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The construction industry is one of the most stressful industries. Thus, quantity surveyors (QSs) who work at sites frequently experience high levels of occupational stress. The gender of a QS also has a significant impact on his/her occupational stress. Hence, this study aims to investigate the management of occupational stress in QSs working at sites for contractors (hereinafter referred to as CQSs).

The study adopted a mixed approach using semi-structured interviews and a questionnaire survey for female and male CQSs to identify, validate and rank the stressors and symptoms of occupational stress in CQSs and the strategies of managing that stress based on their significance levels. Manual content analysis and the mean weighted rating were used to analyse the data collected.

Heavy workload was the most significant occupational stressor of CQSs, whereas sleeping disorders were their primary symptom of occupational stress. Establishing a proper work programme was identified as the most effective stress management strategy for male and female CQSs. This study shows that many site QSs are stressed owing to their heavy workloads and work obligations and that their stress-related attributes significantly depend on their genders.

This study is significant because no previous studies have been conducted on managing occupational stress in CQSs in male and female CQSs. The study findings can be used to identify the stressors and symptoms of occupational stress in CQSs early and use appropriate management strategies to enhance the work satisfaction and productivity of CQSs suffering from occupational stress.

The construction industry has considerably evolved in the recent two decades due to the emergence of sustainability, lean construction (LC) and building information modelling (BIM). Despite previous research efforts, there is still a gap concerning the multidimensional nature of their integration. Hence, this study aims to fill the mentioned knowledge gap through exploring and comparing the challenges, enablers, techniques as well as benefits of integrating LC with BIM and sustainability in building construction projects.

A systematic literature review was conducted to fulfill the purpose of this study.

The findings reveal and compare the challenges, enablers, techniques and benefits of integrating LC with BIM and sustainability in building construction projects. The results suggest that there are eight common challenges for integrating LC with BIM and sustainability, including high initial cost, lack of collaboration, lack of professionals and lack of compatible contractual framework. The discovered challenges, enablers, techniques and benefits seem to be mostly routed in people. The findings also suggest that the synergistic benefits of integrating LC with BIM and sustainability can overcome the common challenges (safety, reliability, productivity, collaboration and quality) in construction projects.

The findings contribute to the literature and practice concerning the integration of LC with BIM and sustainability by exploring, comparing and discussing the relevant challenges, enablers, techniques as well as benefits. Moreover, the findings reveal the significance of the development of people in construction industry, besides processes and technology, as people are always subject of activities in construction while processes and technology are always objects.

A comprehensive literature review was conducted to identify the lean principles and the challenges of building refurbishment. To have an in-depth investigation of the application of lean principles to address the challenges of refurbishment projects, ten expert interviews following a qualitative research approach were utilised in this research. Data were analysed using manual content analysis to derive the framework.

The refurbishment of buildings has attracted the attention of the present construction industry. However, uncertain project characteristics, information deficiency, limited space for construction activities and less stakeholder involvement make it complex. Since the lean concept effectively deals with complex and uncertain projects, this study focusses to investigate the application of lean principles to overcome the challenges of refurbishment projects in Sri Lanka by developing a framework.

It was found that the five main lean principles of customer value, value stream, value flow, pull and perfection are appropriate for building refurbishment projects in Sri Lanka. Precise identification of clients and end-users, value adding and non-value adding activities, interruptions and stakeholder communication chains, setting scope, examining the possible technologies and taking measures to deliver the exact product to ensure the successful application of lean principles for refurbishment projects. Further, 27 benefits of five lean principles were identified which can be used to address the 13 identified challenges of building refurbishment of projects. Finally, a framework has developed portraying the application of lean principles in building refurbishment.

The framework developed is beneficial for the building refurbishment project team to address the barriers of refurbishment projects by applying lean principles.

This framework can be used as a guideline for the implementation of building refurbishment projects by addressing their challenges with lean principles.

