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For a public project leader charged with a construction project, it can be crucial to meet the budget, while maximizing the qualities within a construction project. A method to achieve this is to use the “opposite design build” procurement method, in which the price is fixed and the contractors compete on adding a wide range of qualities to the project. However, such procurement approaches are rare, and it is difficult to find models on how to implement such an approach.

This study firstly looks at the literature on design-build, quality-only as the main selection criterion and to some degree on constructors’ bidding behaviour. Secondly, it explains a model for a design-build, quality-only procurement designed within the public tendering legislations. Thirdly, it investigates the outcome of the model applied to a specific case in Norway.

There seems to be a research gap within literature and cases on design-build, quality-only selection with a fixed price. The developed model allowed for negotiations, which led to more comparable and improved bids. In the investigated case, and the client was able to implement more qualities in the project than expected within the budget.

The researcher was himself partly involved in the process as an advisor.

The developed method is relatively simple and might readily be applied by any client to maximise a project’s qualities within a given fixed price.

The long-term value should be to widen the range of useful procurement methods.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how procurement strategies may be designed to facilitate exploration and exploitation in construction projects.

This paper is based on a literature review of organizational research and construction management literature together with a brief interview study of Swedish clients and contractors.

The theoretical and empirical findings propose that small and simple projects with low uncertainty and scarce resources may focus on exploitation to enhance short-term efficiency through traditional procurement strategies including delivery systems that separate the actors and their activities (i.e. pure design-build- or design-bid-build-contracts), fixed price payment and price focus in bid evaluation. Large complex projects with high uncertainty and customization benefit from combining exploration and exploitation to enhance sustainable performance. This requires collaborative procurement strategies including joint specification through early contractor involvement, cost reimbursement coupled with incentive-based payment, bid evaluation based on multiple criteria and collaborative tools and activities in partnering arrangements.

This paper contributes to organizational learning literature by pinpointing the need for integrating procurement strategies that enhance combination of exploration and exploitation. The main contribution to the construction management literature involves the investigation of how procurement strategies may affect exploration and exploitation, as identified and articulated in the propositions developed in this paper.

From a practical perspective, the findings highlight the importance of tailoring procurement strategies to project characteristics to enhance a suitable balance between exploration and exploitation in construction projects.

The explicit focus on the operational project-level is uncommon but relevant in organizational learning literature.

This study aims to investigate the moderating role of investor demand on the relationship between the investors' divergence of beliefs and the first-day initial public offering (IPO) return.

The study sample covers the period from 2010 to 2019 and consists of 117 IPOs that are priced using the fixed price and listed on the Malaysian stock exchange (Bursa Malaysia). This study employed both the ordinary least square (OLS) and the quantile regression (QR) methods.

Investor demand, proxied by the over-subscription ratio (OSR), plays a moderating role in increasing the effect of investors' divergence of beliefs on initial return, and the moderation effects vary across the quantile of initial return. Pure moderation effects are observed at the bottom and top quantiles, suggesting that investor demand is necessary for divergence of beliefs to influence IPO initial return. However, at the middle quantile of initial return, investor demand is a quasi-moderator. That is, the OSR not only moderates the relationship between the divergence of beliefs and initial return but also has a positive effect on the initial return.

Investors' excessive demand for an IPO issue exacerbates the IPO under-pricing issue induced by a divergence of beliefs amongst investors, thus rendering greater equity market inefficiency.

To the authors' knowledge, this study is amongst the first to empirically investigate the moderating role of investor demand on the investors' divergence of beliefs and IPO initial return relationship.

This paper aims to understand the significant farm and market-level factors that incentivize the adoption and marketing of pulses influencing its supply response to changing demand.

The authors first use a modified Nerlovian supply response model using secondary data to identify the major price and non-price factors influencing the supply of pigeon pea, black and green gram in the major pulses growing states in India. Second, using primary qualitative data the authors map the pulses value chain from farm to retail to identify the how proportional and fixed transaction costs (FCTs) influence market participation of pulses growers and limit the transmission of price and quality information.

The supply response model shows some positive influence of price on area allocation for pigeon pea and black gram and some negative effects of yield and price increase of competing crops on pigeon pea acreage. However, for the most part, the area of Kharif pulses is inelastic to prices in the long run. Irrigation, rainfall and yields in the lag year are shown to have a significant influence on area allocation for pulses. The market study reveals that low yields, low landholding size and geographical disadvantages of high agro-climatic risk and poor connectivity hinder market access of pulses farmers relative to other crops. Market power in favor of buyers and poor price and quality information is a disadvantage to sellers, influencing their ability to participate in markets.

