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Collaborative contracting (CC) is the direction that Singapore is venturing into in line with the Construction Industry Transformation Map. For its successful adoption, it is necessary to examine the potential barriers and possible solutions. Therefore, this study aims to explore the current status, major barriers and best solutions for the adoption of CC in the Singapore construction industry.

To achieve these objectives, a comprehensive literature review was carried out and 26 barriers, as well as 21 solutions, were identified. Then a questionnaire was designed to assess the priority of these barriers and solutions. After a pilot study, 165 questionnaires were distributed, and 31 responses were received. And the survey result was validated by post-survey with three industry professionals.

Results revealed that only a small percent of projects adopted CC in Singapore. Seven significant barriers hindering CC implementation were found out. They are “inherent difficulties in changing organizational culture,” “lack of incentives/financial support,” “lack of legislative regulations,” “resistant to change the current way of working,” “seeking for the lowest cost” and “difficulties in converting strategic decisions to operational levels” and “unclear contract terms and objectives.” Also, five best solutions were suggested to overcome the identified barriers.

The findings of this study could enable industry practitioners to be aware of the potential barriers to adopting CC and choose suitable solutions to overcome these barriers. It is also helpful for authorities to come up with effective policies to promote the adoption of CC.

The Singapore construction sector is promoting performance improvement by implementing collaborative contracting (CC). For CC's successful implementation, there is a need to sieve out the critical success factors (CSFs). Hence, this paper aims to explore factors influencing the adoption of CC and investigate the potential performance improvement by implementing CC.

Based on the literature review, 23 CSFs were identified and packaged to a questionnaire to evaluate the CSF's priority as well as CC's potential impact on the project performance. After prior validation, 165 potential respondents were drawn from survey list by using simple random sampling. Finally, 31 valid responses were received.

The survey result showed that the top five CSFs are mutual trust, all parties to commit fully, openness between parties, commitment to a win–win attitude and resource availability. The majority of respondents hold that CC implementation would improve overall project performance, decision effectiveness, cost, time, quality and risk performance.

Directors, project managers, contractor managers and site engineers have different perceptions of CSFs. Also rather than meeting the same requirements in the implementation of CC, there are differences among projects with different values.

This study provides an in-depth understanding of the CSFs for industry practitioners adopting CC and CC's potential impact on project performance. This study is also helpful for authorities to formulate effective policies to push the implementation of CC.

This chapter explores the development of an individual-level measure of decent work. It draws on a recent article written by the authors, which was part of a larger international project to validate a cross-cultural self-report measure of decent work within the context of the Psychology of Working Theory (Dodd et al., 2019). It discusses the importance of a psychological perspective on decent work to better understand working lives; summarizes the findings from the validation studies Decent Work Scale (DWS) in eight countries; outlines potential uses of the DWS; and considers the limitations of the DWS as well as challenges to conceptualizing decent work more generally.

Health policies often require individuals to limit behaviours deemed enjoyable or suffer other burdens. This leads to considerable and contested discourse often played out in the popular media. The aim of this study is to determine the effects of such contested media discourse on viewers' perceived attitude change towards the target behaviour.

Combining concepts from discourse analysis and marketing-psychology elaboration models, the authors undertook an online survey in which a large sample of the public (N = 855) watched parts of a real daytime news debate on the UK Sugar Tax. The authors then evaluated the effects of this discourse on the perceived understanding of the tax and perceived attitude change to the consumption of sugary drinks.

Participants differentiated between parts of the discourse related to facts and arguments (termed argument-related discourse devices) and parts related to the format and tone of the debate (termed debate-/speaker-related discourse devices). Contrary to what might be expected, debate-/speaker-related discourse devices, which might be thought of as subjective, appeared to effect positive perceived attitude change through a cognitive processing route that involved perceived improved understanding. The argument-related discourse devices, which may appear objective or rational, were not associated with perceived improved understanding but were directly associated with positive perceived attitude change.

Given the authors' interest in the relationship between discourse and perceived attitude change, the authors take the novel step of linking concepts from discourse analysis with models of attitude change taken from the marketing-psychology domain. Furthermore, the authors' large-scale survey “democratises” discourse analysis, allowing non-expert participants to reflect upon discourse.

