Search results

This study aims to examine the ability of independent directors to discipline related-party transactions (RPTs) among listed companies in Malaysia. Firms typically appoint independent directors individually, not as a group. However, board members are commonly viewed collectively as a group, and evidence of the abilities of individual directors is scarce.

The attributes of individual independent directors include accounting literacy, length of service, audit committee membership and active participation in board and audit committee meetings. The unit of analysis is the individual independent director. The final sample consists of 1,552 observations in 2017, and RPTs are categorized as either efficient or conflicting.

The study finds that the tenure of individual independent directors and active participation in board meetings affect the firm’s engagement in RPTs. However, the financial literacy, audit committee membership and attendance of independent directors at audit committee meetings do not affect the firm’s engagement in RPTs, either efficient or conflicting. Overall, this result offers limited support for the upper-echelon theory concerning the attributes of individual independent directors and RPTs.

This study uses cross-sectional observations for 2017, which predates the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, this study ignores the impact of restrictions in community mobility during the pandemic on the independent director’s ability to monitor the corporation. This circumstance may have implications for practice and merit further research.

The findings provide information for board nominating committees, regulators and policymakers that the capability of individual independent directors to fulfill their responsibilities is limited. The firm’s nominating committee must be very selective in nominating and appointing independent directors with appropriate competencies. Investors should choose companies that have reappointed the same independent directors for an extended period, as they may benefit from the experience in protecting investors’ interests.

This paper contributes novel evidence to upper-echelon theory literature on the association between independent directors and RPT types from the perspective of individual independent directors.

This paper aims to analyse the relationship between the degrees of involvement of key design participants in the decision‐making process of refurbishment projects on the design performance.

The approach takes the form of a literature review of the published journals and textbooks along with a postal questionnaire with professional architects. In total 234 selected professional architects in Malaysia were involved in a postal questionnaire survey. A total of 82 questionnaires or 36 percent were identified as being fit to be used for the data analysis.

The degree of involvement of key participants are varied at all stages. Greater involvement of key participants is one of the ways to obtain more information on increased integration in the design process. Highest involvement of key design participants was found in the construction stage, which implies that more tasks need to be carried out in refurbishment projects. The involvement of an M&E engineer outside their normal domain in the design process could improve the design performance of refurbishment projects.

The literature review in the refurbishment design process was rather limited. Only limited study was carried out in specific areas owing to time and cost constraints.

The paper helps the project manager identify skills and professions that are important in the refurbishment design process, which could improve the completeness and accuracy of design product before work is started on site. This would help to reduce unnecessary design changes during the construction stage. The scale of fees for payment of the architect's services in refurbishment projects needs to be amended so that the amount paid up to contract documentation stage would be reduced from 70 percent to a more reasonable figure.

The paper determines the types of designers that are critically required in refurbishment projects, in order to have a more effective design process and thereby improve the accuracy and completeness of refurbishment design before work is started on site.

The paper's aim is to establish the relationships between the formalisation of construction firms on the level of coordination and effectiveness of refurbishment projects.

The approach takes the form of a literature review of published journals and textbooks, a postal questionnaire survey with managing directors, project managers and contract managers. About 94 construction companies were selected for the postal questionnaire survey. In total, 54 (57 percent) of returned questionnaires were considered to be useful for statistical analysis.

Highly formalised construction firms require higher level of coordination than lowly formalised construction firms. In highly formalised construction firms, the participants managing refurbishment projects tend to circumvent formalisation by having more informal interactions, which contradicts the needs of the firms. The effectiveness of highly formalised construction firms is not significantly better than lowly formalised construction firms.

The study is limited to medium and large refurbishment projects, with contract value above £500,000.

The paper highlights the need to reduce formalisation in managing refurbishment projects. Large construction firms, which tend to be highly formalised should set up autonomous refurbishment division to manage refurbishment projects.

The paper shows that the formalisation of the organizational structure of construction firms affects the level of coordination of refurbishment projects.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of family control on the association between related party transactions (RPTs) and different forms of accrual-based earnings management (AEM) and real earnings management (REM), analyzing the effect of board characteristics on the possible association.

This paper studies a sample of Italian non-financial listed firms over the 2014–2019 period, by GLS regression models, controlling for the fixed effects of the company's sector of operation and the year.

