Of Incentive, Bias, and Behaviour: An Empirical Economic Investigation into Project Delivery Constructs Influencing the Adoption of Building Information Modelling

Building Information Modelling (BIM) is a collaborative construction platform allowing for digital databases, real-time change management, and a high degree of information reuse catalysing increased quality of work, enhanced productivity, and lower costs. Yet, overall adoption rates within industry remain vexingly low. Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) is currently the only contractual incentive vehicle available for BIM, and indeed the full potential of both are only realised when employed together; even so, uptake rates of IPD exist even lower. In response, this research evaluates hitherto ill-explored factors influencing the adoption of BIM by empirically testing hypotheses related to the impacts of three compounding theories upon the BIM decision calculus. Specifically, the incentive theory, the theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT), and the status quo bias model. The research approaches BIM adoption holistically at the organizational, individual, transactional, and behavioural levels through a mixed design combining five quantitative, cross-sectional, questionnaire-based studies and one interview-based pre-test/post-test case study with sample populations including a Fortune 100 contractor, internationally renowned trade groups, and arguably the most progressive municipal construction client in the world. Data was collected using purposive sampling and analysed quantitatively through Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) and qualitatively with Directed Content Analysis (DCA). Primary conclusions are that BIM decisions are hierarchical; BIM adoption involves a general higher-level decision-making requiring stakeholders’ consensus; BIM utilization involves a specific lower-level decision-making with managerial discretion; economic incentives and competitive pressure influence higher-level decisions; non-economic factors influence lower-level decisions but are moderated by organizations’ type and size; organizations’ size and the degree of managerial discretion are inversely related; strength of the effects vary across and within the three theory-based factors that influence BIM adoption; and the effects of leadership and organizational culture remain unaccounted for and require investigation

Developing Solar Energy in Rural Virginia: An Analysis of Legal, Environmental, and Policy Issues

This paper focuses on the legal, environmental, land use, and policy issues associated with developing solar energy projects in Virginia, with a particular focus on large-scale installations in rural areas. Part II discusses state laws, regulations, and recent legislative actions that relate to solar development, including the Virginia Stormwater Management Act and Erosion and Sediment Control Law. Part III reviews local strategies for managing solar development, including comprehensive plans, ordinances, siting agreements, and conditional use permits. Part IV addresses the challenges localities may face when balancing land preservation and Virginia’s ambitious clean energy goals. Finally, Part V provides recommendations for consideration by Virginia’s lawmakers, regulators, and localities as the state continues to expand its solar energy generation capacity. This abstract has been taken from the authors\u27 introduction

Antitrust Overreach: Undoing Cooperative Standardization in the Digital Economy

Information technology markets in general and wireless communications markets, in particular, rely on standardization mechanisms to develop interoperable devices for data processing, storage, and transmission. From 2G through the emergent 5G standard, wireless communications markets have largely achieved standardization through cooperative multi-firm arrangements that likely outperform the historically dominant alternatives of government monopoly, which is subject to informational deficits and regulatory capture, and private monopoly, which suffers from pricing and other distortions inherent to protected market positions. This cooperative process has successfully relied on three key legal elements: reasonably secure patents, quasi-contractual licensing commitments supplemented by reputation effects, and targeted application of antitrust safeguards against collusion risk. Over approximately the past decade, antitrust agencies and courts in the U.S., Europe and Asia have taken actions that threaten this legal infrastructure by limiting patentees’ ability to seek injunctive relief, adopting rigid understandings of “fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory” licensing principles, and addressing collusion risk among licensors-innovators while overlooking (and even exacerbating) collusion risk among licensees-implementers. These judicial and regulatory interventions in IP licensing markets shift value from firms and economies that specialize in generating innovations to firms and economies that specialize in integrating innovations into end-user products. These entity-level and country-level redistributive effects are illustrated by lobbying activities in the wireless communications markets and antitrust actions against IP licensors in jurisdictions that have substantial net IP deficits and are principally populated by IP licensees. Current antitrust policy promotes producers’ narrow interests in lower input costs while ignoring the broader public interest in preserving the cooperative standardization structures that have supported innovation and commercialization in the digital economy

