Re-engineering construction: going against the grain

An overtly critical perspective on 're-engineering construction' is presented. It is contended that re-engineering is impossible to define in terms of its substantive content and is best understood as a rhetorical label. In recent years, the language of re-engineering has heavily shaped the construction research agenda. The declared goals are to lower costs and improve value for the customer. The discourse is persuasive because it reflects the ideology of the 'enterprise culture' and the associated rhetoric of customer responsiveness. Re-engineering is especially attractive to the construction industry because it reflects and reinforces the existing dominant way of thinking. The overriding tendency is to reduce organizational complexities to a mechanistic quest for efficiency. Labour is treated as a commodity. Within this context, the objectives of re-engineering become 'common sense'. Knowledge becomes subordinate to the dominant ideology of neo-liberalism. The accepted research agenda for re-engineering construction exacerbates the industry's problems and directly contributes to the casualization of the workforce. The continued adherence to machine metaphors by the construction industry's top management has directly contributed to the 'bad attitudes' and 'adversarial culture' that they repeatedly decry. Supposedly neutral topics such as pre-assembly, partnering, supply chain management and lean thinking serve only to justify the shift towards bogus labour-only subcontracting and the associated reduction of employment rights. The continued casualization of the workforce raises real questions about the industry's future capacity to deliver high-quality construction. In order to appear 'relevant' to the needs of industry, it seems that the research community is doomed to perpetuate this regressive cycle.

Exploring context-awareness in the construction logistics services delivery

Managing a construction project supply chain effectively and efficiently is extremely difficult due to involvement of numerous sectors that are supported by ineffective communication system. An efficient construction supply chain system ensures the delivery of materials and other services to construction site while minimising costs and rewarding all sectors based on value added to the supply chain. The advancement of information, communication and wireless technologies is driving construction companies to deploy supply chain management strategies to seek better outputs. As part of the emerging wireless technologies, contextaware computing capability represents the next generation of ICT to the construction services. Conceptually, context-awareness could be integrated with Web Services in order to ensure the delivery of pertinent information to construction site and enhance construction supply chain collaboration. An initial study has indicated that this integrated system has the potential of serving and improving the construction services delivery through access to context-specific data, information and services on as-needed basis.

Glucosinolates in brassica vegetables: the influence of the food supply chain on intake, bioavailability and human health

Glucosinolates (GLSs) are found in Brassica vegetables. Examples of these sources include cabbage, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower and various root vegetables (e.g. radish and turnip). A number of epidemiological studies have identified an inverse association between consumption of these vegetables and the risk of colon and rectal cancer. Animal studies have shown changes in enzyme activities and DNA damage resulting from consumption of Brassica vegetables or isothiocyanates, the breakdown products (BDP) of GLSs in the body. Mechanistic studies have begun to identify the ways in which the compounds may exert their protective action but the relevance of these studies to protective effects in the human alimentary tract is as yet unproven. In vitro studies with a number of specific isothiocyanates have suggested mechanisms that might be the basis of their chemoprotective effects. The concentration and composition of the GLSs in different plants, but also within a plant (e.g. in the seeds, roots or leaves), can vary greatly and also changes during plant development. Furthermore, the effects of various factors in the supply chain of Brassica vegetables including breeding, cultivation, storage and processing on intake and bioavailability of GLSs are extensively discussed in this paper.

Learning across business sectors: context, embeddedness and conceptual chasms

While the construction industry is frequently encouraged to learn from other business sectors, the difficulties of transferring knowledge from one context to another are rarely acknowledged. The problematic nature of knowledge is addressed with particular emphasis on the concept of contextual embeddedness. From this point of view, the process of 'knowledge transfer' depends upon a prolonged process of socialization between actors from both the 'receiving' and 'sending' contexts networking. It is contended that a significant conceptual chasm exists between the exhortations of industry leaders to learn from other sectors and the theoretical complexities associated with knowledge transfer. An ongoing research project is described that seeks to facilitate knowledge sharing between construction and aerospace. A novel approach to knowledge sharing based upon soft systems methodology (SSM) (Mode 2) is described and justified. Initial findings from the first cycle of the research are discussed and used to highlight the importance of context in the implementation of supply chain management.

The economic theory of international business: a supply chain perspective

This paper proposes a way of addressing unresolved issues in international business theory by modelling the multinational enterprise as a coordinator of supply chains. It identifies a new market seeking strategy that is an alternative to conventional strategies such as exporting, licensing and FDI, and analyses the conditions under which it will be adopted by firms. The new strategy involves the off-shoring of production and the out-sourcing of R&D, and is implemented through co-operation between a source country firm and a host country firm.

Mutual dependency grid for stakeholder mapping: a component-based approach to supply chain participant analysis

Stakeholder analysis plays a critical role in business analysis. However, the majority of the stakeholder identification and analysis methods focus on the activities and processes and ignore the artefacts being processed by human beings. By focusing on the outputs of the organisation, an artefact-centric view helps create a network of artefacts, and a component-based structure of the organisation and its supply chain participants. Since the relationship is based on the components, i.e. after the stakeholders are identified, the interdependency between stakeholders and the focal organisation can be measured. Each stakeholder is associated with two types of dependency, namely the stakeholder’s dependency on the focal organisation and the focal organisation’s dependency on the stakeholder. We identify three factors for each type of dependency and propose the equations that calculate the dependency indexes. Once both types of the dependency indexes are calculated, each stakeholder can be placed and categorised into one of the four groups, namely critical stakeholder, mutual benefits stakeholder, replaceable stakeholder, and easy care stakeholder. The mutual dependency grid and the dependency gap analysis, which further investigates the priority of each stakeholder by calculating the weighted dependency gap between the focal organisation and the stakeholder, subsequently help the focal organisation to better understand its stakeholders and manage its stakeholder relationships.

