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Article
Publication date: 2 June 2023

Zhijiang Wu, Yongxiang Wang and Mengyao Liu

The negative effects of job stress and burnout on construction professionals (CPs) at the construction site have been widely concern in the construction industry. The purpose of…

Abstract

Purpose

The negative effects of job stress and burnout on construction professionals (CPs) at the construction site have been widely concern in the construction industry. The purpose of this study is committed to explore the impact of job stress on CPs on the construction site, especially in the context of the widespread use of social media to express their emotions.

Design/methodology/approach

This study developed a job-related stress-burnout-health conditions-turnover intention (S-B-HT) framework to explore the direct and lagged effects of job stress, we also examined the moderating effects of online emotions, operationalized in terms of emotional intensity and expression pattern, on the relationship between job stress with job burnout under two evolution paths (i.e. health conditions or turnover intention). This study collected 271 samples through a survey questionnaire for empirical testing, and introduced structural equation models to validate the proposed conceptual model.

Findings

The results show that job stress has a significant positive effect on job burnout, and job burnout maintains a positive relationship with health conditions (or turnover intention) under the interference mechanism. Simultaneously, the online emotions expressed in social media have a positive moderating effect in two stages of the evolution path.

Practical implications

The findings of this study remind the project manager need to timely find and solve the job burnout characteristics of CPs due to excessive job stress, especially to prevent the accidental consequences caused by job burnout.

Originality/value

On this basis, this study provides an important value of using social media to express emotions for the project team to alleviate the adverse of professionals under job stress.

Details

Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0969-9988

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 14 July 2021

Guofeng Ma, Zhijiang Wu, Ming Wu and Shanshan Shang

The purpose of this study is to extract the real requirements of the owner (or users) for the construction project in the operation and maintenance stage completely and accurately…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to extract the real requirements of the owner (or users) for the construction project in the operation and maintenance stage completely and accurately and carry out the construction based on the requirements, to make the project status and operation and maintenance requirements (RO&M) consistent after delivered.

Design/methodology/approach

This study creatively proposes the operation and maintenance functions deployment (OMFD) under RO&M. In addition, the OPAR (naming is made up of the initials of owners, project, analysis and result) model is constructed to fully identify the requirements of both owners and projects. In this study, three typical construction projects are taken as examples to calculate the correlation strength between project characteristics (PC) and operation and maintenance requirements through the Apriori algorithm, and order parameters are obtained from the cost chain.

Findings

This study found that there are significant differences in the correlation strength between 11 types of RO&M and PC, in which the “cost of types” (TC) correlation of residential housing and factory buildings is the largest, while the largest correlation demand of commercial buildings is “safety of types” (TS) and “system” (S). Simultaneously, through the calculation of order parameters, the most influential factors on project characteristics are obtained.

Practical implications

This study could effectively help the owner (or users) to check whether the delivered project fully satisfy their real requirements and also extract the key technical points to realize RO&M, which can guide the accurate construction of the same type of projects.

Originality/value

This research establishes OPAR model to accurately identify the requirements of the project in the operation and maintenance stage and establishes the association rules between the requirements and the construction scheme, which is helpful for the project to construct under the expected requirements.

Details

Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, vol. 29 no. 8
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0969-9988

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 25 December 2020

Jianyao Jia, Guofeng Ma, Shan Jiang, Ming Wu and Zhijiang Wu

Although social media use at work has made great impact on employee work performance, little is known about the effect of social media use at work on construction employees…

Abstract

Purpose

Although social media use at work has made great impact on employee work performance, little is known about the effect of social media use at work on construction employees, especially construction managers. In this way, the purpose of this study aims to investigate the impact of social media use at work on construction managers' work performance based on the enabler-process-intermediate outcome-performance framework.

Design/methodology/approach

This study adopts the knowledge seeker's perspective to empirically investigate the mechanism through which social media use at work impacts construction managers' work performance. Questionnaire survey was conducted with 210 construction managers to test the research model proposed in this study. A component-based structural equation modeling technique was employed to analyze the data.

