Search results

There has been a significant increase in the use of relationship contracting in the global construction industry, with strategies such as Partnering, Alliancing and Public-Private Partnerships all used. These approaches were introduced to the Australian construction industry in the 1990s in an attempt to overcome the adversarial nature of traditional contracting methods. The purpose of this paper is to investigate factors that influence the successful implementation of Project Alliancing by means of a case study approach focusing on the procurement of a large water treatment plant. The research findings identify critical success factors (CSFs) both from literature and the case study project.

The research traces the origins of Alliancing and identifies CSFs by reviewing literature and analysing a current case study project. The paper first identifies CSFs on a global scale by establishing a theoretical framework of CSFs and then compares this to the case study project. A case study of an Australian Alliance project is investigated whereby a semi-structured interview process, involving senior managers from the six partners from the Alliance, was used in conjunction with a review of project documentation. The findings of the case study project are compared to the literature and any new CSFs are identified.

Alliancing helps to establish and manage the relationships between all parties, remove barriers and encourage maximum contribution to achieve success. Alliancing provides a project delivery method that promotes open communication, equality and a systematic problem resolution process. Team culture focusing on an “open book/no blame” approach is vital to the success of an Alliance. Five CSFs were identified as specifically influencing the success of the case study project: the use of an integrated Alliance office; the staging of project and stretch targets; establishing project specific key performance indicators; facilitating on-going workshops; and the integration of a web-based management programme.

The research findings assist both public and private sectors by identifying factors that are critical for success in Alliancing. Five additional factors were identified as specifically influencing the success of the case study project. Since this research was conducted, Australia has seen a further increase in relationship contracting where the likes of Alliancing is often used as the default approach for certain Public Sector projects. Ongoing research into Alliancing is vital to ensure the development of sustainable procurement models, successful operational viability, fair risk distribution and value for money.

The filing and indexing of unpublished papers in government departments is a job given in the great majority of departments to a special section known as ‘the registry’, and a description of the practice in government departments reduces to a description of ‘registry procedure’.

While there is little enough progress to report for the moment among the training boards, the Central Training Council has set up some new special committees. The General Policy Committee is drawn from members of the council itself. It will consider and make recommendations to the council on general policy, and on the form and content of publications.

The objectives of this paper are to examine the impact of psychological contract on project performance in private construction projects and to investigate if the positive effect of psychological contract on project performance can be mediated by inter-organisational teamwork.

Multiple regression analysis and mediation analysis were applied in this study to conduct the proposed hypotheses. Data were collected via questionnaire surveys from the construction professionals working for contractor firms on private construction projects.

The result of the multiple regression analysis indicated that psychological contract between contractors and owners is significantly related with project performance in construction projects. This study examined five psychological contract components, but the most important element was found as trust which can influence every aspect of project performance. Fairness is another key factor that can improve project performance in terms of budget and quality. Further, the findings of the mediation analysis revealed that inter-organisational teamwork has a mediating effect on the relationship between psychological contract and project performance.

This paper presents the important role of psychological contract between contractor and owner organizations in construction projects that can affect project performance. The study also highlights the significance of inter-organisational teamwork as a mediator to the relationship between psychological contract and project performance.

The US prison population has recently reached an all-time high, with women representing the fastest growing subpopulation. Correctional health-care system in the USA remains fragmented and nonuniform in practice, particularly in women’s health care, with poor transitions between incarceration and release. This study aims to examine the qualitative health-care experiences of women while incarcerated and their transition into the community health-care setting. Additionally, this study also examined the experiences of a subset of women who were pregnant while incarcerated.

After obtaining institutional review board approval, adult, English-speaking women with a history of incarceration within the past 10 years were interviewed using a semi-structured interview tool. Interview transcripts were analyzed using inductive content analysis.

The authors completed 21 full interviews and identified six themes that were both the most significant and most novel: “feeling stigmatized and insignificant,” “care as punishment,” “delay in care,” “exceptions to the rule,” “fragmentation of care” and “obstetric trauma and resilience.”

Women face numerous barriers and hardships when accessing basic and reproductive health-care services while incarcerated. This hardship is particularly challenging for women with substance use disorders. The authors were able to describe for the first time, partially through their own words, novel challenges described by women interacting with incarceration health care. Community providers should understand these barriers and challenges so as to effectively reengage women in care upon release and improve the health-care status of this historically marginalized group.

Considering the important role of knowledge management in the global growth of world economies, the importance of knowledge management in the tourism industry can hardly be overestimated. Knowledge management, empowering leadership and innovation can open new research prospects for online travel and tourism, thereby increasing organizational capacity. In this context, this study aims to investigate the relationship between knowledge management practices and transformational leadership, along with the mediating role in this relationship of leadership communication. Knowledge management practices are discussed through the lens of managers’/organizational perspectives working in the online travel and tourism industry.

Using a descriptive research method, the data were collected from a total of 174 managers/senior executives working in the online travel and tourism sectors. The proposed conceptual framework was evaluated using structural equation modeling through AMOS 21 and Process Macro (SPSS-Plugin).

The results revealed a significant increase in the adoption of knowledge management practices in the online travel and tourism sector under transformative leadership. The results also highlighted that effective communication is a vital contributor and significant complementary mediator in the relationship between transformative leadership and knowledge management practices.

