Consumer perception of product value is central to all stages of the process of bringing products to markets, from design and manufacture to distribution and retail. As a result, product strategy needs to respect customer needs in order to achieve or retain competitive advantage in providing...

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to evaluate the diffusion of and user response to an information technology support system (ITSS) which was designed to facilitate inter-organisational coordination and collaboration in the professional development of officers employed by local...

• Trust is described as an elusive concept (Gambetta 1988), difficult to describe, understand and, therefore, manage. The Trust in Construction project undertook 6 exploratory case studies, of which 4 are presented in this paper, in order to understand how trust is formed, and the impact this...

Action learning is intended to enable a group of professionals (a SET) to tackle work problems, develop solutions and reflect upon the success and failure of their actions. As part of the UK construction industry's drive to improve learning and performance, four SETs of small and medium-sized...

Innovation-led performance improvement in the construction industry is significantly influenced by the innovation performance of small firms. There is a dearth of research investigating innovation from the perspective of the small construction firm. This paper contributes to this underdeveloped...

One reason for the interest in performance-based building is that it is commonly advocated as a powerful way of enhancing innovation performance by articulating building performance outcomes, and by offering relevant procurement actors the discretion to innovate to meet these performance...

Britain's passenger rail services were privatised in 1996/97 to reduce public subsidies and produce customer benefits through the private sector competing for medium or long-term franchises. Private sector franchisees were committed to investment in rolling stock, services, and infrastructure...

Small construction knowledge-intensive professional service firms (SCKIPSFs) are becoming increasingly important agents of innovation within the construction industry. The nature and process of innovation in SCKIPSFs, however, is generally considered through the constraining prism of research...

Relevant literature is synthesized to provide a holistic picture of our current knowledge of innovation in small, project-based firms, highlighting significant gaps in the broad areas of ‘focus and outcome’, ‘organizational capabilities’, ‘context’ and ‘process’. Research...

Purpose – Many supply contracts are employed in practice to improve the performance of supply chains. But there is a lack of research that can offer guidance to practitioners in choosing the best supply contract among a group of popular contracts. This paper aims to fill this gap by developing...