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We identify and further aggregate the most commonly engaged risk factors in dry port projects into dimensions. Noting the importance of developing a multi-perspective view of risk, we further assess the priority, interdependency and heterogeneity of the identified risk dimensions.

We identified 44 risk factors from the literature, which were aggregated via exploratory factor analysis (EFA) into 8 major risk dimensions. We employ a fuzzy-based decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) relationship map to articulate various relationships among the risk dimensions.

“Cost” emerged as the most important risk influencing the success of the dry port project, followed by “location,” “accessibility,” “infrastructural” and “operational,” which were also ranked prominently.

This study offers significant insights into the management of risk in dry port projects. By aggregating key risk factors into distinct dimensions, we develop a structured framework for effective risk assessment and management. The insights gleaned from the study extend globally as it serves as a concrete knowledge base to understand potential barriers to successful dry port projects.

We explore the design risk factors and associated managerial practices driving collaborative risk management for design efficacy in green building projects. By illuminating project design risk as an important project risk category in its own right, the study contributes to our understanding of optimising design efficacies for collaborative project risk management.

The study comprises exploratory interviews conducted with 27 industry project practitioners involved in the design and delivery/implementation of Green Star-certified building projects in South Africa.

The findings discursively highlight seven sources of design risk. We also identify seven specific collaborative risk management practices for design efficacy emerging from a consideration of how risk environments vary in the Green Star-certified projects, each with its own project design risk implications.

The study advances our understanding of how collaborations emerging from particular relational yet context-specific practices can be optimised to strengthen project risk management.

This paper aims to draw on historical conceptions of true and false prudence within the broader context of virtue ethics ideas, to create a prudence framework for developing risk-and-ethics cultures in organisations.

The authors use a theoretical analytical approach as a means of examining plausible representations of risk as ethical practice.

While the ethical ideal of true prudence is explained primarily with reference to psychological theories of generativity, false prudence is explained as undesirable, primarily with reference to psychological problems of narcissism and the broader dark triad. True and false prudence are represented as centring upon very different motivations for foresight, each of which might set the cultural tone for organisational risk management.

This paper’s main contribution is therefore to call attention to the benefits for organisations of reflecting upon differences between true and false prudence when planning the risk management they want.

This conceptual paper aims to explore how supply chain managers deal with social threats to supply chains, in the process of demonstrating the potency of a largely neglected strand of realist social theory. This theory, as posited, sheds a great deal of light on the behavioural reality of how supply chain managers operate within the social aspects of their risk environments.

The paper is presented as a narrative synthesis of classical realist sociological literature.

The Machiavellian approach provides a template that can be used to help academics and practitioners understand how and why supply chain managers orient themselves to the social threats they confront in very different ways. The theory’s contention that the behavioural reality can be subdivided between two basic patterns allows it to serve as a constructively simple template for becoming attuned to ways in which supply chain managers socially construct and act within their social threat environments.

The growing social complexity of supply chains gives behavioural responses a complexity reduction function. The authors theorise that such patterns, once activated, may not necessarily adapt rationally as guides to optimise the chance of success against the full range of social threats they are likely to encounter.

Cross-disciplinary supply chain management research is increasingly drawing upon sociology and behavioural science to facilitate greater understanding of not only the supply chain environment but also the roles of supply chain managers as relationship influencers and managers of conflict. The authors posit that Machiavellian–realist social theory can contribute to supply chain management scholarship by offering a constructively simple approach to evaluate the behavioural realities associated with social threats.

This essay contributes to the ongoing exposition of a project management-focused understanding of “public policy” implementation. Distinct from previous studies that take a predominantly administrative sciences perspective, the delivery and implementation of publicly funded infrastructure projects as an instrument of public policy is explored through the lens of legal frameworks.

We adopt the explanation-building review approach to provide descriptions and explanations of the relevant enablers and context necessary for the successful delivery and implementation of publicly funded infrastructure projects.

The ambiguity associated with public policy is more likely to hinder than facilitate the use of publicly funded infrastructure projects as preferred instruments of choice for implementing public policy.

Despite substantial interest among academics and practitioners in utilising projects as tools for public policy implementation, thorough discussions on the legal complexities inherent in these projects remain scarce.

Risk appetite is widely accepted as a guiding metaphor for strategic risk management, yet metaphors for complex practice are hard to critique. This paper aims to apply an analytical framework comprising three categories of flaw – futility, perversity and jeopardy – to critically explore the risk appetite metaphor. Taking stock of management literature emphasising the need for metaphor to give ideation to complex management challenges and activities and recognising the need for high-level metaphor within strategic risk management in particular, the authors propose a means to scrutinise the risk appetite metaphor and thereby illustrate its use for further management metaphors.

The authors apply a structured analytical perspective designed to scrutinise conceivably any purportedly progressive social measure. The three flaw categories are used to warn that organisational risk appetite specifications can be: futile vis-a-vis their goals, productive of perverse outcomes with respect to these goals and so misleading about the true potential for risk management as to jeopardise superior alternative use of risk management resource. These flaw categories are used to structure a critical review of the risk appetite metaphor, which moves towards identifying its most fundamental flaws.

