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The purpose of the present study is to examine the failure factors for the construction firms in a developing nation. Furthermore, the comparison of failure factors for private and government firms are evaluated.

In the present study, comparison between private and government construction firms is done in the context of a construction firm failure. About 60 construction firms were selected in and around the Nashik region for the investigation, where a simple multi-attribute rating technique (SMART) is used for analysis purpose.

It is found that for private firms (private contractors and builders) lack of experience is the major factor for failure of the business as against lack of managerial experience is a critical factor in case of a government contractor.

The outcome of the present study will be used to guide the policymakers during the implementation of governmental and private projects in order to lessen the construction project failures.

Construction company failure is an important aspect in developing countries like India. The limited studies were available in literature which shows failure factors for government and private firms and distinguished them. Hence, the present study extends the construction company failure literature by focusing on government and private firms. Also, the study provides some theoretical guidelines for management to avoid construction company failure in India.

Purpose: Although the transnational mobility of youth is prevalent across the globe, the policies and strategies used by developing countries to promote youths’ transnational mobility remains unclear. This chapter aims to discuss a few emerging trends and concerns related to youth transnational mobility and human capital accumulation. It focuses on the specific case of youth transnational migration from India. As such, this chapter considers the factors that have led to the construction of aspirations for transnational migration among Indian youth.

Study approach: In this chapter, we examine youth transnational mobility by synthesising the major literature available in the area of globalisation and transnational migration in the developing countries context. The study also incorporates the policy debates and secondary data evidence in these domains to substantiate the arguments.

Findings: Mainly focussing on the internal state of affairs of India, this work highlights three critical issues (a) new norms and practices of human capital accumulation within India’s knowledge economy; (b) understanding state and formal-informal ‘commoditised’ market dynamics in the changing aspirations for global human capital formation, specifically through transnational migration; and (c) examining the upshots of youth transnational mobility in terms of the production of relatively new forms of caste and class inequalities within Indian society.

Originality: This conceptual piece of work is an initial foray to unpack the complexities of Indian youths’ migration for specialised forms of human capital accumulation in a global landscape. The study motivates future policy-oriented interdisciplinary research on education and transnational mobility, specifically in empirical research projects.

The construction industry is facing an enormous number of challenges due to continuous advancements in construction technologies and techniques. Hence, construction management theories have to confront critical newly issues concerning market globalization and construction innovations. The key factor to address these challenges is to ameliorate the competitive abilities of the competing construction firms. In this context, measuring competitiveness of construction firms is an efficacious approach to amplify their competitive growth and profitability. To this end, the purpose of this research paper is to design a three-tier multi-criteria decision making model for competitiveness assessment and benchmarking of construction companies, meanwhile tackling a wide range of essential factors and attributes that covers broad aspects of the present competitive market.

In the first tier, four new pillars (4P) of competitiveness assessment are introduced for construction firms, namely, organization performance, project performance, environment and client and innovation and development. These pillars are able to aid in construction firms’ management on both long and short term basis. Hence, 21 key competitive factors and eighty key competitive criteria are identified, incorporated and analyzed in this research study. The second tier encapsulates carrying out a questionnaire survey in the Canadian and Vietnamese market to garner two main sets of information. The first set of information incorporates responses of the pairwise comparisons between competitiveness factors and criteria. The second set involves gathering utility scores pertinent to each competitiveness criteria. The developed model then leverages the use of analytical hierarchy process to scrutinize the relative importance priorities of competitiveness factors and criteria. The third tier of the developed model encompasses the use of multi-attribute utility theory to compute competitiveness scores for construction companies through blending criteria’ relative importance weights alongside their respective utility functions. In addition, the third tier comprises conducting a sensitivity analysis to derive the most important criteria influencing the overall competitiveness of construction companies. The developed model is tested and validated using three case studies; one construction company from Canada and two construction companies from Vietnam.

Results demonstrated that the developed model has a potential to render a synthesized and methodical performance evaluation for the competitive ability of a given construction company. Furthermore, it was found that Vietnamese companies are more considerate towards pillars pertaining to environment and client while Canadian companies are more attentive towards innovation and development. The outcome of sensitivity analysis revealed that effectiveness of cost management highly affects the competitive ability of Vietnamese companies while effectiveness of cost management exhibits the most significant influence on the competitive of Canadian companies.

The developed model can benefit construction companies to understand their competitiveness in their market and diagnose their strengths and weaknesses. It is also can be useful in efficient utilization of their limited resources and development of sustainable and long-term strategic plans strategic plans, which consequently leads to maintaining better position in their dynamic business markets.

Literature review manifests that reported competitiveness assessment models and practices are not able to address present challenges, technologies and developments in construction market.

