A descriptive research school of thought provides the context for an examination of contractors' risky bid mark-up decisions in a competitive bidding setting. Grounded in prospect theory and the one-reason decision model, a contingency-based theoretical model was developed to explain and to...

In the contemporary managerial regime, managerial control is increasingly being maintained through indirect forms of control, centring on identities and ideologies and instituting the co-workers as enterprising, self-regulating subjects. The construction industry has, over time, managed to...

Performance of corporations, under the stakeholder approach, is not measured in financial terms only; modern corporations have significant responsibilities beyond those to their shareholders. A value-laden concept such as sustainable construction, which emerges from a multi-stakeholder...

Community-based activism against proposed construction projects is growing. Many protests are poorly managed and escalate into long-term and sometimes acrimonious disputes which damage communities, firms and the construction industry as a whole. Using a thematic storytelling approach which draws...

One of the critical factors in quality control is the efficient management of quality field inspections. A method was developed to assess the cost impact of process improvements in construction jobsite management. Through the development of a prototype quality inspection system together with...

Residential remodelling contractors operate in a highly fragmented, disaggregated market. Competition and consolidation arise from other market actors, thus remodellers have diminished bargaining power and higher market risk since they traditionally service geographically specific markets....

During the past several decades, globalization has led to the integration of product markets. Rapid increases in cross-border economic, social, technological and cultural exchange have become the key elements of knowledge diffusion and thus technology spillovers among countries. As a result, the...

Productivity is a key driver for economic growth and prosperity in any country. The pursuit of productivity growth requires an understanding of the factors affecting productivity. The trend of productivity growth, along with the possible factors underlying such growth across Europe, the US and...

The construction industry has experienced high numbers of occupational injuries and fatalities over the years. To address this issue, differences in safety attitudes and behaviours were explored among construction workers, first-line supervisors, and project managers in small residential...

Risk decisions in small companies are not only based on the rational evaluations of the likelihood and magnitude of risks, but also rely on the personal traits of the owners, who are the dominant or single decision makers in their organizations. The major hypothesis of this paper is that risk...