A quantitative study would be required to identify the magnitude of farm and market-level transaction costs.

This study helps to understand the supply response of pulses and gives suggestions to direct policy to rectify this.

Brazil uses the dollar as a vehicle currency to invoice its exports. This fact produces a tendency toward equalizing the prices of products in dollars in the international market and reducing the ability of firms to practice pricing-to-market (PTM). This study aims to evaluate the hypothesis by estimating error correction models in panel data, obtaining estimates of PTM for 25 manufacturing products exported by Brazil between 2010 and 2020.

This study uses the correlated common effect estimator proposed by Pesaran (2006) and Chudik and Pesaran (2015b) to estimate the PTM coefficients.

Results of this study indicate that exporters practice local-currency pricing stability for dollar prices. This study obtains that Brazilian exporters tend to stabilize their dollar price for exports, reducing heterogeneity between destination markets. The results are in agreement with the hypothesis of the prevalence of the coalescing effect of Goldberg and Tille (2008) and lower sensitivity of the markup adjustment to the specific market, as pointed out by Corsetti et al. (2018). The pricing of Brazilian exports in dollars reflects a profit maximization strategy that considers an international price system based on global demand for products.

In addition to analyzing the dollar role in the pricing of Brazilian exports through the triangular decomposition, this study also shows the importance of examining the cross-section dependence of errors, considering the heterogeneous cointegration in export pricing models and producing PTM estimates for short-term and long-term.

The main purpose of this study is to examine the disclosure of earnings forecasts in firms' prospectuses to explain investor demands or, in other words, oversubscription rates of Malaysian initial public offerings (IPOs).

Ordinary least squares and robust methods were used to examine cross-sectional data comprising 466 fixed-price IPOs reported for the period from January 2000 to February 2020 on Bursa Malaysia.

The results showed that IPOs with earnings forecasts obtained higher oversubscription rates than those without earnings forecasts. IPOs with earnings forecasts provide value-relevant signals to prospective investors about the good prospects of firms, resulting in an increase in the demand for IPO shares. For the IPO samples listed during the global financial crisis (GFC) period, IPOs with earnings forecasts had negative impacts on the oversubscription rates. These results were robust to quantile methods and the two-stage least squares method.

The research findings provide fresh information for investors regarding the importance of earnings forecasts as a trustworthy signal of a firm’s quality when making share subscription decisions.

The regulator is advised to encourage issuers to include earnings forecasts in their prospectuses since such forecasts help to increase the demand for IPOs.

This study contributes to the literature by offering empirical evidence regarding the signalling impact of earnings forecast disclosures on investor demands for Malaysian IPOs. Moreover, this study provides evidence demonstrating the impact of earnings forecast disclosures on oversubscription rates of Malaysian IPOs during the GFC period.

This study investigates an under-researched yet fundamental question of how a developed country multinational enterprises (DMNE) perceives and manages political risks when undertaking infrastructure projects in the emerging markets (EMs).

The authors use an abduction-based qualitative research approach to analyze six international project operations of a multinational enterprise originating from Finland in five EMs.

The findings suggest that the overall nature of political risks in EMs is not the same, except few political risk factors that are visible in most EMs. Consequently, the applied risk management mechanisms vary between EMs, except with few common mechanisms. The authors develop an integrative analytical framework of political risk management based on the findings.

This paper is one of the first studies to identify political risk factors for western MNEs while undertaking international project operations and link them to reduction mechanisms used by them. The authors go beyond the notion of risk being conceptualized at a general level and evaluate 20 specific political risk factors referred to in extant literature. The authors further link these political risk factors with both social exchange and transaction cost theories conceptually as well as empirically. Finally, the authors develop a relatively comprehensive analytical framework of political risk management based on the case projects' findings that combine several strands of literature, including the social exchange theory, transaction cost theory, international market entry, project management and finance literature streams.

We consider a domestic monopolist who is protected by an import quota on the product he produces. He faces a domestic demand curve which is characterized by a constant price elasticity. He is unable to export and has an upward sloping marginal cost curve. We demonstrate that in this case his employment of labor rises with the import quota until imports rise to a fraction lie of domestic output where e is the elasticity of domestic demand. Thus, the employment maximizing quota sets permissible imports at a fraction of domestic output which is at least as high as the reciprocal of the elasticity of demand. We also make a case for liberalizing all the way right away, "cold turkey liberalization. "

This study aims to reveal the impact of consumers’ price sensitivity on their purchase intention within the scope of supermarkets. Besides, the study aims to examine the impact of consumers’ price sensitivity on their price perception level and emotions and the impact of consumers’ price level perception and emotions toward supermarkets on their purchase intention. It also aims to detect the mediating effects of consumers’ price level perception and emotions toward supermarkets between their price sensitivity and purchase intention.