Two closely interrelated antecedents to flaws discussed within the three flaw categories are proposed: first, false confidence in organisational risk assessment and, second, organisational blindness towards contributions of behavioural risk-taking to true organisational risk exposure. A theory of high (over-optimistic, excessive or inappropriate) risk-taking organisations explores flaws within the three flaw categories with reference to these antecedents under organisational-cultural circumstances where the risk appetite metaphor is most needed and yet most problematic.

The paper is highly original in its representation of risk management as an organisational practice reliant on metaphor and in proposing a structured means to challenge it as a dominant guiding metaphor where it has gained widespread uncritical acceptance. The discussion is also innovative in its representation of high risk-taking organisations as likely to harbour strong managerial motives, aptitudes and capacities for covert and illicit forms of risk-taking which, being subversive and sometimes reactionary towards risk appetite specifications, may cause particularly serious futility, perversity and jeopardy problems. To conclude, the theory and its implications are summarised for practitioner and educational use.

This study aims to explore the impact of cultural values on the importance individuals assign to project success/failure factors (PSFFs).

Themes emerging from 40 interviews of project practitioners based in Brazil, China, Greece, Nigeria, Thailand, the UAE, the UK and the USA are integrated with literature evidence to design a survey instrument. One thousand three hundred and thirteen practitioner survey responses from the eight countries are analysed using multi-group, structural equation modelling.

Ten project success/failure indicators (PSFIs) are found to reduce to two main PSFFs: project control and extra-organisational goals and project team management/development and intra-organisational goals. It is found that the levels of importance individuals assign to both factors are dependent, not only on age and gender, but also cultural values measured as constructs based on Hofstede's individualism, masculinity, power distance and uncertainty avoidance dimensions.

The snowballing method used to gather survey data and analysis of relationships at individual level reduces generalisability.

The results reveal insights on how best to match the cultural values of project participants to project characteristics. They also increase knowledge on the likely perceptual differences among culturally diverse individuals within projects.

This research contributes to the literature on culture in project environments by defining a factor structure of multiple-dependent PSFIs and increases insight on how specific cultural values may impact on the perception of the so-defined PSFFs.

The UK Chinook helicopter is a utility and attack helicopter being operated by the Royal Air Force (RAF). Its versatile nature is of enormous importance to the strategic capability of the RAF's operations. The purpose of this paper is to utilise systems‐based forecasting to conduct an evaluation of inventory and forecasting systems being used to support its maintenance programme.

A case study is conducted. Data are collected from existing monthly Component Repair (CRP) data and performance evaluation of software. For propriety reasons, all data have been sanitised.

Analysis of the current inventory and forecasting system suggests a possible lack of forecasting precision. Current non‐specific formulation of forecasting techniques implied several of the cost driver's demands were being miscalculated. This lack of precision is possibly a result of the smoothing value of 0.01 being too low, especially as the results of statistical modelling suggest that current parameter values of 0.01 might be too low.

The paper reports on work conducted jointly between Boeing and the University of Southampton that sought to create an intermittent demand forecasting model.

Unfortunately, the majority of studies examining business intelligence (BI) have focused on its exploitation in large firms. Often studies appear to assume that smaller firms have limited interest or capabilities in intelligence. The purpose of this paper is to redress this imbalance by extending the role of intelligence (intelligence management (IM)) to small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

Data from a sample of 650 SMEs are analysed using multivariate techniques.

The results of the data analysis suggest that entrepreneurial pro-activeness is dependent on IM and Knowledge management; but also that a model fit exists between the IM and the ability of SMEs to enact and sustain entrepreneurial opportunities. The authors also found that firm size is a determining factor in the effectiveness of IM.

This study seeks to extend prior research which alludes to the fact that the decision-making capabilities of firms can be substantially enhanced through the exploitation of BI capabilities among SMES, which traditionally have not considered intelligence as a key competitive competency.

The objective of this study is to identify how risk and social variables are likely to be impacted by an increase in private sector participation in health insurance provision. The study focuses on the Chilean health insurance industry, traditionally dominated by the public sector.

Predictive risk modelling is conducted using a database containing over 250,000 health insurance policy records provided by the Superintendence of Health of Chile.

Although perceived with suspicion in some circles, risk segmentation serves as a rational approach to risk management from a resource perspective. The variables that have considerable impact on insurance claims include the number of dependents, gender, wages and the duration a claimant has been a customer.

As shown in the case study, to ensure that social benefits are realised, increased private sector participation in health insurance must be augmented by regulatory oversight and vigilance.

As it is clear that a “community-rated” health insurance provision philosophy impacts on insurance firm's ability to charge “market” prices for insurance provision, the authors explore whether risk segmentation is a feasible means of predicting insurance claim behaviour in Chile's private health insurance industry.