Investigating the role of ICT in improving productivity in construction supply chains in Australian construction industry.

The Australian construction industry is a fragmented and profoundly competitive industry with high levels of subcontracting resulting in complex supply chain formations. Traditional methods and forms of communication are being proven as inefficient and losing their charm while participants face heavy volumes of communications that often occurs on a daily basis between trading partners in a supply chain on projects. Information Communication Technologies (ICT), due to their robustness and the ability to quickly disseminate data/information, have the capacity to address highlighted communication issues in a structured and an efficient manner. Timesavings produced by these can be directly translated in terms of productivity gain. This paper presents perceptions of subcontractors working in the construction industry in Melbourne Australia on the use of ICT obtained through an exploratory study.

A review of the video games industry in the United States

With increasing revenues for video game manufacturers, higher software sales and a more diverse audience, the video games industry has been experiencing strong and rapid growth in recent times, rivalling other forms of entertainment. As a result, games have begun to attract the attention of marketing practitioners who are finding it increasingly difficult to attract consumer attention, and are seeking alternative media for marketing communications. This paper provides a review of the video games industry in the United States and raises the question as to whether games are a viable new medium for marketing messages. Areas for research are identified.

Understanding Organisational Culture in the Construction Industry

Since the early 1980s, researchers and practitioners in the organisational and management fields have presumed a link between organisational, or corporate, culture and organisational performance. Whilst many believe this exists, other authors have been critical of the validity of such studies. Part of this doubt stems from a reliance on measures of organisational performance that are based purely on financial measures of business growth. Using the construction industry as the subject of his research, Vaughan Coffey traces the development of the literature on organisational culture and business effectiveness and investigates the culture–performance link using a new and highly objective measure of company performance and an evaluation of organisational culture, which is largely behaviourally-based. Providing a theoretical contribution to the field, this work shows that various cultural traits appear to be closely linked to objectively measured organisational effectiveness. This book will be valuable to professionals and researchers in the fields of management and public policy. It indicates directions for construction companies to develop and change, and in doing so strengthen their chances of remaining strong when opportunities for work might deplete and only the most successful companies will be able to survive.---- Selected Contents: 1. An Introduction to Organizations, Culture, Performance and Construction 2. Organizations, Culture and Climate 3. Organizational Culture Studies 4. Measuring Organizational Performance and Effectiveness 5. Organizational Culture and Effectiveness – The Link Between Them 6. Research on the Relationship between Organizational Culture and Performance in Hong Kong Construction Companies 7. The Hong Kong Experiment – Presentation of Demographic Data, Overall Results and some Descriptive and Qualitative Analysis 8. Detailed Statistical Analysis of the Docs and Pass Data in Relation to the Major Research Questions 9. Four Hong Kong Construction Mini-Case Studies 10. Conclusions and Future Research Directions

Safety impacts of alcohol and other drugs in the construction industry : a research methodology

