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This paper aims to contribute to research on corporate governance in regulated sectors, with emphasis in the field of activity of foreign investors through the ownership structure and legal system that regulates companies in Brazil.

In the first moment, the investigation had a quantitative approach of relational nature. Based on the data about the valuation of actions, statistical methods were applied to a secondary database containing measurable information provided by the organizations that operate the Brazilian stock-market and documentary evidence provided by the companies. In the second moment, a qualitative approach was adopted, resorting on the use of semi-structured interviews with investors and agents of the sector.

The results lead to two paths: presenting the perspective that foreign investors play a key role in improving governance practices because foreign ownership mitigates agency problems, provides adequate follow-up and optimizes the use of corporate resources; and evidencing the existence of a mitigation of operational risks in the face of the various obligations imposed by the concession contract with the regulatory agency, without direct interference under the ownership structure of regulated companies.

The literature portrays a distinct economic scenario in Brazil, where stock control is pulverized and mechanisms of corporate governance and scope of action of investors and regulated sectors are well-defined and implemented.

A great part of the studies from this field discusses the same object: the impact of the adoption of corporate governance mechanisms on selected efficiency indicators or on the value of the companies' actions. This investigation, on the other hand, targeted a differentiated approach so that its contribution would lie in the investigation under the influence of the regulation on the legal attributions and the performance of the investors how many conflicts between the other shareholder/regulatory body, as the control measures import by the regulatory agent the concessionaires of the Brazilian highways and transportation sector.

The identification of the presence of foreign investors as a determinant for: better performance of companies in Brazilian regulated sector in terms of market valuation; better mitigation of requirements with the regulatory framework for the agencies that regulate the concession sector, targeting a reduction in the asymmetry of information and transparency among all stakeholders.

The fact that Brazil is an emerging country that lacks a rigid legal system and corruption-control measures in corporate environments and public sectors, stresses the importance of the application of the “Best Codes of Corporate Governance Practices” in the main developed countries. This also stresses the need for effective supervisory bodies that contribute to a better financial performance of companies, guaranteeing investors the legal system.

Downtime resulting from equipment failure is a major problem consistently faced in highway construction. Since managing construction equipment is tightly connected to various activities and parties inside as well as outside of the firm, failure to account for this fact invariably causes downtime to be even more severe. Variation in equipment management practices is thus, indeed, a root cause of the dynamics of machine downtime. This study is intended to address key dynamic features of heavy equipment management practices and downtime in small to medium highway contracting firms and propose policies for equipment performance improvement.

Face‐to‐face interviews with equipment managers from five different small to medium highway construction companies in Thailand were conducted. Data were analysed using a system dynamics (SD) simulation approach.

To overcome downtime problems, contractors need to understand the dynamics of downtime as well as its influential factors, and thus manage their equipment as a dynamic process rather than one that is static. Based on the simulation, various policies are proposed to improve the performance of heavy equipment for small to medium highway contractors.

The research is of value in facilitating better understanding on the dynamics of equipment management practices and downtime as well as their interdependency.

GMR Infrastructure Limited (GMRIL) had to make a decision on its continued role in the 555.48 km Kishangarh Udaipur Ahmedabad (KUA) Expressway Project, India's then longest road public-private partnership (PPP) project. GMR had terminated the contract citing NHAI's failure in fulfilling Conditions Precedent (CP) of providing (i) environment clearance (EC), (ii) revised toll free notification and (iii) 80% of required land. The case intends to educate the reader on the concessionaire-authority dynamics in typical Indian infrastructure PPPs. Taking into account its internal strategy, the extant unfavourable investment climate, the Central Government's steps to revive private interest in the highways sector and NHAI's quick turnaround in fulfilling CP, GMR had to decide how to respond.

In the view of most economists, highways and streets are “public goods,” not amenable to ordinary market competition. The present papers argues, to the contrary, that these thoroughfares are conducive to competitiveness, and then applies these insights to automobile insurance and price controls.

This paper aims to describe in depth case studies demonstrating that many small companies that participate in collaborative relationships are not realising the knowledge and skill acquisition benefits that policy makers envision when they formulate public policy that promotes creation of collaborative business relationships.

Hamel's theory of inter‐partner learning is built upon to explain the possible reasons why firms fail to derive learning‐related benefits from participation in collaborative relationships, and the implications for public policy, for firms participating in collaborative relationships, and for future research are discussed.

Key findings reveal that small companies are not realising the intended benefits of collaboration. Many New Zealand firms that participate in alliances are not using them to develop new skills and competencies.

Learning was neither an objective nor an outcome of most of the collaborative business relationships investigated in this research. The cases studied were selected from a large database of collaborative business relationships involving New Zealand firms, so there is no reason to believe that these findings are unique to the particular relationships examined; however, it would be useful to investigate the extent to which the findings generalise to other collaborative relationships in New Zealand and in other countries.

Policy makers should carefully consider the types of collaborative relationships that they promote as not all relationships generate public benefits. Firms should consider collaborative relationships as a possible option for acquiring new skills and, if they wish to learn through participation in such a relationship, then they should make this a specific objective.

The paper shows that the adoption of a qualitative approach allows a more insightful examination of collaborative relationships and learning.

Although a high proportion of the Ghanaian population live and work in under‐developed areas, research on rural infrastructure development is scarce. The purpose of this paper is to explore the challenges confronting rural infrastructure development and the requisite incentives needed to boost it.

An inductive methodological approach was adopted using a structured questionnaire to survey the perceptions of rural contractors.

Incentive systems identified include the provision of mobilization funds for projects; a plant pool for rural contractors; special allowance for rates of project items; and provision of letters of credit to secure loans for projects. Key challenges confronting rural construction were identified as a lack of financial institutions willing to support projects with funds; lack of potable water; lack of good health care systems; and lack of a goods market to supply materials.