Findings

Results show that social media use at work positively influences knowledge acquisition both internally and externally, and knowledge acquisition promotes task self-efficacy and creativity, which in turn improve construction managers' work performance. In addition, the interaction of task self-efficacy and creativity is found to negatively influence work performance.

Originality/value

These findings contribute to a comprehensive understanding about the impact of social media use at work on construction managers' work performance. This research also provides informative insights for practitioners on how to improve work performance.

Details

Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, vol. 28 no. 10
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0969-9988

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 6 August 2021

Zhijiang Wu, Yongxiang Wang and Wei Liu

Economic fundamentals are recognized as determining factors for housing on the city level, but the relationship between housing price and land supply has been disputed. This study…

Abstract

Purpose

Economic fundamentals are recognized as determining factors for housing on the city level, but the relationship between housing price and land supply has been disputed. This study aims to examine what kind of impact housing prices have on land supply and whether there is heterogeneity in different regional spaces.

Design/methodology/approach

This study collects the relevant data of land supply and housing prices in Nanchang from 2010 to 2018, constructs a vector autoregression (VAR) model, including one external factor and four internal factors of land supply to explore the dynamic effects and spatial heterogeneity of land supply on housing prices through regression analysis. Also, the authors use the geographic detector to analyze the spatial heterogeneity of housing prices in Nanchang.

Findings

This study found that the interaction between land supply and housing price is extremely complex because of the significant differences in the study area; the variables of land supply have both positive and negative effects on housing price, and the actual effect varies with the region; and residential land and GDP are the two major factors leading to the spatial heterogeneity in housing price.

Research limitations/implications

The dynamic effects of land supply on housing price are mainly reflected in the center and edge of the city, the new development area, and the old town, which is consistent with the spatial pattern of the double core, three circles and five groups in Nanchang.

Originality/value

This is a novel work to analyze the dynamic effects of land supply on house prices, instead of a single amount of land supply or land prices. Furthermore, the authors also explore the spatial heterogeneity according to the regional characteristics, which is conducive to targeted policymaking.

Details

International Journal of Housing Markets and Analysis, vol. 15 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1753-8270

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 7 October 2022

Liping Liao and Zhijiang Wu

The booming social media attracts construction professionals (CPs) to express emotions caused by work pressure (WP) through online behaviors. Previous works focus on the analysis…

Abstract

Purpose

The booming social media attracts construction professionals (CPs) to express emotions caused by work pressure (WP) through online behaviors. Previous works focus on the analysis of WP and emotions but do not adequately consider how WP can be reflected through online emotions. Thus, this study aims to attempt to explore the quantitative relationship between online emotional intensity and WP.

Design/methodology/approach

This study developed a linguistic-sticker (LS) model to quantitatively evaluate the sentiment intensity of posts published on social media. Moreover, the authors designed two econometric models of ordinary least squares regression and negative binomial regression to test the hypothesis.

Findings

The research found that posts with stronger negative sentiment (or positive sentiment) indicate that CPs face higher (or lower) WP. Besides, there is a negative bias between the sentiment intensity of posts and the comment quantity.

Practical implications

The positive correlation between sentiment intensity of posts and WP has been confirmed, which indicates that construction managers should pay more attention to CPs' behavior on social media, and take a more direct way to analyze work-related online behavior (e.g. posting, commenting). The dynamic monitoring of emotion-related posts also provides a direct basis for the management team to learn about CP's pressure status and propose measures to reduce their negative emotions. Furthermore, the emotional posts published by CPs on social media provide a direct basis for team managers to obtain their psychological state.

Originality/value

The research contributes to incorporating CPs' emotions into the LS model and to providing information systems artifacts and new findings on the analysis of WP and online emotions.

Details

Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, vol. 31 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0969-9988

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 16 August 2022

Zhijiang Wu and Guofeng Ma

The purpose of this study is to automatically generate a construction schedule by extracting data from the BIM (Building Information Modeling) model and combining an ontology…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to automatically generate a construction schedule by extracting data from the BIM (Building Information Modeling) model and combining an ontology constraint rule and a genetic algorithm (GA).

