Exploring behavioural factors for information sharing in BIM projects in the Malaysian construction industry

© 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited. Purpose: Despite the wave of enthusiasm for building information modelling (BIM) as a platform for information sharing, issues from the context of information-sharing behaviours still exist. The purpose of this paper is to explore the behavioural factors for successful information sharing in BIM projects in Malaysia. Design/methodology/approach: Based on a literature review, a questionnaire was designed containing seven identified behavioural factors and their sub-elements. Data were collected through a questionnaire survey with 42 experienced BIM practitioners. In addition to that qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine construction practitioners in the Malaysian construction industry. Initially, a descriptive statistical analysis was adopted, followed by multivariate analysis that was employed to examine the possible effect of demographic attributes (i.e. nature of organisation and work experience in BIM) on the behavioural factors. Findings: The analytical results indicated that communication, accountability and trust were the top three behavioural factors influencing successful information sharing. Additionally, the majority of the behavioural factors on information sharing were found to be not significantly dependent on both, the nature of organisations and the level of BIM experiences. Overall, the success of information sharing in the digital environment (i.e. BIM) depends on organisational behaviour supported by the collaborative constructs. Research limitations/implications: Due to the fact that BIM implementation in Malaysia is still in its infancy, this study was limited to local context with small-scale BIM practitioners. Therefore, their views may not represent all BIM-related stakeholders in the industry. Practical implications: The success of information sharing in BIM projects is a result of a combination of various factors, and this study provides construction practitioners with information on the behavioural factors, which could assist them in creating collective and collaborative information sharing in a digital environment. Originality/value: Despite the fact that this study is country specific, the paper presents a new perspective on the behavioural context of information sharing in BIM projects. The findings further extend the current BIM literature by providing an insight into what it takes for project teams to reinforce their information sharing in the Malaysian digital environment through improvements in behaviours

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N/AThis research evaluated the extent to which the long-term goals of the Kha Ri Gude (KRG) mass literacy campaign have been achieved by using the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) as a benchmark. The literacy campaign, which arose from the Education for All (EFA) goals of the United Nations’ Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), was initiated to empower disadvantaged people to become self-reliant and participate more effectively in the economic activities of their communities. In this study, the achievements of the literacy campaign introduced in South Africa in 2008 (called Kha Ri Gude) are weighed up against the first five SDGs to find out if there was any policy cohesion, which is one of the tools for effective community development. This study forms part of an initiative by the Adult Basic Education and Training (ABET) and Youth Development Department of the University of South Africa (Unisa) to assess the implementation of the KRG mass literacy campaign in the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu Natal, and Limpopo. Since the researcher did not form part of the Unisa team who visited these provinces, secondary sources (such as interview transcripts, journals, and a voice recorder) employed by Unisa’s ABET Department from 2013 to 2015 were used. A qualitative approach and purposeful sampling technique were used to source information-rich participants. The sample consisted of KRG graduates, voluntary educators, and coordinators of the KRG project. The study found that the program had a positive effect on participants and their communities. To some extent, it eradicated poverty, encouraged healthy living, and enhanced female empowerment. This is what the South African government aspires to achieve with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals. However, funds are needed for start-ups to boost livelihoods and to ensure further developmentN/AAdult Basic Education (ABET

Moderation effect of client special treatment benefits on the relationship between logistics integration and logistics performance in the logistics services providers’ context

In the face of global competition and the coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemic, the logistics service providers (LSPs) are facing severe challenges to attain their logistics performance indicators. To continue in such a market place, LSPs need to maintain a dedicated integration relationship with their clients by enhancing client special treatment benefits. The aim of this study is to apply the relational view (RV) theory and the relationship marketing (RM) perspective to examine the moderation effect of special treatment benefits on the link between logistics integration and LSPs’ logistics performance (i.e., cost leadership and customer services innovation). Data was collected from 214 Malaysian LSPs, and analysed using partial least squares-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM). Although the results show that logistics integration has a strong impact on both performances, further analysis shows that a high level of logistics integration has an association with high levels of special treatment benefits (moderating effect), in turn, maintaining performance at a high level. The exploring of the moderation effect of special treatment benefits contributes to the RV theory by incorporating the RM to reflect the moderation effect. Additionally, the study contributes empirically to the field of strategy and RM within the LSPs’ industry. Finally, the findings enable LSPs to better allocate resources to ensure more effective value-based strategies that emphasise on client special treatment benefits to develop financial confidence and maintain long-term dedicated relationships, so as to achieve the target outcomes

