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This paper aims to investigate the role of body size on female consumers’ fashion brand image perceptions.

An experimental design was used whereby the model’s body size in a fictitious advert was digitally manipulated to create four advertising images with an underweight, slender, average and obese model size (all other factors remained constant). Through an intercept survey of German female consumers, respondents were exposed to one of the four images, and asked questions pertaining to their brand image perceptions.

The findings suggest that for older consumers, model body size has no significant impact on their brand image perceptions. For younger consumers (18-25), there was some limited evidence of how a positive brand image affects when a slender model size is used, but there was no evidence that underweight models have a more positive impact on brand image.

The sample was restricted to a single German city (Berlin) with a relatively small sample and, therefore, the generalisability of the findings may be limited. It would be interesting to repeat the study in different cultural contexts. Whilst this paper focussed on potential differences in perceptions between different age groups, future studies could consider other factors, such as fashion involvement or consumer personality on the impact of body size on brand image.

Given the potential link to low self-esteem and eating disorders, it is recommended that fashion brands cease using clinically underweight models. Brands targeting older consumers may benefit from using larger models.

There is limited research to date that looks at the role of body size on brand image, and this is one of the first studies to consider all non-product-related brand image associations, and how perceptions may differ between different age groups, with many previous studies relying on student samples.

The purpose of this study is to elicit the success factors from empirical evidence, as construction industry requires an improved understanding of factors for managing projects to positive outcomes. Increased stakeholder involvement, including the new technologies, achieving sustainability and safeguarding health and safety, whilst at the same time facing uncertainties, it is crucial to examine whether there are new factors that drive construction projects to succeed, especially from a value-driven perspective.

Using a systematic review approach, this research reviewed 172 studies published after 2004. When compared to a comprehensive project success factor framework presented by Chan et al. in 2004, 19 factors are considered new since 2004.

Though several scholarly outputs highlighted significant improvements to project operations and innovations in equipment and techniques, there has not been a comprehensive oversight since Chan’s et al. (2004) conceptual framework. This paper investigates 16 years of industry changes and identified two new success factors categories (innovation and sustainability) and 19 new factors that add to Chan’s et al. (2004) study. Consequently, a new framework of factors affecting project success was developed.

This paper was very specific in its attempt to find the new and additional success factors for managing construction projects. A new conceptual framework, which includes the newly identified factors, was then developed that will create a greater awareness of stakeholders’ concerns and ultimately contribute to significant improvement in developing project objectives and defining success measures.

Despite the critical issues involving Middle East countries such as war and a drop in currency exchange rates, a large number of students leave their country to pursue a higher education abroad, every year. The purpose of this paper is to understand the difficulties that these students face while conducting their research in a foreign country and in doing so hopes to enhance a greater awareness of the kind of hindrances they face to complete their studies.

The respondents of this qualitative study are PhD students from the Middle East who were studying in a public university in Southeast Asia. This university has recorded an increasing enrollment of international students, particularly from the Middle East in the last few years. Data were collected using a series of unstructured interviews that elicited information on critical incidents that characterized the kind of difficulties students had to face in their research. The data obtained was further analyzed using a qualitative software package – NVivo (QSR International, 10).

Six main themes emerged from the content analysis of the interviews, which are the role of the supervisor, student characteristics, family commitments, financial problems, psychological and research barriers which provide a holistic picture of student perspectives on the factors that affect research progress. While these students might have faced difficulties that might have been cited in existing literature, this paper argues that the respondents have indicated experiencing psychological barriers that were not described in earlier studies, such as the state of mind they were in as a result of being worried for family members due to war or violence in their home countries, drop in currency exchange rates and difficulties in acquiring money due to international sanctions imposed against their countries.

This study provides important insights on the factors that affect the progress of PhD students from the Middle East, while at the same time revealing a serious gap in supervisors’ role which can contribute to the delay in the research progress of PhD students.

The purpose of this study is to develop a novel hybrid approach that incorporates the structural equation model (SEM) and fuzzy cognitive map (FCM) to investigate the impacts of the variation in project complexity on project success.

This study adopts SEM to identify and validate a correlation between project complexity variables and PS. Standardized causal coefficients estimated in SEM are used to construct an FCM model to illustrate the effect of complexity on PS with linkage direction and weights. Predictive and diagnostic analyses are performed to dynamically model the variation in project complexity on the evolution of PS.

Results indicate that (1) the hybrid SEM–FCM approach is capable of modeling the dynamic interactions between project complexity and PS; (2) information, goal and environmental complexities are negatively correlated with PS, and technological, task and organizational complexities are positively correlated with PS and (3) the recommendations of complexity management for construction projects are put forward under the guideline of success monitoring.

This research contributes to (1) the state of knowledge by proposing a hybrid methodology that can model the dynamic interactions between project complexity and PS and (2) the state of practice by providing a new perspective of PS evaluation to enhance the probability of success in complex construction projects.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the underlying logics applied by different project evaluation approaches and to propose an alternative research agenda.

This paper explores the project evaluation literature via conducting a qualitative research applying systematic literature review and thematic analysis.

The project evaluation literature has mainly concentrated on the objective aspects of project evaluation and overlooked the subjective aspects that reflect the temporal, dynamic, complex and subjective nature of today’s projects. The authors propose a meta-framework that helps project practitioners to select an appropriate project evaluation criterion for their projects by considering the strengths and limitations of their preferred project evaluation model as well as making project evaluators aware of the underlying logics associated to diverse project evaluation approaches.

This study suggests that new conceptual approaches to deal with some of the major challenges in the project evaluation field. Practice-based views, narrative analysis and actor-network theory are likely to be useful tools to better understand and cope with the projects’ uncertainty and complexity.

The findings of this research assist project management practitioners and particularly project evaluators to enhance their understanding of the subjectivity, complexity and dynamics of current projects. To increase the reflexivity and resilience of project evaluation practice, this study also proposes new directions to apply different criteria, sub-criteria and indicators to the evaluation practice.

The originality of this study relies on transcending the conventional objective and rational approaches prevailing in current project evaluation practices. It proposes a research agenda that pave the way to address the shortcomings of conventional project evaluation practice.