Design/methodology/approach

This study developed a feasible multi-phase framework to generate the construction schedule automatically through extracting information from the BIM, utilizing the ontology constraint rule to demonstrate the relationships between all the components and finally using the GA to generate the construction schedule.

Findings

To present the functionality of the framework, a prototype case is adopted to show the whole procedure, and the results show that the scheme designed in this study can quickly generate the schedule and ensure that it can satisfy the requirements of logical constraints and time parameter constraints.

Practical implications

A proper utilization of conceptual framework can contribute to the automatic generation of construction schedules and significantly reduce manual errors in the Architectural, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry. Moreover, a scheme of BIM-based ontology and GA for construction schedule generation may reduce additional manual work and improve schedule management performance.

Social implications

The hybrid approach combines the ontology constraint rule and GA proposed in this study, and it is an effective attempt to generate the construction schedule, which provides a direct indicator for the schedule control of the project.

Originality/value

In this study, the data application process of the BIM model is divided into four modules: extraction, processing, optimization, and output. The key technologies including secondary development, ontology theory, and GA are introduced to develop a multi-phase framework for the automatic generation of the construction schedule and to realize the schedule prediction under logical constraints and duration interference.

Details

Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, vol. 30 no. 10
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0969-9988

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 11 June 2018

Yuanyuan Wu, Zhenzhong Ma and Milo Shaoqing Wang

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of middle managers in the corporate entrepreneurship process that drives new capability development. Middle managers are…

1213

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of middle managers in the corporate entrepreneurship process that drives new capability development. Middle managers are highlighted as key entrepreneurial agents because of their special position in an organization.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper draws on existing capability development and corporate entrepreneurship literature and develops a conceptual model and research propositions that are illustrated through three examples from a Chinese private firm.

Findings

This paper contends the dual role of middle managers, both as change implementers to follow pre-set rules of an existing corporate entrepreneurship system and as change initiators to bring new rules to improve the existing system.

Research limitations/implications

The paper is conceptual in nature, advancing the understanding of middle managers’ role in corporate entrepreneurship. The paper provides directions for future empirical research.

Practical implications

The interactions between middle managers and other organizational agents are discussed in the propositions. This paper suggests the importance of empowering middle managers to facilitate changes in complex internal environments.

Originality/value

The paper provides a unique theoretical contribution by introducing the interface-based, multi-level conceptual model of corporate entrepreneurship toward new capability development.

Details

European Business Review, vol. 30 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0955-534X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 19 June 2017

Weidong Wang, Wenrui Gao, DongMei Wu and Zhijiang Du

The paper aims to present a tracked robot comprised of several biochemical sampling instruments and a universal control architecture. In addition, a dynamic motion planning…

Abstract

Purpose

The paper aims to present a tracked robot comprised of several biochemical sampling instruments and a universal control architecture. In addition, a dynamic motion planning strategy and autonomous modules in sampling tasks are designed and illustrated at length.

Design/methodology/approach

Several sampling instruments with position tolerance and sealing property are specifically developed, and a robotic operation system (ROS)-based universal control architecture is established. Then, based on the system, two typical problems in sampling tasks, i.e. arm motion planning in unknown environment and autonomous modules, are discussed, implemented and tested. Inspired by the idea of Gaussian process classification (GPC) and Gaussian process (GP) information entropy, three-dimensional (3D) geometric modeling and arm obstacle avoidance strategy are implemented and proven successfully. Moreover, autonomous modules during sampling process are discussed and realized.

Findings

Smooth implementations of the two experiments justify the validity and extensibility of the robot control scheme. Furthermore, the former experiment proves the efficiency of arm obstacle avoidance strategy, while the later one demonstrates the time reduction and accuracy improvement in sampling tasks as the autonomous actions.

Practical implications

The proposed control architecture can be applied to more mobile and industrial robots for its feasible and extensible scheme, and the utility function in arm path planning strategy can also be utilized for other information-driven exploration tasks.