Anecdotal evidence from the infrastructure and building sectors highlights issues of drugs and alcohol and its association with safety risk on construction sites. Operating machinery and mobile equipment, proximity to live traffic together with congested sites, electrical equipment and operating at heights conspire to accentuate the potential adverse impact of drugs and alcohol in the workplace. While most Australian jurisdictions have identified this as a critical safety issue, information is limited regarding the prevalence of alcohol and other drugs in the workplace and there is limited evidential guidance regarding how to effectively and efficiently address such an issue. No known study has scientifically evaluated the relationship between the use of drugs and alcohol and safety impacts in construction, and there has been only limited adoption of nationally coordinated strategies, supported by employers and employees to render it socially unacceptable to arrive at a construction workplace with impaired judgement from drugs and alcohol. A nationally consistent collaborative approach across the construction workforce - involving employers and employees; clients; unions; contractors and sub-contractors is required to engender a cultural change in the construction workforce – in a similar manner to the on-going initiative in securing a cultural change to drink-driving in our society where peer intervention and support is encouraged. This study has four key objectives. Firstly, using the standard World Health Organisation AUDIT, a national qualitative and quantitative assessment of the use of drugs and alcohol will be carried out. This will build upon similar studies carried out in the Australian energy and mining sectors. Secondly, the development of an appropriate industry policy will adopt a non-punitive and rehabilitative approach developed in consultation with employers and employees across the infrastructure and building sectors, with the aim it be adopted nationally for adoption at the construction workplace. Thirdly, an industry-specific cultural change management program will be developed through a nationally collaborative approach to reducing the risk of impaired performance on construction sites and increasing workers’ commitment to drugs and alcohol safety. Finally, an implementation plan will be developed from data gathered from both managers and construction employees. Such an approach stands to benefit not only occupational health and safety, through a greater understanding of the safety impacts of alcohol and other drugs at work, but also alcohol and drug use as a wider community health issue. This paper will provide an overview of the background and significance of the study as well as outlining the proposed methodology that will be used to evaluate the safety impacts of alcohol and other drugs in the construction industry.

Safety impacts of alcohol and other drugs in the construction industry : Preliminary findings

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Multi-criteria assessment of innovative technology in the beef industry

In Australia rural research and development corporations and companies expended over $AUS500 million on agricultural research and development. A substantial proportion of this is invested in R&D in the beef industry. The Australian beef industry exports almost $AUS5billionof product annually and invest heavily in new product development to improve the beef quality and improve production efficiency. Review points are critical for effective new product development, yet many research and development bodies, particularly publicly funded ones, appear to ignore the importance of assessing products prior to their release. Significant sums of money are invested in developing technological innovations that have low levels and rates of adoption. The adoption rates could be improved if the developers were more focused on technology uptake and less focused on proving their technologies can be applied in practice. Several approaches have been put forward in an effort to improve rates of adoption into operational settings. This paper presents a study of key technological innovations in the Australian beef industry to assess the use of multiple criteria in evaluating the potential uptake of new technologies. Findings indicate that using multiple criteria to evaluate innovations before commercializing a technology enables researchers to better understand the issues that may inhibit adoption.

Rates of change : online distribution as disruptive technology in the film industry

Much debate in media and communication studies is based on exaggerated opposition between the digital sublime and the digital abject: overly enthusiastic optimism versus determined pessimism over the potential of new technologies. This inhibits the discipline's claims to provide rigorous insight into industry and social change which is, after all, continuous. Instead of having to decide one way or the other, we need to ask how we study the process of change.This article examines the impact of online distribution in the film industry, particularly addressing the question of rates of change. Are there genuinely new players disrupting the established oligopoly, and if so with what effect? Is there evidence of disruption to, and innovation in, business models? Has cultural change been forced on the incumbents? Outside mainstream Hollywood, where are the new opportunities and the new players? What is the situation in Australia?

Strategic management practices in the construction industry : a study of Indonesian enterprises