The results of this study suggest that transformational leaders, who are equipped with the “high touch” nature of leadership and the “high tech” aspect of the contemporary workplace, are the best fit to manage online travel and tourism organizations. To have an adequate knowledge management system, knowledge managers should adopt a transformative leadership style and receive comprehensive training in developing leadership abilities such as effective communication competencies.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to demonstrate that, in emerging online travel and tourism sectors, organizational knowledge can be managed through effective leadership communication.

The aim of this study is to broaden the understanding of the set of knowledge, skills, attributes and experience (KSAE) that teams should demonstrate and the necessary roles they need to play within the team in Relational Contracting (RC). This research seeks to answer three questions: first, what KSAEs are required in a team operating under RC, second, which of the identified KSAEs are more important to enable an integrated team to perform effectively and third, how do these required KSAEs correspond to the major role clusters identified in Belbin’s team role model?

In-depth interviews with 25 experts and key management representatives in infrastructure construction in Australia were conducted to enable detailed discussion of the research questions.

Sixteen behavioural traits and four knowledge and experience areas were identified. The findings highlight that in RC, team members and especially leaders and managers need to be competent in people-oriented roles, above all others.

This research mainly captured the perspectives of personnel working in state government infrastructure departments. Further research is recommended to explore the perceptions of employees in private construction companies.

By aligning the roles required for RC with the team role clusters of the Belbin’s team roles assessment tool, this study will be useful for identifying suitable members to form high-performance project teams.

The findings of this paper can inform government infrastructure organisations and construction companies as to which roles are more critical when selecting fit-for-purpose teams to successfully deliver large infrastructure projects procured under the RC method.

This paper aims to describe the process to create an inventory of the facilities in Canada designated to incarcerate women and girls, health service responsibility by facility, facility proximity to hospitals with maternity services and residential programmes for mothers and children to stay together. This paper creates the inventory to support health researchers, prison rights advocates and policymakers to identify, analyse and respond to sex and gender differences in health and access to health services in prisons.

In spring 2019, this study conducted an environmental scan to create an inventory of every facility in Canada designated for the incarceration of girls and women, including remand/pretrial custody, immigration detention, youth facilities and for provincial and federal sentences.

There are 72 facilities in the inventory. In most, women are co-located with men. Responsibility for health varies by jurisdiction. Few sites have mother-child programmes. Distance to maternity services varies from 1 to 132 km.

This paper did not include police lock-up, courthouse cells or involuntary psychiatric units in the inventory. Information is unavailable regarding trans and non-binary persons, a priority for future work. Access to maternity hospital services is but one critical question regarding reproductive care. Maintenance of the database is challenging.

Incarcerated women are an invisible population. The inventory is the first of its kind and is a useful tool to support sex and gender and health research across jurisdictions.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the global scientific outputs of ontology research, an important emerging discipline that has huge potential to improve information understanding, organization, and management.

This study collected literature published during 1900-2012 from the Web of Science database. The bibliometric analysis was performed from authorial, institutional, national, spatiotemporal, and topical aspects. Basic statistical analysis, visualization of geographic distribution, co-word analysis, and a new index were applied to the selected data.

Characteristics of publication outputs suggested that ontology research has entered into the soaring stage, along with increased participation and collaboration. The authors identified the leading authors, institutions, nations, and articles in ontology research. Authors were more from North America, Europe, and East Asia. The USA took the lead, while China grew fastest. Four major categories of frequently used keywords were identified: applications in Semantic Web, applications in bioinformatics, philosophy theories, and common supporting technology. Semantic Web research played a core role, and gene ontology study was well-developed. The study focus of ontology has shifted from philosophy to information science.

This is the first study to quantify global research patterns and trends in ontology, which might provide a potential guide for the future research. The new index provides an alternative way to evaluate the multidisciplinary influence of researchers.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the association between trust and productivity from a subcontractor perspective. More specifically it investigates: the perceived level of trust that currently exists between subcontractors and main contractors; the factors affecting trust at the project level; the relationship between trust and productivity.

An on-line survey was undertaken with of 112 senior construction managers working for tier-1 and tier-2 subcontractors in the Australian construction industry. The survey was based on a combination of validated questions from Lau and Rowlinson’s (2009) interpersonal trust and inter-firm trust in construction projects framework and Cheung et al.’s (2011) framework for a trust inventory in construction contracting.

In contrast to the large number of research projects which have highlighted a lack of trust in the construction industry, the findings show that level of trust that Australian subcontractors have in main contractors is generally high. However, bid shopping is a continuing problem in the Australian construction industry which acts to undermine trust. The findings also provide strong evidence that high levels of trust influence productivity on site by enabling greater collaboration, better communication and greater flexibility, agility and informality in project relationships.

This research was undertaken in the Sydney metropolitan area in Australia and within an economic boom. It is quite possible that outside this regional context which tends to dominated by larger construction firms and in an alternative economic context that the results of this research could be quite different. This possibility needs to be investigated further.

The results indicate that this relatively healthy level of trust is down to good communication and empathy on the part of main contractors to the subcontractor’s welfare. While the results showed that bid shopping is clearly a continuing problem in the Australian construction industry, subcontractors also felt that their contracts were clearly defined and that they were given sufficient time to innovate on their projects. This suggest that new communications technologies can be used to build trust through the supply chain. Given that much of the construction supply chain is made up of small- to medium-sized businesses, the challenge of diffusing these new technologies into this business environment should be a priority.

Trust in basis of effective collaboration which has been shown to produce numerous social benefits such as greater equity and justice in business relationships and higher levels of productivity and safety.

The originality of this research is in using theories of trust to give subcontractors a greater “voice” in the construction productivity debate.