Electrostatic precipitators (ESP) and fabric filters (FF) are the main air pollution control equipment utilized to clean dust laden fumes from utility boilers. The choice among these systems depends on specific site conditions such as dust characteristics, required efficiency, gas flowrate and temperature. ESP are generally characterized by higher capital investments and lower operating charges, while the opposite may be said for FF baghouses. As a consequence, ESP present higher total costs when high specific collection areas are required, as happens in the case of low‐sulfur high‐resistivity dust. However, significant reductions in both capital investment and operating charges may be obtained with pulsed energization of precipitators working in severe back corona conditions. This possibility greatly enlarges the field of applications in which ESP are a lower cost option compared to fabric filters. In the paper an economic comparison of pulse energized ESP, with conventional ESP, reverse‐air, shaker, and pulse‐jet baghouses is performed. A mapping of the operating conditions in which the adoption of each examined control technology is economically convenient is also defined.

This study aims to develop and test a framework for studying the failure of new women entrepreneurs in the small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) sector.

Using a sample of 114 unsuccessful entrepreneurs in Kigali, Rwanda, this study aimed to identify key failure factors of women-owned SMEs. This study used mixed methods where quantitative data were analysed using the principal component approach with Varimax rotation to reduce the variables to only three clusters.

The study findings revealed that the failure of women-owned SMEs results from the entrepreneur’s inability followed by the enterprise incompetence, which are both internally controllable factors and the inauspicious business environment. These findings contribute to the validity of the dynamic capability theory by explaining how well internal and external factors must stay glued together to avoid failure among women-owned SMEs, something that was not yet previously well documented so far.

New SMEs are considered a noteworthy constituent of Rwandan development. Unfortunately, most new SMEs, in general, do not grow; their failure rate is high (70%), which raised many worries for both researchers and policymakers as to why this occurs at this stage of business growth. Therefore, to the best of the authors’ knowledge this paper is the first to analyse the reasons for the failure of Rwandan women-owned SMEs in the service sector. These findings are important because they suggest that policies designed to reduce the incidence of SMEs’ failure should take account of the two main factors influencing failure among women entrepreneurs.

Despite the mounting evidence of gazelles’ higher economic contribution, there is no consensus on whether and how to support gazelles. In this chapter, we therefore discuss varied gazelle policy views as well as the inherent challenges of supporting gazelles. Here, we draw on relevant academic literature as well as on international policy examples. Additionally, we analyze Germany’s gazelle policy stance by triangulating information collected from the literature, practical policy examples and interviews, we carried out with German support agencies and policymakers. Though Germany’s general policies and framework conditions create necessary conditions for gazelles to emerge, they are insufficient to guarantee their prevalence. Moreover, Germany’s policy approach of encouraging new firm formation and self-employment and its focus on the financial support for small as well as technology or innovation-oriented firms is not consistent with the state-of-the-art knowledge about gazelles. Using the case of Germany, we argue that general entrepreneurship policies and high-growth entrepreneurship (gazelle) policies are distinct approaches having divergent and sometimes conflicting objectives and support mechanisms, which need to be synchronized to be effective.

This article aims to explore synergies between Lean, Green and Six Sigma practices in order to propose an integrated LGSS framework for continuous and incremental improvement in the Indian manufacturing industries. The three-dimensional LGSS framework seeks to provide various combinations and support operational, financial, environmental and social needs.

In the research method, first, the current problems faced by Indian manufacturing industries are considered and proposition of a conceptual framework that qualitatively integrates synergistic aspects of Lean, Green and Six Sigma practices, and second, the framework is checked by a survey taken from 203 Indian firms by using SPSS-AMOS.

The hypothesized result suggests that the positive impact of integrated practices on firm performance in terms of operational, financial, social and environmental outcomes. It also provides a systemic and holistic approach to problem-solving through constant and incremental enhancement in the manufacturing sector.

In this research, only Indian manufacturing industries have been studied but can be extending into different geographical areas and sectors. Future research is also possible for different behavior and characteristics of companies that can lead to recommending strategies on how companies can improve performance. Most importantly, future research can try to understand which specific practice can contribute to competitive advantage and business success.

Manufacturing firms that want to improve environmental sustainability should implement integrated LGSS practices into their supply chain. The set of combined practices improves operational, social, economical and environmental benefits.

The research presents an integrated approach of LSS for the manufacturing industry which leads their business processes to achieve economic sustainability through continuous growth and improved operational efficiency. Manufacturing industries result in outcomes like reduced cost, lead time, improved quality, sustainable market position, profitability, customer satisfaction, etc.

This research is different from previous studies because it integrates Lean, Green and Six Sigma practices into a unique framework that fulfills a specific need of the Indian manufacturing sector that guides operational, social, environmental and financial issues in Indian industries.

This study investigates the impact of the fire decay phase on structural damage using the sectional analysis method. The primary objective of this work is to forecast the non-dimensional capacity parameters for the axial and flexural load-carrying capacity of reinforced concrete (RC) sections for heating and the subsequent post-heating phase (decay phase) of the fire.