What drives inter-organisational knowledge management?:The cause and effect analysis using a multi-layer multi-criteria decision-making framework

Purpose Knowledge management seeks collaborative practices among organisations to generate technical, adapt and share knowledge to obtain a sustainable competitive advantage in cross-border business activities. This paper aims to disentangle the crucial determinants of knowledge management in inter-organisational arrangements settings. Design/methodology/approach In the first stage, after an in-depth literature review, the main knowledge management drivers are identified. In the second stage, based on the identified drivers, the importance and relationship between the drivers are evaluated by expert opinions from academic and executive activists. Eventually, in the last stage, a multi-layer decision-making approach has been proposed and used to determine the relationship and the importance of the drivers. Findings The findings of this paper assess the ranking of the different elements from experts’ opinions and discuss important theoretical and managerial implications. The influential factors were identified through an extensive literature review, which combined with the views of experts from academia and industry (international firms). Furthermore, the ranking of factors based on the experts’ overall opinion was used to discuss theoretical and managerial contributions. Originality/value This research provides a better understanding of the interrelationships between the key drivers of knowledge management, which helps management draw more effective strategies to address the cultural differences between firms. Moreover, understanding of the importance of the systems and structures that define the nature of the collaboration in inter-organisational settings, as well as the risks related to those are presented in this research

Managing Relational Capabilities of Inter-Organizational Innovation Ecosystems: Empirical Investigations

