these driving factors across different levels of engineering insurance consumption.

This study extends the research on insurance consumption to the domain of the engineering business, making theoretical and practical contributions. The findings enrich the knowledge of insurance consumption by identifying the driving factors specific to engineering insurance for the first time. The research framework provides a novel and useful tool for examining the determinants of insurance consumption. Furthermore, the study offers insights into the engineering insurance market and its implications for policymakers and market participants.

This paper aims to systematically review the literature on quality management in agri-food supply chains (SCs) and propose an integrated conceptual framework.

A systematic literature review that analyses 93 papers in peer-reviewed academic journals published from 1996 to November 2021 is conducted. A conceptual model is advanced.

Based on a hierarchy of capabilities perspective, the authors develop an integrated conceptual framework in which SC quality (SCQ) management practices promote three levels of SC dynamic capabilities, which in turn lead to agri-food SCQ performance.

The authors propose a hierarchy of capabilities perspective of quality management in agri-food SCs and develop a conceptual framework. Furthermore, a number of propositions based on dynamic capabilities and the review findings are provided. Four future research directions are presented.

Crack detection of pavement is a critical task in the periodic survey. Efficient, effective and consistent tracking of the road conditions by identifying and locating crack contributes to establishing an appropriate road maintenance and repair strategy from the promptly informed managers but still remaining a significant challenge. This research seeks to propose practical solutions for targeting the automatic crack detection from images with efficient productivity and cost-effectiveness, thereby improving the pavement performance.

This research applies a novel deep learning method named TransUnet for crack detection, which is structured based on Transformer, combined with convolutional neural networks as encoder by leveraging a global self-attention mechanism to better extract features for enhancing automatic identification. Afterward, the detected cracks are used to quantify morphological features from five indicators, such as length, mean width, maximum width, area and ratio. Those analyses can provide valuable information for engineers to assess the pavement condition with efficient productivity.

In the training process, the TransUnet is fed by a crack dataset generated by the data augmentation with a resolution of 224 × 224 pixels. Subsequently, a test set containing 80 new images is used for crack detection task based on the best selected TransUnet with a learning rate of 0.01 and a batch size of 1, achieving an accuracy of 0.8927, a precision of 0.8813, a recall of 0.8904, an F1-measure and dice of 0.8813, and a Mean Intersection over Union of 0.8082, respectively. Comparisons with several state-of-the-art methods indicate that the developed approach in this research outperforms with greater efficiency and higher reliability.

The developed approach combines TransUnet with an integrated quantification algorithm for crack detection and quantification, performing excellently in terms of comparisons and evaluation metrics, which can provide solutions with potentially serving as the basis for an automated, cost-effective pavement condition assessment scheme.

Frequent renegotiations within public-private partnership (PPP) have been recognised and affect project efficiency. Literature has focussed on diverse issues associated with renegotiation within PPP, especially in Latin America and Europe. However, a systematic summary what they have already provided appears lacking. Thus, the paper aims to conduct a critical review of publications concerning PPP renegotiation and explore the status quo, future interests and gaps in research.

This study carried out a four-phase literature review research framework to identify the quality PPP-renegotiation articles published from 2003 to 2020. Assessing the full articles for eligibility by providing a structured summary including: background; objectives; data sources; study appraisal; results; limitations; conclusions and implications of key findings. After that, filtering papers associated with PPP renegotiation in terms of the structured summary, and a total of 60 research papers were selected in the database of web of science and Scopus for review.

Methods adopted by researchers, research topics and theoretical foundations of PPP renegotiation research in different disciplines were identified through content analysis. Amongst the popular research topics identified were renegotiation factors, the outcomes with renegotiations, the framework to deal with renegotiations and contract design dealing with renegotiation based on rigid or flexible contracts.

This study contributes to the current body of PPP knowledge by revealing the research trend in the past 20 years. It also points out the directions that the renegotiations of PPP research may go towards in the future. Moreover, this study is very valuable in understanding how governments and concessionaires effectively handle renegotiations.

A new wire arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) process combined with gravity-driven powder feeding was developed to fabricate components of tungsten carbide (WC)-reinforced iron matrix composites. The purpose of this study was to investigate the particle transportation mechanism during deposition and determine the effects of WC particle size on the microstructure and properties of the so-fabricated component.

Thin-walled samples were deposited by the new WAAM using two WC particles of different sizes. A series of in-depth investigations were conducted to reveal the differences in the macro morphology, microstructure, tensile performance and wear properties.

The results showed that inward convection and gravity were the main factors affecting WC transportation in the molten pool. Large WC particles have higher ability than small particles to penetrate into the molten pool and survive severe dissolution. Small WC particles were more likely to be completely dissolved around the top surface, forming a thicker region of reticulate (Fe, W)₆C. Large WC particles can slow down the inward convection more, thereby leading to an increase in width and a decrease in the layer height of the weld bead. The mechanical properties and wear resistance significantly increased owing to reinforcement. Comparatively, samples with large WC particles showed inferior tensile properties owing to their higher susceptibility to cracks.

Fabricating metal matrix composites through the WAAM process is a novel concept that still requires further investigation. Apart from the self-designed gravity-driven powder feeding, the unique aspects of this study also include the revelation of the particle transportation mechanism of WC particles during deposition.

The decisions of contractors could impact the reduction of construction carbon footprint. These decisions are linked to the belief of contractors which equally affects how they behave while delivering projects. This study aims to investigate the behavioural tendencies of contractors that could lead to carbon minimisation during the execution of construction projects.

An industry survey was performed amongst 41 UK construction professionals. Spearman’s correlation and factor analysis were used to analyse the data.

The result of the Spearman’s correlation gave rise to 14 contractors’ carbon reduction behaviour (CCRB) variables and their factor analysis yielded two distinct factors, namely, contractors’ consummate carbon reduction behaviour and contractors’ pragmatic carbon reduction behaviour. The findings suggest that in the UK, contractors are willing to take voluntary practical steps to decrease the carbon footprint of construction projects.

This finding might be unexpected to construction stakeholders, especially construction clients who may believe that infusing strict carbon reduction obligations in contracts is sufficient in nudging contractors to lessen the carbon impact of projects.

The study attempted to quantitatively derive CCRB, thereby extending the breadth of knowledge in the construction carbon reduction domain.