Since the establishment of the first national strategic development plan in the early 1970s, the construction industry has played an important role in terms of the economic, social and cultural development of Indonesia. The industry’s contribution to Indonesia’s gross domestic product (GDP) increased from 3.9% in 1973 to 7.7% in 2007. Business Monitoring International (2009) forecasts that Indonesia is home to one of the fastest-growing construction industries in Asia despite the average construction growth rate being expected to remain under 10% over the period 2006 – 2010. Similarly, Howlett and Powell (2006) place Indonesia as one of the 20 largest construction markets in 2010. Although the prospects for the Indonesian construction industry are now very promising, many local construction firms still face serious difficulties, such as poor performance and low competitiveness. There are two main reasons behind this problem: the environment that they face is not favourable; the other is the lack of strategic direction to improve competitiveness and performance. Furthermore, although strategic management has now become more widely used by many large construction firms in developed countries, practical examples and empirical studies related to the Indonesian construction industry remain scarce. In addition, research endeavours related to these topics in developing countries appear to be limited. This has potentially become one of the factors hampering efforts to guide Indonesian construction enterprises. This research aims to construct a conceptual model to enable Indonesian construction enterprises to develop a sound long-term corporate strategy that generates competitive advantage and superior performance. The conceptual model seeks to address the main prescription of a dynamic capabilities framework (Teece, Pisano & Shuen, 1997; Teece, 2007) within the context of the Indonesian construction industry. It is hypothesised that in a rapidly changing and varied environment, competitive success arises from the continuous development and reconfiguration of firm’s specific assets achieving competitive advantage is not only dependent on the exploitation of specific assets/capabilities, but on the exploitation of all of the assets and capabilities combinations in the dynamic capabilities framework. Thus, the model is refined through sequential statistical regression analyses of survey results with a sample size of 120 valid responses. The results of this study provide empirical evidence in support of the notion that a competitive advantage is achieved via the implementation of a dynamic capability framework as an important way for a construction enterprise to improve its organisational performance. The characteristics of asset-capability combinations were found to be significant determinants of the competitive advantage of the Indonesian construction enterprises, and that such advantage sequentially contributes to organisational performance. If a dynamic capabilities framework can work in the context of Indonesia, it suggests that the framework has potential applicability in other emerging and developing countries. This study also demonstrates the importance of the multi-stage nature of the model which provides a rich understanding of the dynamic process by which asset-capability should be exploited in combination by the construction firms operating in varying levels of hostility. Such findings are believed to be useful to both academics and practitioners, however, as this research represents a dynamic capabilities framework at the enterprise level, future studies should continue to explore and examine the framework in other levels of strategic management in construction as well as in other countries where different cultures or similar conditions prevails.

The relationship between building characteristics and the chemical composition of surface films found on glass windows in Brisbane, Australia

Films found on the windows of residential buildings have been studied. The main aim of the paper was to assess the roles of the films in the accumulation of potentially toxic chemicals in residential buildings. Thus the elemental and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon compositions of the surface films from the glass windows of eighteen residential buildings were examined. The presence of sample amounts of inorganic elements (4.0–1.2 × 106 μg m−2) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in the films (BDL - 620.1 ng m−2) has implications for human exposure and the fate of pollutants in the urban environment. To facilitate the interpretation of the results, data matrices consisting of the chemical composition of the films and the building characteristics were subjected to multivariate data analysis methods, and these revealed that the accumulation of the chemicals was strongly dependent on building characteristics such as the type of glass used for the window, the distance from a major road, age of the building, distance from an industrial activity, number of smokers in the building and frequency of cooking in the buildings. Thus, building characteristics which minimize the accumulation of pollutants on the surface films need to be encouraged.