The sectional analysis method is used to determine the moment and axial capacities. The findings of sectional analysis and heat transfer for the heating stage are initially validated, and the analysis subsequently proceeds to determine the load capacity during the fire’s heating and decay phases by appropriately incorporating non-dimensional sectional and material parameters. The numerical analysis includes four fire curves with different cooling rates and steel percentages.

The study’s findings indicate that the rate at which the cooling process occurs after undergoing heating substantially impacts the axial and flexural capacity. The maximum degradation in axial and flexural capacity occurred in the range of 15–20% for cooling rates of 3 °C/min and 5 °C/min as compared to the capacity obtained at 120 min of heating for all steel percentages. As the fire cooling rate reduced to 1 °C/min, the highest deterioration in axial and flexural capacity reached 48–50% and 42–46%, respectively, in the post-heating stage.

The established non-dimensional parameters for axial and flexural capacity are limited to the analysed section in the study owing to the thermal profile, however, this can be modified depending on the section geometry and fire scenario.

The study primarily focusses on the degradation of axial and flexural capacity at various time intervals during the entire fire exposure, including heating and cooling. The findings obtained showed that following the completion of the fire’s heating phase, the structural capacity continued to decrease over the subsequent post-heating period. It is recommended that structural members' fire resistance designs encompass both the heating and cooling phases of a fire. Since the capacity degradation varies with fire duration, the conventional method is inadequate to design the load capacity for appropriate fire safety. Therefore, it is essential to adopt a performance-based approach while designing structural elements' capacity for the desired fire resistance rating. The proposed technique of using non-dimensional parameters will effectively support predicting the load capacity for required fire resistance.

The fire-resistant requirements for reinforced concrete structures are generally established based on standard fire exposure conditions, which account for the fire growth phase. However, it is important to note that concrete structures can experience internal damage over time during the decay phase of fires, which can be quantitatively determined using the proposed non-dimensional parameter approach.

The purpose of this paper is to present and discuss the external factors of the solar dryer design that influenced the thermal efficiency of the solar dryer that contribute to the better quality of dried food products.

From the reviewed works of literature, the external factors including the drying temperature, airflow rate and relative humidity have significant effects to increase the rate of moisture diffusivity of the freshly harvested products during the drying process. The proper controls of airflow rate (Q), velocity (V), relative humidity (RH%) and drying temperature (°C) can influence the dried product quality. The dehydration ratio is the procedure to measure the quality of the dried food product.

The indirect solar dryer including the mixed-mode, hybrid and integrated was found shorter in drying time and energy-intensive compared to sun drying and direct drying. The recommended drying temperature is from 35.5°C to 70°C with 1–2 m/s velocity and 20%–60% relative humidity. The optimum thermal efficiency can be reached by additional devices, including solar collectors and solar accumulators. It gives a simultaneous effect and elongated the drying temperature 8%–10% higher than ambient temperature with 34%–40% energy saving. The recommended airflow rate for drying is 0.1204 to 0.0894 kg/s. Meanwhile, an airflow rate at 0.035–0.04 kg/m2 is recommended for an optimum drying kinetic performance.

This paper discusses the influence of the external factors of the solar dryer design on the thermal performance of the solar dryer and final dried food products quality. Therefore, the findings cannot serve as a statistical generalization but should instead be viewed as the quantitative validation subjected to fundamentals of the solar dryer design process and qualitative observation of the dried food product quality.

A well-designed of solar dryer with low operating and initial fabrication cost, which is simple to operate is useful for the farmers to preserve surplus harvested crops to an acceptable and marketable foods product. The optimization of the external and internal factors can contribute to solar dryer thermal performance that later provides an organoleptic drying condition that results in good quality of dried product and better drying process. The recommended drying temperature for a drying method is between 35°C up to 70°C. Drying at 65.56°C was effective to kill microorganisms. Meanwhile, drying at 50°C consider as average drying temperature. The recommended airflow rate for drying is 0.1204 to 0.0894 kg/s. Meanwhile, air flowrate at 0.035–0.04 kg/m² is recommended for optimum drying kinetic performance. The recommended value of aspect ratio and mass flow rate is 200 to 300 for an optimum evaporation rate. The good quality of dried products and good performance of solar dryers can be developed by proper control of airflow rate (Q), velocity (V), relative humidity (RH%) and drying temperature (°C).

The proper control of the drying temperature, relative humidity and airflow rate during the drying process will influence the final dried food products in terms of shape, color, aroma, texture, rupture and nutritious value. It is crucial to control the drying parameters because over-drying caused an increment of energy cost and reduces the dry matter. The quick-drying will disturb the chemical process during fermentation to be completed.

This study identifies the potential of the solar drying method for dehydrating agricultural produces for later use with the organoleptic drying process. The organoleptic drying process can reduce mold growth by promising an effective diffusion of moisture from freshly harvested products. The research paper gives useful understandings that well-designed solar drying technology gives a significant effect on dried product quality.