Identification of challenges and incentive systems for rural infrastructure development provides an opportunity to reinvigorate rural infrastructural development in sub‐Saharan Africa.

The study will be of value to all project partners throughout the supply chain who contemplate rural infrastructure development.

The paper presents a novel epitome of rural infrastructure delivery in the developing country of Ghana.

Retailing.

Undergraduate and Master's level business and management courses.

This case looks at the second largest oil company in India (Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL)) and examines an innovative services marketing concept that they introduced into the market in India for the first time, namely, one-stop truck shops. These new format truck-stops were targeted at the highway-based truckers in India who earlier had to stop off at multiple locations to eat and re-fuel increasing their on-road time and reducing their efficiency, much to the chagrin of their truck-fleet owners.

Students will be expected to build their knowledge of retailing in developing markets using the example of BPCL as a learning tool. The case examines differences in consumer behavior in developed vs developing markets, paying particular attention to the required need to differentiate the retail approach to suit the market.

Teaching note (with photographs).

Starting in March 2020, Indonesia had the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, this situation has decreased the utilization of highways due to complying with the government regulation, including work from home and large-scale social restrictions to reduce the spreading the corona virus. There are three highway companies listed on Indonesia Stock Exchange such as CMNP, META, and JSMR. On the other hand, the research about the financial performance and the financial distress prediction in Highways sector, especially in Indonesia is not available during the COVID-19 pandemic. This research is aimed to evaluate the financial distress by the Zmijewski model with two criterions: bankrupt and non-bankrupt zone and the financial performance by state-owned enterprise (SOE) rating with three criterions: healthy, less healthy, and unhealthy condition. The period of research is Q1 2019 – Q1 2020 as the period before the COVID-19 pandemic and Q2 2020 – Q2 2021 as the period during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study concludes that all highway companies was in non-bankrupt zone by the Zmijewski model for both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, based on SOE rating on average for the period before the COVID-19 pandemic, CMNP, META, and JSMR achieved rating consecutively BBB, BBB, and BB. Meanwhile, on average, for the period during the COVID-19 pandemic, CMNP, META, and JSMR achieved ratings consecutively BB, BB, and B.

With the majority of highway projects in China having entered their operational phases, the maintenance and repair of the pavement is receiving increasing attention. One problem that needs to be addressed urgently is that of how to raise the proper funds for highway maintenance to ensure the sustainable operation of the project. To this end, the aim of this study is to investigate the capital demand for operation and maintenance of a project by means of a refinancing scheme, in order to reduce the possibility of project bankruptcy and to enhance the economic value of the project.

Based on an analysis of the dynamic complexity of the highway pavement maintenance system, a Markov model is used to predict pavement performance, and an optimal capital structure decision model is proposed for highway public–private partnership (PPP) project refinancing, using the method of system dynamics (SD). The proposed model is then applied to a real case study.

Results show that the proposed model can be used to predict accurately the dynamic changes in the demand for road maintenance funds and refinancing during the period of operation, before making the optimal decision for the refinancing capital structure.

Although many scholars have studied the optimal refinancing capital structure of PPP projects, the dynamic changes inherent in the demand for maintenance funds for highway PPP projects are seldom considered. Therefore, in the approach used here the influence of the dynamic change of road maintenance capital demand on refinancing is investigated, and SD is used for the optimal capital structure decision-making model of highway PPP project refinancing, to make the decision-making process more reasonable and scientific.

The advent of Industry 4.0 has engendered opportunities for a coalescence of digital technologies that collectively enable driverless vehicles to operate during the construction and use of a highway. Yet, hitherto scant research has been conducted to review these collective developments and/or sample construction practitioner opinion on them. This study aims to present a systematic review of extant literature on the application of driverless technologies in civil engineering and in particular, the highways infrastructure sector and offers insight into the limitations of associated barriers to full adoption, namely, current technological development processes, legal deficiencies and societal concerns. In so doing, this work presents a vignette of contemporary developments augmented by a critical analysis from practitioners’ perceptions.

A mixed philosophical methodological approach is adopted for this inductive research study. Interpretivism is used to critically analyse the literature and post-positivism to perform content analysis of the literature and synthesis of the discourse with practitioners. A total of 44 related papers published between 1998 and 2019 have been included in this study. Emergent themes identified from literature are then discussed in some further detail, namely, 1) automation and robotics; 2) case studies and simulations; and 3) safety and ergonomics). A focus group is then held with leading industrialists to discuss their experiences of advanced driverless technology applications in practice. Based upon a culmination of emergent evidence, a conceptual model of prevailing barriers is then developed to further elucidate upon the challenges facing the highways infrastructure sector.

Research into driverless technologies within the highways infrastructure sector has received relatively scant academic attention. Hitherto, most advancements made have stemmed from multidisciplinary teams consisting of engineering, information technology and social scientist researchers. There is insufficient supporting evidence of civil engineering and construction academics input into developments made – suggesting that prototype products often fail to adequately consider practical applications in the highways infrastructure sector at the design and use case stage. This view is substantiated by feedback from leading industry experts who participated in unstructured telephone interviews. Their feedback suggests that practical applications of products have been beset with problems, thus creating a perception that advanced technologies are largely “unusable” within the highways infrastructure sector and so are unsuitable for large-scale (and particularly bespoke) industrial applications.

This research critically synthesises the prevailing scientific discourse within extant literature on driverless technologies implemented but also garners practitioner feedback from leading UK industrialists on their applications in practice. Hitherto, this combined analysis approach has been rarely used in spite of it having significant advantages of tacit knowledge reflection on technologies used, where such can be used as a basis for further informed discourse and/or development. Moreover, this work culminates in a conceptual model that acts as a catalyst for future research investigations.