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A defining feature of international business is the necessity for people from diverse cultural backgrounds to interact and collaborate but intercultural interaction is difficult and may give rise to disagreement and conflict. I have been working on the dynamics that promote positive intercultural interaction in the international business context, and two streams of my research, one empirical and the other conceptual, are reviewed here. The first stream is concerned with fairness issues surrounding the pay disparity between locals and expatriates in multinational enterprises operating in China, which has implications for MNC operations in other emerging economies. My research has shown that the pay disparity is associated with negative reactions from local employees but some management practices associated with the relationship between locals and expatriates, attributions made by locals, and salient norms about the pay disparity can buffer such negative reactions. In this research program, the focus is not on the actual interaction between locals and expatriates. To address this gap, a conceptual framework is presented, which provides insight about the factors that contribute to positive interaction between locals and expatriates. This paper ends with implications for future research on intercultural interaction in the MNC context.

Uses the technique of delay‐time analysis to model preventive maintenance problems of gearboxes for the Kowloon Motor Bus (KMB) Company Limited in Hong Kong. Presents a basic model of inspection maintenance, along with models of some of the variations which have been observed in the case being studied. Aims, in particular to identify the problems and requirements of KMB and then develop a delay‐time model to fit the case, as well as to determine a preventive maintenance policy derived from the model so that the total maintenance cost per unit time can be minimized. Verifies the feasibility of implementing the policy according to three criteria: workers’ utilization, downtime of the gearboxes and the monthly cost incurred by both maintenance and overhead. Compares the results with those of the current policy. Suggests recommendations to KMB for improving the current maintenance policy, and highlights the general applicability of the delay‐time modelling technique.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the mediating role of organisational commitment in the relationship between work‒life balance (WLB) and organisational performance of female construction professionals in the Nigerian construction industry.

The study empirically examined WLB of female professionals in medium- and large-sized Nigerian construction organisations. The data collected were analysed using partial least square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM).

The findings revealed that there is a positive relationship between WLB and organisational commitment, and that organisational commitment mediates the impact of WLB on organisational performance.

One of the limitations of this research is the cross-sectional nature of the study and the nature of data collected, which is related to female gender. Efforts should, therefore, be made to further this study by examining the impact of WLB on both male and female professionals in construction.

This paper presents an empirical research on the significance of family-friendly initiatives within construction organisations in Nigerian context, and the results of the study have implications for industry practitioners and academics.

The purpose of this paper is to assess how gender influences stress response strategies among quantity surveyors in workplaces with a view to enhancing job performance.

Primary data were obtained through a survey, which utilised structured questionnaires administered to quantity surveyors in Lagos, Oyo and Ondo States in Nigeria. In total, 334 quantity surveyors in government establishments, consulting and construction firms were randomly sampled to survey male quantity surveyors, and a purposive sampling technique was used to collect data from female quantity surveyors. Data collected were analysed using percentile, using mean item score (MIS) and Mann–Whitney U test.

In total, 27 stress response strategies were identified in dealing with stressors in quantity surveyors’ workplaces. The results of the analysis revealed the level of usage of the stress response strategies with the highest being “seeking clarification with colleagues or superiors” achieving an MIS of 3.95, followed by “belonging to professional association” (MIS=3.67), and “opportunity to discuss with manager/supervisor” (MIS=3.66). The scoring of the level of usage of the stress response strategies (2.20<MIS<3.95) suggested that although quantity surveying organisations were familiar with a good number of workplace stress response strategies, a significant number of the strategies were neither suitable nor adopted. Moreover, stress response strategies with high a rating of familiarity were also the most utilised and most effective.

The study provided implications for management roles in identifying stressors and appropriate strategies towards creating a healthy working environment and improving job productivity of female quantity surveyors in their workplaces.

The results show no significant difference in gender perception of the effectiveness of the 27 stress response strategies assessed except three. The first is “opportunity to discuss with manager/supervisor” with the Mann–Whitney U test (MWW) value of 3.337 at p=0.001. The other two are “prioritizing future workloads” (MWW=−3.226; p=0.002) and “clubbing or socializing” (MWW=−3.483; p=0.001). These findings imply that both male and female quantity surveyors perceived the use of these three stress response strategies in different ways. In this regard, although all the strategies may be applied as influenced by employers’ decision and preference, managers may have to exercise caution when applying them while dealing with male and female employees.

In this study, we employed a geometric process approach to resolve gearbox maintenance problems. The approach is realistic and direct in modelling the characteristics of a deteriorating system such as a gearbox since a decreasing geometric process can model a gearbox’s successive operating times and an increasing geometric process can model the corresponding consecutive repair times. First, two test statistics were used to check whether the process was geometric or not. Next, model parameters of the geometric process were estimated using the simple linear regression techniques. Finally, the optimal replacement policy based on minimising the long‐run average cost per day was determined for each type of gearbox.