Results indicate a different association between RPTs and earnings management (EM) in family and non-family firms. They point out that family firms use RPTs in association with downward AEM and REM perpetrated by abnormal discretionary expenses as well as a substitute of REM via abnormal production costs. For non-family firms, findings indicate only a substitution effect between RPTs and AEM. Furthermore, CEO duality, board gender diversity and the presence of the family on the board positively moderate the association between RPTs and, respectively, REM implemented through sales manipulations, downward AEM and upward AEM.

This study suggests that the socioemotional wealth (SEW) differently affects the relationship between RPTs and EM, according to the form of the latter. It also points out family firms' heterogeneity in earnings manipulations, by providing evidence of the moderating role of board characteristics on the association between RPTs and the various forms of EM.

This paper aims to apply a methodology that is capable to classify and localize mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) elements to assist facility managers. Furthermore, it assists in decreasing the technical complexity and sophistication of different systems to the facility management (FM) team.

This research exploits artificial intelligence (AI) in FM operations through proposing a new system that uses a deep learning pre-trained model for transfer learning. The model can identify new MEP elements through image classification with a deep convolutional neural network using a support vector machine (SVM) technique under supervised learning. Also, an expert system is developed and integrated with an Android application to the proposed system to identify the required maintenance for the identified elements. FM team can reach the identified assets with bluetooth tracker devices to perform the required maintenance.

The proposed system aids facility managers in their tasks and decreases the maintenance costs of facilities by maintaining, upgrading, operating assets cost-effectively using the proposed system.

The paper considers three fire protection systems for proactive maintenance, where other structural or architectural systems can also significantly affect the level of service and cost expensive repairs and maintenance. Also, the proposed system relies on different platforms that required to be consolidated for facility technicians and managers end-users. Therefore, the authors will consider these limitations and expand the study as a case study in future work.

This paper assists in a proactive manner to decrease the lack of knowledge of the required maintenance to MEP elements that leads to a lower life cycle cost. These MEP elements have a big share in the operation and maintenance costs of building facilities.

This study aims to examine the effect of the auditor-client relationship (ACR) on related party transaction (RPT) types of disclosure, either RPT-efficient or RPT-conflict. This study also examines whether family controlling shareholders (FCS) negatively affect the ACR in RPT types of disclosure.

This study uses multivariate regression on 2,203 year-observations of companies listed in Malaysia during the period 2014–2017.

This study finds weak evidence that auditors can mitigate companies’ RPT type (RPT-efficient and RPT-conflict) disclosure while maintaining a close ACR. However, an interaction between FCS and ACR reduces the RPT-conflict disclosure. Additionally, the Big 4 auditors slightly increase the RPT-conflict disclosure, however, the relationships are inversed if the close ACR involves the FCS. The Big 4 auditors also increase RPT-efficient disclosure although in a close ACR with FCS. Meanwhile, an interaction between non-Big 4 auditors and FCS in close ACR reduces both types of RPT disclosures.

The findings suggest that a close relationship between auditors and clients in firms with significant family control could compromise auditor’s skepticism. The FCS can easily influence the auditors to agree with the ways they treat the RPT disclosure. Therefore, policymakers may have to revisit auditors’ rotation policies in Malaysia, especially those involving FCS.

Trust, familiarity and future fee dependency are significant threats to auditor independence in a close ACR. This study contributes to the literature by examining the effect of a close ACR on RPT types of disclosure from a network theory perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an alternative new ternary geopolymer mortar (MKSP) to resolve a traditional mortar problem which exhibits several disadvantages, including poor strengths and surface microcracks and the CO₂ air pollution.

The MKSP ternary binder was produced using metakaolin (MK), slag (S), and palm oil fuel ash (POFA) activated with an alkaline mixture of sodium silicate (Na₂SiO₃) and 10 M NaOH in a mass ratio of 2.5. Seven different mix proportions of MK, slag, and POFA were used to fabricate MKSP mortars. The water-to-binder ratio was varied between 0.4 and 0.5. The mortars were heat cured for 2 h at 80°C and then aged in air. Flexural stress and strain, mortars flow and compressive strength were tested. Furthermore, the mortars were characterized using X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analyses.