This study aims to examine the association between Not in Employment, Education, or Training (NEET) status and a set of individual and household socioeconomic factors, including potential gender-based variations, for young people aged 15–34 years in Cameroon and Chad.

Using data from the 2021 Survey on Youths’ Transition to the Labour Market in Francophone Africa, logistic regressions were conducted to identify the determinants of NEET status, and the multivariate decomposition for nonlinear response models was employed to examine gender disparities in the likelihood of being NEET.

In Cameroon, the likelihood of being NEET is linked to factors such as age, being female, being in a couple, having dependent children, financial difficulties and urban residency. In Chad, NEET status is associated with higher education, age, being female, being in a couple and having dependent children, but decreases with secondary education, technical education and balancing work and study. Gender disparities in NEET status are largely explained by individual characteristics, accounting for 56.16% of the disparity in Cameroon and 73.72% in Chad. The main contributors in Cameroon are higher education, marital status and having children, while in Chad they are secondary and technical education, studying STEM, age, marital status and having children.

This paper makes two key contributions: first, it is the pioneering study on the determinants of entering the NEET category in sub-Saharan Africa, focusing on individual characteristics; second, it offers the first comprehensive decomposition of factors driving gender disparities in the likelihood of being NEET.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the management of intragroup conflicts occurring in project design teams during pre-contract stages that affect the project deliverables of construction projects implemented in Sri Lanka.

A qualitative approach with a case study research strategy was used in the study. The required empirical data were collected by conducting expert interviews and reviewing the documents used in four selected projects implemented in Sri Lanka. All the projects used traditional separated procurement systems and had re-measurement contracts. Manual content analysis was used to analyze the collected data.

The study findings revealed the different types of intragroup conflicts that arise during the pre-contract stages of projects within project design teams of construction projects implemented in Sri Lanka and the causes and effects of those conflicts on project deliverables. The study recommends proactive strategies that can be adopted to manage those conflicts.

A dearth of literature on the association between the intragroup conflicts that arise during the design stages of construction projects and project deliverables exists. This study bridged this research gap. It is novel because it reveals the impact of intragroup conflicts that occur during the pre-contract stages of construction projects on project deliverables and identifies several proactive strategies that will assist in managing those intragroup conflicts.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of acculturation on immigrant consumer behaviours in their host country. Mainly, the role of acculturation and luxury brand purchasing intentions were investigated.

The research conducted an online survey of 400 Indian sub-continent born immigrants in Australia.

The findings confirm that the behaviour acculturation dimension of immigrants is significantly negatively related to their luxury brand purchase intention. Although immigrants' overall acculturation is significantly related to the luxury brand purchase intention, their language and identity acculturation have no significant effect, supporting the multidimensional framework’s influence on immigrant consumer behaviour. Immigrants with higher family income, younger age and less academic education show more luxury brand purchase intention; however, no moderating demography was found between the relationship of acculturation and purchase intention. In spite of the limitation of sampling, this study demonstrates that immigrants' level of acculturation influences their luxury brand purchase intention in the host country.

This study aims to help marketers formulate a unified segmentation strategy of purchasing luxury brands based on immigrants' acculturation and sociodemographic stance. This paper highlights the specific needs of ethnic consumers. Incorporating immigrant consumers into the marketplace will help create a homogenised society and more integration of immigrants into the larger society in the host country. Findings shed light on the role of culture change as a crucial element that affects immigrants' luxury brand purchase behaviour considering their integration level into the host country.

This chapter focuses on the conservative Heritage Foundation's “Project 2025” and especially its comprehensive Mandate for Leadership, which provides a detailed plan for fundamental policy and administrative changes to be instituted in a Trump second term. It advocates an unparalleled concentration of executive power, elimination of the independence of the civil service and Department of Justice from the office of the president, and institution of permanent dominance of Trumpian conservatism. The specific focus is on the Mandate's proposed antienvironmental policies, which are weaved throughout the document and are designed to roll back sweepingly previous climate-change and environmental protection policies. Stressing maximal usage, production, and export of fossil fuel, the Trumpian “energy dominance agenda” is in polar contradiction to climate science policy aimed at decarbonizing the economy and society and averting catastrophic climate change and a “Hothouse Earth.” The Mandate's postfactual discourse combined with its advocacy of an all-powerful president and conspiratorial vision of the “woke” left as public enemy has definite protofascist overtones.

