• 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...

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...

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...

By 2003 the first Irish Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects had reached the operational stage. Media reports were emerging of significant differences in the effectiveness of these projects. This research set out to find a means by which effectiveness of PPPs could be increased and to...

The development of a model of interdependence between investment in construction and gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, based on a long-term trend, for the developing countries of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is presented. The study follows previous research undertaken by others who have...

Trust is described as an elusive concept, difficult to describe, understand, and therefore manage. The Trust in Construction project undertook five exploratory case studies in order to understand how trust is formed and the impact this has on project performance. The authors propose a model of...

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...

There is a popular tendency in management science towards what could be called “theory denial”: the denial of the significance of theory for the development of management thought and action. We contend that this theory denial is just wrong, in the light of empirical evidence, and that is a...

This paper considers the problem of designing a returns policy in a supply chain from a supplier's perspective. The supply chain considered here is assumed to have one supplier and one retailer who serves a random demand of a product with a short life cycle. The retailer can return all the...