Independent cinema in the Chinese film industry

Chinese independent cinema has developed for more than twenty years. Two sorts of independent cinema exist in China. One is underground cinema, which is produced without official approvals and cannot be circulated in China, and the other are the films which are legally produced by small private film companies and circulated in the domestic film market. This sort of ‘within-system’ independent cinema has played a significant role in the development of Chinese cinema in terms of culture, economics and ideology. In contrast to the amount of comment on underground filmmaking in China, the significance of ‘within-system’ independent cinema has been underestimated by most scholars. This thesis is a study of how political management has determined the development of Chinese independent cinema and how Chinese independent cinema has developed during its various historical trajectories. This study takes media economics as the research approach, and its major methods utilise archive analysis and interviews. The thesis begins with a general review of the definition and business of American independent cinema. Then, after a literature review of Chinese independent cinema, it identifies significant gaps in previous studies and reviews issues of traditional definition and suggests a new definition. After several case studies on the changes in the most famous Chinese directors’ careers, the thesis shows that state studios and private film companies are two essential domestic backers for filmmaking in China. After that, the body of the thesis provides an examination of the development of ‘within-system’ independent cinema. Specifically, three factors: government intervention, the majors’ performance (state studios and, later, the conglomerates) and the market conduct of independent cinema at various points in their trajectories are studied. The key findings of the study are as follows: First, most scholars have overlooked the existence and the significance of within-system Chinese independent cinema. Drawing on an American definition of the independent sector, this thesis proposes a definition of the sector in China: namely, any film that has not been financed, produced, and/or distributed by majors. The thesis also notes important contradictions in applying this definition: i.e. film-making is still dependent on policies that frame industry development. The thesis recognises that major tensions apply to filmmaking in China, which significantly differentiates the Chinese independents from those in the US. Second, the development of Chinese independent cinema is the result the rise of the private sector and the decline of the state studio system. As state studios encountered difficulties the private sector moved forward; consequently the environment improved for independent cinema. Third, before 2003, the film industry in China had little commercialisation. The government controlled independent cinema by means of license and censorship. State studios produced main melody films and Hollywood attracted most of the audiences. Many independent filmmakers focused on commercial films, thus contributing to film commercialisation. Fourth, after 2003, the film industry became increasingly fragmented. The government created distribution and exhibition opportunities for main melody films; conglomerates collaborated with Hong Kong players; Hong Kong co-productions and Hollywood occupied the film market; and small private film companies produced main melody films in order to earn meagre profits. The original contribution of the thesis is to advance the study of Chinese independent cinema. The study suggests a reasonable and practical definition of Chinese independent cinema. It shows how the Chinese government authorities have implemented economic measures to gain ideological control in the film industry. Finally, this the first study on Chinese independent cinema applying a synthesis of economic, political and historical perspectives.

Creative industry clusters and the ‘creative milieu’ in Shanghai.

In 2005 the Shanghai municipal government adopted the notion of ‘creative industries’ as part of their economic development strategy. At the same time, they officially recognized a number of ‘Creative Industry Clusters’ (CIC) in the city; over the next five years these official clusters grew to over ninety in number. The active promotion of CIC by the local state can thus been seen as central to its adoption of the creative industries agenda, in turn part of its aspiration to become a modern, global metropolis. In the first part of this paper we look at the emergence of the creative industry agenda in China, making some general observations about the need to place such policy transfer in its specific context. We suggest how this agenda might be understood in the national context of china’s economic and cultural policy development. In the second we give a critical account of the development of the creative industries agenda in Shanghai and its relationship to that for CIC. We argue that this agenda had more to do with real estate development than the promotion of a ‘creative milieu’ or ‘ecosystem’, and we also give some reasons as to why this was the case. In the third section we provide some new evidence to suggest the increasing disjunction between CIC and such a wider ‘creative milieu’. In the final section we suggest some new ways in which these CIC might be approached by local government in Shanghai

Validating a model of cooperative procurement in the construction industry

Project management in the construction industry involves coordination of many tasks and individuals, affected by complexity and uncertainty, which increases the need for efficient cooperation. Procurement is crucial since it sets the basis for cooperation between clients and contractors. This is true whether the project is local, regional or global in scope. Traditionally, procurement procedures are competitive, resulting in conflicts, adversarial relationships and less desirable project results. The purpose of this paper is to propose and empirically test an alternative procurement model based on cooperative procurement procedures that facilitates cooperation between clients and contractors in construction projects. The model is based on four multi-item constructs – incentive-based compensation, limited bidding options, partner selection and cooperation. Based on a sample of 87 client organisations, the model was empirically tested and exhibited strong support, including content, nomological, convergent and discriminant validity, as well as reliability. Our findings indicate that partner selection based on task related attributes mediates the relationship between two important pre-selection processes (incentive-based compensation and limited bid invitation) and preferred outcome of cooperation. The contribution of the paper is identifying valid and reliable measurement constructs and confirming a unique sequential order for achieving cooperation. Moreover, the findings are applicable for many types of construction projects because of the similarities in the construction industry worldwide.