Over the past few years, the internet has expanded rapidly, and it has been considered a systematic way that consumers use to retrieve health-related information. However, the existing literature does not provide an articulated view of online health information-seeking behaviour through an in-depth understanding of users’ searching-related behaviour. The objectives of this study are to identify the factors affecting consumers’ health-related internet use and recognise the relationships between those specified and health-related internet use. Finally, the recommendations are made based on the findings.

An amalgamated model of technology acceptance model and health belief model was used to hypothesise health-related internet use behaviour, which is then tested using a cross-sectional survey of 287 Sri Lankan managerial-level employees. The covariance-based structural equation modelling with AMOS was used to check the study hypotheses.

Findings of this study depict five factors contributing to consumers’ health-related internet use as follows: perceived health risk towards chronic diseases consisting of perceived susceptibility and perceived severity; health consciousness; perceived usefulness of the internet; perceived ease of internet use; and attitude towards health-related internet use. As theorised, the internet’s perceived usefulness was positively and significantly related to consumers’ use of health-related internet and attitude towards health-related internet use. But as hypothesised, perceived ease of internet use did not directly affect consumers’ use of health-related internet. Further, findings reveal that health-related internet use is estimated by perceived health risk than health consciousness.

Findings reveal that Sri Lankan managerial-level employees have a reactive health behaviour driven by the perceived health risk and the desire to seek online health information.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the challenges and influential factors experienced in the development of public sector accounting reforms in the emerging economy of Sri Lanka. The reforms aim to improve public governance and transparency while reducing corruption and dishonesty.

Qualitative (thematic) analysis has been employed by using both primary and secondary data. Primary data was obtained by interviewing selected respondents from public sector organisations in Sri Lanka. The respondents were selected by using an expert purposive sampling technique. Apart from the primary data, secondary data such as government reports, relevant literature and paper articles was also analysed in order to produce more robust findings.

The findings indicate that technological and cultural factors have influenced accounting reforms in the public sector in Sri Lanka. In addition, the politicisation and bureaucracy of the public sector as well as sluggish attitudes towards costs have served as prominent barriers to efficient implementation of the reforms.

This study was limited in terms of generalisation because of relatively small sample sizes. A larger sample with more diversity could have enhanced the generalisation of the results which could serve as direction for further research.

This paper is intended to fill a gap in the existing literature on public sector accounting reforms in the context of less developed or emerging countries. It is hopefully valuable for both policy makers and practitioners by allowing them to view the development, challenges and influential aspects of the implementation of New Public Management (NPM) in Sri Lanka in order that they will be able to make informed decisions about adopting more efficient NPM practices to enhance the country’s competitive advantages.

The purpose of the study is to analyze the risk of violent conflict with the global conflict risk factors in the Middle East economies by using an integrated fuzzy decision approach. For this purpose, five different dimensions and 24 different criteria are defined by analyzing similar studies in the literature. The dataset is borrowed from the European Commission, and experts appointed for the linguistic evaluation of each dimension and criterion. Additionally, fuzzy Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) methodology is used to weigh dimensions and criteria and Multi-objective Optimization on the basis of Ratio Analysis (MOORA) approach is considered to rank the countries with respect to the conflict risk. Social dimension was concluded to have the highest importance of the Global Conflict Risk Index. Moreover, Syria, Libya, and Saudi Arabia were identified as the countries that have high conflict risk. Because these countries have high risk of facing conflict in the future, it is strongly recommended that they should primarily focus on social factors in order to minimize this risk.