The results showed that the sample MKSP6, which contained 40 percent MK, 40 percent slag, and 20 percent POFA, exhibited high compressive strength (52 MPa) without any cracks and flexural strength (6.9 MPa) at 28 days after being cured for 2 h at 80°C; however, the MKSP7 mortar with optimal strength of 55 MPa showed some surface cracks . Further, the results of the XRD, SEM, and FTIR analyses indicated that the MKSP mortars primarily consisted of a crystalline (Si+Al) phase (70 percent) and a smaller amorphous (Si+Ca) phase (30 percent).

The MKSP ternary geopolymer mix has three limitations as an importance of heat curing for development early strength, POFA content less than 20 percent to gain high normal strength and delaying the sitting time by controlling the slag content or the alkali activator type.

The use of geopolymer materials binder in a real building is limited and it still under research, Thus, the first model of real applied geopolymer cement in 2008 was the E-Crete model that formed by Zeobond company Australia to take the technology of geopolymer concrete to reality. Zeobond Pty Ltd was founded by Professor Jannie S.J. van (van Deventer et al., 2013), it was used to product precast concrete for the building structure. The second model was PYRAMENT model in 2002 by American cement manufacturer Lone Star Industries which was produced from the development carried out on inorganic alumino-silicate polymers called geopolymer (Palomo et al., 1999). In 2013 the third model was Queensland’s University GCI building with three suspended floors made from structural geopolymer concrete containing slag/fly ash-based geopolymer (Pathak, 2016). In Australia, 2014, the newly completed Brisbane West Wellcamp airport becomes the greenest airport in the world. Cement-free geopolymer concrete was used to save more than 6,600 tons of carbon emissions in the construction of the airport. Therefore, the next century will see cement companies developing alternative binders that are more environmentally friendly from a sustainable development point of view.

Production of new geopolymer binder of mortar as alternative to traditional cement binder with high early and normal strength from low cost waste materials, less potential of cracking, less energy consumption need and low carbon dioxide emission.

The use of electric vehicles has received popularity as alternative fuel vehicles to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and energy cost, which are expected to perform a crucial role in the near future of emerging mobility markets. The purpose of this empirical study is to analyse the role of electric vehicle knowledge in predicting consumer adoption intention directly and indirectly in the backdrop of an emerging market.

The study approached an extended version of “Technology acceptance model” (TAM) based on the integrated framework of “knowledge-beliefs-intention”. The model was tested via direct and indirect path analyses with the data collected from Indian respondents using an online survey.

The results indicate the robustness of the present research model, which shows that consumer adoption is significantly driven by electric vehicle knowledge, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and perceived risk. Electric vehicle knowledge has emerged as the most powerful cognitive measure, which directly affects the adoption intention along with the measures of “TAM”. Additionally, this also poses a higher indirect effect on adoption intention in the integrated model.

The study has focused on potential young and educated consumers, which may not be warranted to generalise the research findings, while youth or millennials are more receptive to adopt innovative and clean technology products like electric vehicle. Based on the findings, implications are offered for encouraging electric vehicles in the backdrop of emerging automobile markets.

Concerning this cognitive phenomenon of knowledge, scant literature has been explored the role of subjective knowledge in consumer adoption for electric vehicles, particularly in the emerging markets like India. Thus, the present study analyses how consumers' knowledge about electric vehicle affects their decision to adopt this in the near future of Indian zero-emission mobility market.

The maintenance of original building materials is crucial to extending their lifetime and avoiding their repeated replacement in heritage buildings. In order to maintain the identity of built heritage and resolve possible deterioration over the years, special expertise is required to avoid possible materials decay and to preserve building elements in a way that allows them to function efficiently as originally intended.

An expert system is created to identify the most effective method of repair for each specific building material and to propose the appropriate conservation methods for resolving different types of damages. Artificial intelligence is used to provide a systematic problem-solving technique that saves time and provides the most efficient conservation and preservation method for heritage building elements.

Those expert systems could be generalized on similar historical structures to be used as a systematic guide for examining material, evaluating deterioration state and objectively suggesting their related repair techniques. Further deteriorated materials in heritage buildings should be investigated, such as stone and timber staircases, to provide a guide for usage by restoration and conservation authorities.

Using a user-friendly method, with special considerations to three major problematic building elements in terms of decay and material dysfunction in heritage structures, timber doors, iron gates, and ceiling paintings are selected for diagnosis and repair in an Egyptian heritage building.