In this study, a power law process (PLP) for the failures of an engine, regarded as a complex repairable system, in a minimal repair set‐up (i.e. only a small proportion of the constituent parts of the engine are replaced on repair) with the engine regularly replaced within period T or replaced at the Nth failure after its installation, whichever occurs first, was examined. First of all, the Laplace test was used to check for the existence of a deteriorating trend in the failure data. Second, model parameters of the PLP were estimated using the maximum‐likelihood estimation method. Third, the Cramer‐von Mises test was used to test its goodness of fit. Finally, the optimal replacement policy based on minimising the long‐run expected cost per month for each type of engine was determined. The statistical inference procedure involving the maximum‐likelihood method for the PLP is based on the associated large‐sample theory. This implies the need to have a lot of data before conducting a statistical analysis. Unfortunately, the authors do not have sufficient data to conduct a real statistical analysis and to bring a significant conclusion to the considered application. The paper describes an industrial application of a PLP and a theoretical replacement model.

The purpose of this paper is to understand more precisely the culture and interpersonal behaviours associated with stress.

The research was conducted using a qualitative approach through an ethnographic methodology in relation to three companies. The greater part of the data collection period was structured into observations that ranged between 2 and 4 hr per day, 1–3 days per week, for a period of six months. A total of ten sites were explored; and on each site, the observations involved activities by 5–20 people.

The results showed the pivotal importance of interpersonal relationships in coping with the uncertainty of working conditions, the coordination of teamwork and managing responsibilities and power interactions. It was found that the impact of stress is multifaceted, affecting the physical status, interpersonal relationships, work performance and emotional well-being of construction workers. The workers who were studied emphasised five sources of support that help moderate work-related stress: additional tools such as communication systems and software, a facilitated access to professional help (e.g. psychological services), organisational changes in leadership, provision of resources for the well-being of personnel (e.g. job training) and better teamwork.

The study underlines the importance of dedicated services for stress management and specific training-related abilities devoted to reinforcing positive person–organisation dynamics. In particular, the abilities should relate to managing the impact of stress in terms of physique, interpersonal relationships, work performance and emotional well-being.

This is one of the first studies to adopt a psychological perspective for understanding construction scenarios and phenomena and was conducted by a qualified psychologist.

This paper reports on the application of the sequential method, presented in a previous paper by Lai et al. in 2001, to determine optimal strategies of when to carry out a preventive maintenance action for an engine and when to replace an engine in use. The sequential method was run with real data provided by the Kowloon Motor Bus Company Limited in Hong Kong. First, both the maximum‐likelihood density estimation procedure and the nearest‐neighbour density estimation procedure were applied to assess the model parameters, and the goodnesses of fit of the distribution was assessed. Second, some values were assigned to the corrective maintenance indicator and the preventive maintenance indicator. Third, the other input values for the method were assessed. Finally, the optimal preventive maintenance and replacement strategies based on minimising loss were determined. This case study shows that the sequential method can be used to solve a maintenance and replacement problem efficiently, and also shows that the method has advantages over the non‐homogeneous Poisson process model in comparison with the results obtained by the latter.

The construction industry has always been regarded as a stressful and task-driven industry with high levels of work pressure. When the stressful situations are prolonged, job burnout becomes unavoidable for construction professionals. The purpose of the present paper is to investigate the critical predictors of burnout among civil engineers at construction sites in Turkey and identify the impact of those determined burnout predictors on various burnout dimensions.

The possible causes of burnout for civil engineers at construction sites were determined using an extensive literature review and were further studied using a questionnaire. The obtained data were analysed statistically using SPSS 22 and LISREL 8.7 software. Correlation analysis, exploratory and confirmatory analysis, and structural equation modelling were performed on this collected data, and a structural model was developed.

Three critical factors affecting burnout levels of civil engineers in construction sites were determined; among them “organisational injustice” and “competitive pricing and lack of contract management” were identified as the critical predictors of burnout in the emotional-exhaustion and cynicism dimensions. Based on these predictors, potential solutions and recommendations are proposed that are anticipated to decrease the burnout among civil engineers at construction sites.

Although there are several works of research regarding the burnout among construction professionals, there is limited research that has provided insight into the specific factors causing burnout among civil engineers. This research presents a structural model of the predictors obtained by a confirmatory factor analysis for decreasing the burnout level of civil engineers at construction sites. The current study represents the first comprehensive quantitative determination of the factors and predictors of burnout among civil engineers at construction sites in Turkey.

The problem of motif discovery has become a significant challenge in the era of big data where there are hundreds of genomes requiring annotations. The importance of motifs has led many researchers to develop different tools and algorithms for finding them. The purpose of this paper is to propose a new algorithm to increase the speed and accuracy of the motif discovering process, which is the main drawback of motif discovery algorithms.

All motifs are sorted in a tree-based indexing structure where each motif is created from a combination of nucleotides: ‘A’, ‘C’, ‘T’ and ‘G’. The full motif can be discovered by extending the search around 4-mer nucleotides in both directions, left and right. Resultant motifs would be identical or degenerated with various lengths.

The developed implementation discovers conserved string motifs in DNA without having prior information about the motifs. Even for a large data set that contains millions of nucleotides and thousands of very long sequences, the entire process is completed in a few seconds.

Experimental results demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed implementation; as for a real-sequence of 1,270,000 nucleotides spread into 2,000 samples, it takes 5.9 s to complete the overall discovering process when the code ran on an Intel Core i7-6700 @ 3.4 GHz machine and 26.7 s when running on an Intel Xeon x5670 @ 2.93 GHz machine. In addition, the authors have improved computational performance by parallelizing the implementation to run on multi-core machines using the OpenMP framework. The speedup achieved by parallelizing the implementation is scalable and proportional to the number of processors with a high efficiency that is close to 100%.