Problem statement: The inter-organizational relationship has become an increasingly emerging configuration in the domains of an innovation ecosystem. The synergy of firms, with diverse institutional logics, motives and resources position has the potential to generate common good, that lie beyond the reach and capability of a single firm. However, managing the idiosyncrasies of firms in such alliances remain highly problematic in practice and largely limited in the extant literature, and thus often results in firms’ unwillingness to engage in a collaborative innovation ecosystem. To address this, first, we conduct a review of the literature to elucidate the research gap, highly influential authors, and countries, the classification of the body of literature according to the network antecedents, management, and performance issues that are fundamental to innovation network projects. These results, however, advance our understanding of the critical issues affecting the practices of co-creation of value and the ecosystem innovation performance. Furthermore, while knowledge on inter-organizational relationship has been dominated in the context of large corporations, a comprehensive understanding of how relational capabilities of a network is linked to the co-value creation of local SMEs network is missing. Second, we try to address this by performing an empirical study of local SMEs business networks, in practical terms, to understand how the network develops and leverages the distinct capabilities and resources of partners while advancing the ecosystem innovation performance. Since the diverse idiosyncrasies associated with firms continue to limit the proliferation of the inter-firm innovation ecosystem, our third chapter tries to examine how institution-based trust-building programs enable the development of actors’ innovation performance in the ecosystem. Finally, despite the presence of prior studies on the inter-firm alliance for commercial purposes, studies on a cause-related alliance of firms in a period of global uncertainty are largely underdeveloped. We addressed this problem in the fourth chapter, by examining the first empirical context of collaborative value practices of a cause-based inter-firm alliance. Research design: To address the gaps, we first reviewed the state-of-the-earth on inter-organizational relationships and integrate the innovation ecosystem literature, to understand the current body of literature and explore the avenue for future research. Based on the result of this study, we conducted two series of qualitative case studies and one quantitative study, analyzing (1) the relational capabilities enabling value co-creation of an inter-firm innovation network, (2) the inter-firm innovation network characterizing the social cause rather than commercial purpose interests, and (3) the development of trust in inter-firm innovation projects. We mainly relied on the explorative, grounded theory methodology to select and analyze our cases. For both case studies, a series of in-depth personal interviews were conducted across two business networks involving the network companies allying. In addition to this, a comprehensive list of secondary data was generated to augment the research process and increase the robustness of the findings. Results: The results of this thesis first map out the state of the earth, describing the emerging themes and direction for future agenda. Based on our review of extant literature, we found that research in inter-organizational innovation is emerging fast. This is due to the plethora of economic and commercial advantages firms derived in their relationship- thus creating an opportunity for more research in the field. Despite the growing attention of researchers in the field, the literature on inter-organizational relationships suffers from many weaknesses - making it problematic to achieve common alliance success. Generally, we discovered that research in the field is highly fragmented. First, research in an inter-organizational business network is, however, still struggling to gain a solid identity in practice because of the nuance of factors and their effects on inter-firm relationships. Our findings showed that several factors caught researchers’ attractions while others remain largely limited. Th results showed that these factors have parsimonious effects on innovation ecosystems– failing many inter-organizational projects across many industries and sectors. These results were further clustered according to three categories of network management: network antecedents, network management, and network performance. The extant literature, however, provides no integrated framework to entangle such challenges in inter-organizational relationships. Second, we empirically examined the development of relational capabilities of local SMEs inter-firm network contracts. The study identifies key antecedents for successful organizing of inter-firm engagement, and the consequent development of network relational dynamic capabilities in a business network environment: friendship, institutional arrangements, participatory culture, homophily, flexibility, coordination and control, communication/information flows, trust-building, transparency and managing change/adaptability. Our findings also suggest that organizing for inter-firm engagement in a business network context, positively influenced network relational performance over time. Third, we empirically explored institution-based trust-building in the context of an inter-firm innovation ecosystem. The findings show that relational risk mediates the effects of trust in institutional openness and honesty, similarity/identification trust, and institutional reliability on the innovation performance of SMEs. In addition to these findings, our study also established that institutional trust-building practices differ greatly by the size of the enterprise (small vs medium). While small firms are found to be more vulnerable to relational risks of inter-firm similarity (over-familiarity) than medium-sized firms, Medium-sized firms, on the other hand, are vulnerable to high relational risks caused by low institutional openness and low competence on innovation performance. Finally, in the last chapter of this thesis, we empirically explored the value-creating activities of a cause-based social alliance project in Northern Italy, seeking to address the social challenges of society in times of the COVID-19 pandemic. The finding of this study provides evidence that despite the different organizations, motives, and even diverse institutional logics, the collaborative value creation framework is a suitable theoretical lens to understand value generation in cause-based social entrepreneurship (SE) alliance. The study found four critical aspects of collaborative value processes, that enable the alliance actors to leverage the cause-based SE alliance capabilities: value definition, co-value creation, value balance, and value renewal. Due to the idiosyncrasies associated with the alliance firms, our study showed several challenges confronting the alliance, such as finding the right cause-driven social alliance partner, different institutional logics, systems, and operational guidelines, stakeholder commitment to the cause, resource-cause alliance fit, and trust. Contribution: Our results contribute, first, to the literature on managing the inter-organizational innovation network. By considering the context of local SMEs business networks, we provide empirical insights into the relational dynamics of actors in the innovation ecosystem. By the network context, we examined collaborative value processes that are critical to open innovation performance. Second, we bridge social entrepreneurship by better linking inter-firm cause-based alliance literature, a subject that is highly fragmented in the literature. Third, our empirical study of network relational capabilities contributes to the relational dynamic capabilities’ literature – discussing the processes enabling the development of the network’s relational capabilities while organizing inter-firm engagement projects. Lastly, we also contribute to research by empirically exploring the institution-based trust-building in the context of SMEs innovation ecosystem literature. The findings also contribute to the existing empirical studies on how institutional trust factors affect inter-firm innovation performance and the mediating role of relational risk involved in inter-firm business relationships. Finally, we contribute to practice, by arguing that the development of institution-based trust is a critical antecedent of setting up a successful cause-based inter-firm alliance. Limitations: This thesis underlies amongst others three main limitations: First, qualitative studies are prone to researchers’ bias as data is subjectively interpreted by researchers. This, however, makes it impossible to eliminate the influence of researchers’ personal views and perceptions. To minimize this bias, we adopt various triangulations methods thus, addressing the limitation of the case study approach. Second, the generalization of findings is limited by the case studies approach, giving the unique context of each case. Third, the quantitative study adopted is not without limitations. For instance, the small sample size, and use of limited scales, are likely to influence the results of the study. We recognized these limitations and proposed that future research should try to address more context-sensitive theorizing and by discussing findings limited to just specific case contexts. Future Research: This thesis proposed some agenda that future research should address: First, the research on network relational dynamic capabilities across various business networks, could offer more robust generalizable findings. Second, the case study approaches adopted in this thesis, however, has limitations. This limited context inherent in a case study design provides a narrow empirical context for the applicability of the results. Third, the quantitative studies adopted also posed some limitations, and thus, future research could explore other multi-dimensional scales of institutional trust-building practices for bigger firms, and even in different sectors/industries, or even across different geographic locations. Finally, future studies may also try to replicate the collaborative value practices of a cause-based SE network, addressing a particular industry or market, or even comparing across different network levels with a diverse membership, and market/industry structure. Thus, the samples from bigger firms and corporations and their attitude to a social cause may be highly influenced by the size, capability, and motives, since our current case is largely by SMEs. Further, a quantitative study on how collaborative value practices influence actors’ social performance, could yield interesting findings to the cause-based social entrepreneurship alliance literature