Looks at the 2000 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference held at the University of Cardiff in Wales on 6/7 September 2000. Spotlights the 76 or so presentations within and shows that these are in many, differing, areas across management research from: retail finance; precarious jobs and decisions; methodological lessons from feminism; call centre experience and disability discrimination. These and all points east and west are covered and laid out in a simple, abstract style, including, where applicable, references, endnotes and bibliography in an easy‐to‐follow manner. Summarizes each paper and also gives conclusions where needed, in a comfortable modern format.

This study extends previous literature on social exchange by investigating the mediating effects of leader‐member exchange on the relationship between procedural justice, job attitudes and turnover in a unionized setting. Past research has shown that procedural justice and subordinate/supervisor exchanges are related to job attitudes and turnover. These relationships have normally been studied in non‐union settings, in which union contextual variables are not considered. The current study uses hierarchical linear modeling to test theoretical models of these relationships in a unionized setting, where procedures and managerial treatment are more clearly defined and regulated. Results reveal that both procedural justice and leader‐member exchange are related to organizational commitment and job satisfaction and leader‐member exchange is related to actual turnover. Leadermember exchange partially mediates the relationship between procedural justice and these job attitudes after accounting for the effects of union commitment (at the individual level) and union‐management relations (at the store level). From a managerial perspective, our results emphasize the importance of proper selection, training and performance appraisal of supervisors, with treatment and support of employees as a main focus.

This introductory chapter provides the context for this edited collection: Care and Coronavirus: Perspectives on Children, Youth and Families which aims to understand care in the context of COVID-19, the practices, experiences and potential futures of it for children, young people and families. In this chapter, the authors begin by exploring COVID-19 and its implications for children, young people and families. This includes a consideration of how particular discourses of childhood and youth often led to the marginalisation of children in care policy and practice during the lockdown periods. The authors then discuss interdisciplinary literature on care to identify directions in policy, practice and research, drawing attention to the political nature of care and the need for scholars of childhood, youth and family to engage with these critical and political approaches to care. The authors argue that developments in the field of Childhood Studies can be brought into productive dialogue with care to forge new ways of thinking through care and childhood. The final part of the chapter provides an overview of the ensuing chapters and concludes with the implications of this work for future research, policy and practice. The authors argue that COVID-19 heightened the attention paid to care and the ways in which care is vital for the maintenance of ourselves and the world around us, while also cautioning about the inequalities and the commodification of care that was revealed in these times. The authors end with a call for reflection on the failures and successes of caring during the pandemic and in its aftermath so we might plan a more caring, hopeful future.

Physical inactivity has a considerable negative impact on health. Physical activity has reduced partly due to workplace and lifestyle changes, causing people to spend more time in buildings and increasing sedentary behaviour. The purpose of this paper is to address a largely untapped opportunity for designers and managers to improve building users’ health by designing buildings that raise users’ Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT) levels. In this research a conceptual model was developed to assess buildings’ performance in providing NEAT-promoting opportunities through building design features and management, in relation to building users’ propensity for NEAT behaviours.

The conceptual model was developed by a multi-disciplinary team of researchers and data to populate the model was obtained through a survey of 75 buildings in Jakarta (Indonesia).

The presented proof-of-concept shows that the model’s “meso-scale” approach to study physical activity and building design can lead to potential improvements of NEAT levels and physical activity in buildings.

The review of precedent models shows that this subject has been researched at micro-scale (i.e. detailed monitoring of individuals’ movement) and macro-scale (i.e. epidemiological studies of populations’ health). The presented model is original, as it explores a “meso-scale”(i.e. building scale) that is unique.

The concept of corporate social responsibility of the enterprise covers a vast territory! This paper proposes to limit the analysis and evaluation of this concept to three distinct aspects. The first will treat the comparatively new and evolving common law implied term in corporated into the contract of employment relating to the enterprise’s social responsibility of respect towards the employee. The second will analyse an other generically linked recent common law development in the field of the enterprise’s social responsibility of respect towards the employee, namely the implied over‐riding term. Thirdly, the novel and developing wider concept of corporate social responsibility will be addressed and assessed. Some concluding thoughts will follow.