Originality/value

Several specific biochemical sampling instruments are presented in detail, while ROS and Moveit! are integrated into the system scheme, making the robot extensible, achievable and real-time. Based on the control scheme, an information-driven path planning algorithm and automation in sampling tasks are conceived and implemented.

Details

Industrial Robot: An International Journal, vol. 44 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0143-991X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 30 December 2021

Bifeng Zhu, Gebing Liu and Jing Feng

This paper aims to make a comparative study on the latest version of green campus evaluation standard between China and America: Green Campus Evaluation Standard (GB/T51356-2019…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to make a comparative study on the latest version of green campus evaluation standard between China and America: Green Campus Evaluation Standard (GB/T51356-2019) and the sustainability tracking, assessment and rating system (STARS 2.2). The differences of evaluation methods and contents are analyzed and their respective characteristics and advantages are sorted out, so as to promote the development of sustainable campus evaluation standards.

Design/methodology/approach

The research mainly adopts the method of comparative study, which is carried out from three dimensions, namely, the related policies development of campus construction and world university sustainable rankings; the content of evaluation standards (including evaluation methods and evaluation categories and scores); the characteristics and current application of standards.

Findings

There are great differences between the evaluation standards of China and America in organization and participation mode, evaluation method and content. Public engagement, energy and campus engagement are the hot spots. Buildings, energy, food and dining and investment and finance will become the focus of sustainable campus in the future. Specific optimization strategies of key points, evaluation method and content and organization and participation mode of Chinese standard are put forward.

Practical implications

This paper clarifies the advantages and disadvantages of the current global sustainable campus, and provides the basis for the next stage of construction policy. At the same time, it is helpful for all countries, especially China, to formulate construction guidelines that not only meet their own actual needs but also conform to the trend of global sustainable campus development.

Social implications

The connotation of sustainable campus is enriched, and the evaluation standards of sustainable campus are improved. The development of sustainable campus is promoted, so as to realize the sustainable development goals.

Originality/value

This research expands the scope of the study to the whole campus, rather than just one aspect of campus buildings. It compares the evaluation standard of green campus in China with STARS in the USA, and no longer compares leadership in energy and environmental design for schools. It discusses the campus building’s energy conservation while paying attention to the campus green consciousness, green management and green planning. Based on the relevant data currently used by STARS in the global evaluation, this paper analyzes the hot spots and shortcomings of the current global sustainable campus construction and puts forward some optimization suggestions for China’s green campus evaluation system.

Details

International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, vol. 23 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1467-6370

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 9 February 2018

Yongzhuo Gao, Zhijiang Du, Xueshan Gao, Yanyu Su, Yu Mu, Li Ning Sun and Wei Dong

This paper aims to present an open-architecture kinematic controller, which was developed for articulated robots, facing the demands of various applications and low cost on robot…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to present an open-architecture kinematic controller, which was developed for articulated robots, facing the demands of various applications and low cost on robot system.

Design/methodology/approach

A general approach to develop this controller is described in hardware and software design. The hardware consists of embedded boards and programable multi-axes controller (PMAC), connected with ethernet, and the software is implemented on a robot operating system with MoveIt!. The authors also developed a teach pendant running as a LAN node to provide a human–machine interface (HMI).

Findings

The proposed approach was applied to several real articulated robot systems and was proved to be effective and portable. The proposed controller was compared with several similar systems to verify its integrality and flexibility. The openness of this controller was discussed and is summarized at the end of this paper.

Practical implications

The proposed approach provided an open and low-complex solution for experimental studies in the lab and short-run production in small workshops.

Originality/value

Several contributions are made by the research. The actuation model and communication were implemented to integrate the trajectory planning module and PMAC for setting up the physical interface. Method and program interface based on kinematics was provided to generate various interpolations for trajectory planning. A teach pedant with HMI was developed for controlling and programing the robot.

Details

Industrial Robot: An International Journal, vol. 45 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0143-991X

Keywords

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