Kajian tentang tadbir urus dan risiko dalam perhubungan terhadap perkongsian maklumat di kalangan pengusaha stesen minyak luar bandar di Malaysia

One of the New Economic Policy (NEP) is to increase rural development and to bridge the economic gap between the urban and rural areas. The importance of the rural petroleum retailing industry in supplying fuel sources is the driving force for economic activity in the rural areas in Malaysia. Issues concerning the rural oil supply chain in Malaysia needs to be addressed effectively and efficiently to ensure timely supply. Practicing information sharing between suppliers and retailers is a critical process to ensure alignment in the supply chain management. To address the issue of information sharing in the supply chain, a research framework was developed to delineate the relationship between relational governance and information sharing through the role of mediating relational risk. The testing of research framework was conducted using the questionnaire which 162 questionnaires were distributed to rural petrol station operators in Malaysia. Of these, only 65 questionnaires were returned and could be used for the data analysis phase. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistical approaches and inferential statistics. The findings show that the level of information sharing is at a moderate pace. Meanwhile, relational governance is a simple predictor of information sharing but has an influence on information sharing through relational risk mediator. This demonstrates the need for relational governance to focus on relational risk issues in order to contribute to information sharing. Findings also showed that relational risk acts as partial mediator between relational governance and information sharing with significant influence. Relational governance dimensions of connectedness, can be the catalyst for improved information sharing performance. The results of this study are expected to contribute towards the proliferation of knowledge - related information sharing in the supply chain to the academic and industry players in implementing supply chain management more efficiently and effectively through information sharing