The quota sampling method was used to form the study sample. The population was 20–69-year-old consumers. The study sample included 513 consumers, 276 of whom were men, and 237 of whom were women. Data were collected via a questionnaire by the researchers in Mersin’s (Turkey) five central counties. Explanatory and confirmatory factor analyses and structural equation models were used to analyze data.

Consumers’ price sensitivity, perception of cheapness, perception of expensiveness and positive emotions toward supermarkets affect their purchase intention. Besides, price sensitivity affects their perception of cheapness while it does not affect their perception of expensiveness. It influences negative emotions, but not on positive emotions. Consumers’ perception of cheapness and perception of expensiveness have impacts on positive emotions toward supermarkets. It was additionally discovered that perception of cheapness and perception of expensiveness affected negative emotions toward supermarkets. A contributed finding was that perception of cheapness had a partial mediating role between price sensitivity and purchase intention.

The study provides managerial implications in terms of understanding consumers’ behavioral changes, developing effective pricing strategies and achieving competitive advantages over the other retailing companies.

The study illustrates that consumer behavior can be explained by a theoretical construct considering the price perception levels and emotions toward supermarkets in examining the effect of consumers’ price sensitivity on their purchase intention. Therefore, it contributes to explain consumers’ behavior by bringing the stimulus–organism–response (SOR) model into a theoretical construct.

本研究旨在揭示在超級市場的研究範疇內，消費者的價格敏感度對其購買意圖的影響。此外，本研究亦擬探討消費者的價格敏感度對其價格水平感知及情緒的影響，以及消費者的價格水平感知及對超級市場的情感對其購買意圖的影響。本研究亦旨在檢測在消費者的價格敏感度與購買意圖之間，其價格水平感知及對超級市場的情感兩者的仲介效果。

本研究用了配額抽樣法來建立研究樣本。研究的對象為20嵗至69嵗的消費者。研究樣本包括513名消費者，其中276人為男性，237人為女性。數據由研究人員透過一項問卷調查在梅爾辛省 (土耳其) 的五個中心縣取得。使用探索性因素分析，驗證性因素分析及結構方程模型來分析數據。

研究結果顯示，消費者的價格敏感度，廉價感，對昂貴的看法及對超級市場的正面情緒，均影響其購買意圖。此外，消費者的價格敏感度會影響其廉價感，唯其對昂貴的看法則不受影響。價格敏感度對負面情緒帶來影響，但正面情緒則不受影響。消費者對廉價的看法及對昂貴的看法均影響他們對超級市場的正面情緒。研究亦發現，廉價感及對昂貴的看法均影響消費者對超級市場的負面情緒。貢獻的發現是：廉價感於價格敏感度與購買意圖之間扮演部分仲介角色。

本研究對管理有其作用。研究結果幫助管理人員更了解消費者行為的改變，發展有效的定價策略，以及比其它零售公司更能發展競爭優勢。

本研究闡明消費者行為是可以利用一個理論構建來說明的，而這個理論構建是透過考慮價格水平感知及對超級市場的情感來探討消費者的價格敏感度對其購買意圖的影響。因此，本研究透過把「刺激 – 機制 – 反應」模型變成為一個理論構建來說明消費者的行為， 在這方面，本研究是有其貢獻的.

This paper aims to understand the implementation of a circular economic business where animal manure is used to produce biogas and alternative fertilizer in a regional network of manure suppliers and biogas producers and to reveal the impacts of five variables (manure quantity, transportation distance, manure dry content, manure price and manure discharge price) on the economic sustainability of manure-based biogas supply chains.

An enterprise input-output approach is used to model physical and monetary flows of the manure-based biogas supply chain. Computational experiments are performed on all variables to identify under which conditions the cooperation is beneficial for all actors.

The cooperation is profitable for a large-scale farm (>20,000 t/year) if biogas producer (b) pays farmer (f) to receive its manure (5 €/t) or if f sells manure for free and manure disposal costs are >10 €/t. Cooperation is always profitable for b if f pays b to supply its manure (5€/t). If b receives manure for free, benefits are always positive if b is a medium-large-scale plant (>20,000 t/year). For a small-scale plant, benefits are positive if manure dry content (MDC) is ≥12 per cent and transportation distance is ≤10 km.

The paper adds value to the biogas production research, as it makes holistic analysis of five variables which might change under different policy and geographical conditions. The investors in biogas production, suppliers and transportation companies can find correspondence to empirical findings for their own site-specific cases.