Climate and more sustainable cities: climate information for improved planning and management of cities (producers/capabilities perspective)

In the last two decades substantial advances have been made in the understanding of the scientific basis of urban climates. These are reviewed here with attention to sustainability of cities, applications that use climate information, and scientific understanding in relation to measurements and modelling. Consideration is given from street (micro) scale to neighbourhood (local) to city and region (meso) scale. Those areas where improvements are needed in the next decade to ensure more sustainable cities are identified. High-priority recommendations are made in the following six strategic areas: observations, data, understanding, modelling, tools and education. These include the need for more operational urban measurement stations and networks; for an international data archive to aid translation of research findings into design tools, along with guidelines for different climate zones and land uses; to develop methods to analyse atmospheric data measured above complex urban surfaces; to improve short-range, high-resolution numerical prediction of weather, air quality and chemical dispersion through improved modelling of the biogeophysical features of the urban land surface; to improve education about urban meteorology; and to encourage communication across scientific disciplines at a range of spatial and temporal scales.

An environmental uncertainty-based diagnostic reference tool for evaluating the performance of supply chain value streams

This research has responded to the need for diagnostic reference tools explicitly linking the influence of environmental uncertainty and performance within the supply chain. Uncertainty is a key factor influencing performance and an important measure of the operating environment. We develop and demonstrate a novel reference methodology based on data envelopment analysis (DEA) for examining the performance of value streams within the supply chain with specific reference to the level of environmental uncertainty they face. In this paper, using real industrial data, 20 product supply value streams within the European automotive industry sector are evaluated. Two are found to be efficient. The peer reference groups for the underperforming value streams are identified and numerical improvement targets are derived. The paper demonstrates how DEA can be used to guide supply chain improvement efforts through role-model identification and target setting, in a way that recognises the multiple dimensions/outcomes of the supply chain process and the influence of its environmental conditions. We have facilitated the contextualisation of environmental uncertainty and its incorporation into a specific diagnostic reference tool.

The role of serviced offices in the corporate real estate supply chain

The paper analyses the evolving corporate real estate supply chain and the interaction of this evolution with emerging business models in the serviced office sector. An enhanced model of the corporate real estate portfolio is first presented incorporating vacant, alienated and transitory space. It is argued that the serviced office sector has evolved in response to an increasingly diverse corporate real estate portfolio. For the peripheral corporate real estate portfolio, the core serviced workspace product provides the ability to rapidly acquire high-quality workspace and associated support services on very flexible bases. Whilst it is arguably a beta product, the core workspace offer is now being augmented by managed office or back-to-back leases which enables clients to complement the advantages of serviced offices with a wider choice of premises. Joint venture business models are aligned with solutions to problems of vacant space.

Progress report on longitudinal and cross-sectional study of carbon disclosure strategies: evidence from UK listed companies

Global warming has attracted attention from all over the world and led to the concern about carbon emission. Kyoto Protocol, as the first major international regulatory emission trading scheme, was introduced in 1997 and outlined the strategies for reducing carbon emission (Ratnatunga et al., 2011). As the increased interest in carbon reduction the Protocol came into force in 2005, currently there are already 191 nations ratifying the Protocol(UNFCCC, 2012). Under the cap-and-trade schemes, each company has its carbon emission target. When company’s carbon emission exceeds the target the company will either face fines or buy emission allowance from other companies. Thus unlike most of the other social and environmental issues carbon emission could trigger cost for companies in introducing low-emission equipment and systems and also emission allowance cost when they emit more than their targets. Despite the importance of carbon emission to companies, carbon emission reporting is still operating under unregulated environment and companies are only required to disclose when it is material either in value or in substances (Miller, 2005, Deegan and Rankin, 1997). Even though there is still an increase in the volume of carbon emission disclosures in company’s financial reports and stand-alone social and environmental reports to show their concern of the environment and also their social responsibility (Peters and Romi, 2009), the motivations behind corporate carbon emission disclosures and whether carbon disclosures have impact on corporate environmental reputation and financial performance have not yet to explore. The problems with carbon emission lie on both the financial side and non-financial side of corporate governance. On one hand corporate needs to spend money in reducing carbon emission or paying penalties when they emit more than allowed. On the other hand as the public are more interested in environmental issues than before carbon emission could also impact on the image of corporate regarding to its environmental performance. The importance of carbon emission issue are beginning to be recognized by companies from different industries as one of the critical issues in supply chain management (Lee, 2011) and 80% of companies analysed are facing carbon risks resulting from emissions in the companies’ supply chain as shown in a study conducted by the Investor Responsibility Research Centre Institute for Corporate Responsibility (IRRCI) and over 80% of the companies analysed found that the majority of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission are from electricity and other direct suppliers (Trucost, 2009). The review of extant literature shows the increased importance of carbon emission issues and the gap in the study of carbon reporting and disclosures and also the study which links corporate environmental reputation and corporate financial performance with carbon reporting (Lohmann, 2009a, Ratnatunga and Balachandran, 2009, Bebbington and Larrinaga-Gonzalez, 2008). This study would focus on investigating the current status of UK carbon emission disclosures, the determinant factors of corporate carbon disclosure, and the relationship between carbon emission disclosures and corporate environmental reputation and financial performance of UK listed companies from 2004-2012 and explore the explanatory power of classical disclosure theories.