Tedarik zincirinde bilgi paylaşımının işletme performansına etkileri

06.03.2018 tarihli ve 30352 sayılı Resmi Gazetede yayımlanan “Yükseköğretim Kanunu İle Bazı Kanun Ve Kanun Hükmünde Kararnamelerde Değişiklik Yapılması Hakkında Kanun” ile 18.06.2018 tarihli “Lisansüstü Tezlerin Elektronik Ortamda Toplanması, Düzenlenmesi ve Erişime Açılmasına İlişkin Yönerge” gereğince tam metin erişime açılmıştır.Günümüz küresel ekonomisinde hayatta kalmak ve yarışmak için, imalat sektörü üretmeye, paylaşmaya, günümüze yaymaya ve uygun bilgi ve bilişime şiddetle ihtiyaç duymaktadır. Artık organizasyonlar arasındaki farklılığı belirleyen en önemli faktör bilgi akışıdır. Tedarik Zinciri Yönetimi (TZY) firmaların performansları açısından önem kazanmıştır. Tedarik zinciri (TZ) içerisinde, karşılıklı güven olgusu geliştirilerek, doğru ve kaliteli bilginin paylaşılması, böylece esnek ve çevik firma yapılarına ulaşılması zincirin performansını olumlu yönde etkileyecektir. Bu sayede, daha esnek ve çevik firma yapıları, sürekli değişen ve gittikçe belirsiz bir hal alan müşteri ihtiyaçlarına daha hızlı cevap verecektir. TZY performansının artması firma performansını artırmaktadır. Performansın ölçülmesi, bir faaliyetin etkinliğini ve verimliliğini ölçme süreci olarak tanımlanabilir. Performans ölçümü ve bu değişkenler, faaliyetlerin gelecekteki konumunun belirlenmesi, performansının değerlendirilmesi ve amaçların ortaya konulabilmesi için aktif bir rol oynamaktadır. Dolayısıyla tedarik zincirinde bilgi paylaşımının performans ölçüm ve değerlendirme kriterlerinin doğru belirlenmesi, tedarik zinciri üyelerinin tamamını ve tedarikçilerle başlayan ve son kullanıcılarla son bulan sürecin içerisinde bütün paydaşları ilgilendirmektedir. Tedarik zinciri süreci ve bilgi paylaşımı günümüz tedarik zincirinde kritik rol oynamaktadır. TZY'nde önceki araştırmalar, çeşitli tedarik zinciri süreçlerini ve bilgi paylaşımının farklı yönleri ayrı ayrı incelenmiştir. Bu nedenle, bu çalışma tedarik zinciri süreci, bilgi paylaşımı, tedarik zinciri esnekliği, çevresel belirsizlikler ve işletme performansı arasındaki ilişkileri incelemek için kapsamlı bir çerçeve önermektedir. Bu çalışma ile tedarik zinciri sürecinde bilgi paylaşımının işletme performansına etkilerinin değerlendirilmesine ilişkin değişkenler belirlenmiştir. Ayrıca işletme performansının değerlendirilmesine yönelik Yapısal Eşitlik Modeli (YEM) ve Yapay Sinir Ağı (YSA) şeklinde iki aşamalı yöntem kullanılmıştır. Çalışmamızda, işletme performans ölçüleri olarak maliyet, esneklik, cevap verme, teslimat ve finansal performans şeklinde 5 farklı model oluşturulmuştur. Elde edilen modeller önce YEM ile test edilmiş ve YEM'den elde edilen veriler YSA için girdi olarak alınıp Matlab programı kullanılarak YSA modelleri gizli değişkenler arası ilişkileri daha güçlü şekilde tahmin ettiği görülmüştür.The manufacturing sector heavily needs producing, sharing, bringing to the present, appropriate information and informatics in order to survive and compete in today's global economy. Now, the most important factor determining the difference between organizations is the information flow. Supply Chain Management (SCM) has gained significance in terms of company performances. Within the supply chain (SC), sharing correct and quality information, and thus, achieving flexible and agile company structures by developing the phenomenon of mutual trust will affect the performance of the chain positively. In this way, more flexible and agile company structures will enable responding to customer needs, which are continuously changing and gradually becoming unclear, more quickly. An increase in the SCM performance enhancees the company performance. The measurement of the performance can be defined as the measuring process of the efficiency and productivity of an activity. Performance measurement and these variables play an active role in determining the future position of activities, evaluating the performance and setting the objectives. Therefore, the accurate determination of the performance measurement and evaluation criteria of information sharing in the supply chain interests all the members of the supply chain and all the shareholders within the process which begins with suppliers and ends with end-users. The supply chain process and information sharing play a critical role in the supply chain nowadays. Previous studies on SCM investigated various supply chain processes and different aspects of information sharing separately. Therefore, an extensive framework is suggested this time to examine the relationships between the supply chain process, information sharing, supply chain flexibility, environmental uncertainties and business performance. In this study, variables have been determined regarding the evaluation of the effects of information sharing on business performance in the supply chain process. Moreover, a two-stage method was used for the evaluation of business performance as the Structural Equation Model (SEM) and the Artificial Neural Network (ANN). In the present study, 5 different models were established as the business performance measures: cost, flexibility, responding, delivery and financial performance. The models obtained were first tested with SEM, and the data obtained from SEM were taken as input for the ANN, and it was then observed by using the Matlab software that the ANN models estimated the relationships between the latent variables more strongl