Climate-smart coffee in Uganda

The climate-smart agriculture (CSA) concept reflects an ambition to improve the integration of agriculture development and climate responsiveness. It aims to achieve food security and broader development goals under a changing climate and increasing food demand. CSA initiatives sustainably increase productivity, enhance resilience, and reduce/remove greenhouse gases (GHGs). While the concept is new, and still evolving, many of the practices that make up CSA already exist worldwide and are used by farmers to cope with various production risks. Mainstreaming Climate Smart Coffee (CSC) requires critical stocktaking of the sector fundamentals, already evident and projected climatic developments relevant to coffee production and promising practices for the future, and of institutional and financial enablers for CSC adoption. This CSC profile provides a snapshot of a developing baseline created to initiate discussion, both within countries and globally, about entry points for investing in CSC at scale

Managing Distributed Information: Implications for Energy Infrastructure Co-production

abstract: The Internet and climate change are two forces that are poised to both cause and enable changes in how we provide our energy infrastructure. The Internet has catalyzed enormous changes across many sectors by shifting the feedback and organizational structure of systems towards more decentralized users. Today’s energy systems require colossal shifts toward a more sustainable future. However, energy systems face enormous socio-technical lock-in and, thus far, have been largely unaffected by these destabilizing forces. More distributed information offers not only the ability to craft new markets, but to accelerate learning processes that respond to emerging user or prosumer centered design needs. This may include values and needs such as local reliability, transparency and accountability, integration into the built environment, and reduction of local pollution challenges. The same institutions (rules, norms and strategies) that dominated with the hierarchical infrastructure system of the twentieth century are unlikely to be good fit if a more distributed infrastructure increases in dominance. As information is produced at more distributed points, it is more difficult to coordinate and manage as an interconnected system. This research examines several aspects of these, historically dominant, infrastructure provisioning strategies to understand the implications of managing more distributed information. The first chapter experimentally examines information search and sharing strategies under different information protection rules. The second and third chapters focus on strategies to model and compare distributed energy production effects on shared electricity grid infrastructure. Finally, the fourth chapter dives into the literature of co-production, and explores connections between concepts in co-production and modularity (an engineering approach to information encapsulation) using the distributed energy resource regulations for San Diego, CA. Each of these sections highlights different aspects of how information rules offer a design space to enable a more adaptive, innovative and sustainable energy system that can more easily react to the shocks of the twenty-first century.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Sustainability 201

Trustworthy Edge Machine Learning: A Survey

The convergence of Edge Computing (EC) and Machine Learning (ML), known as Edge Machine Learning (EML), has become a highly regarded research area by utilizing distributed network resources to perform joint training and inference in a cooperative manner. However, EML faces various challenges due to resource constraints, heterogeneous network environments, and diverse service requirements of different applications, which together affect the trustworthiness of EML in the eyes of its stakeholders. This survey provides a comprehensive summary of definitions, attributes, frameworks, techniques, and solutions for trustworthy EML. Specifically, we first emphasize the importance of trustworthy EML within the context of Sixth-Generation (6G) networks. We then discuss the necessity of trustworthiness from the perspective of challenges encountered during deployment and real-world application scenarios. Subsequently, we provide a preliminary definition of trustworthy EML and explore its key attributes. Following this, we introduce fundamental frameworks and enabling technologies for trustworthy EML systems, and provide an in-depth literature review of the latest solutions to enhance trustworthiness of EML. Finally, we discuss corresponding research challenges and open issues.Comment: 27 pages, 7 figures, 10 table

Strategic Alliances in The Sharing Economy

This thesis aims to explore how sharing economy firms can improve profitability while remaining asset-light. Thus, we explored the possibility of forming strategic alliances with traditional firms. Currently, in academic literature, there is a lack of research on strategic alliances in the sharing economy. This emphasizes the need for a comprehensive study. Our research identified 42 strategic alliances between sharing economy firms and traditional firms. Moreover, the research revealed that joint distribution alliances were the most common type of alliance in the sharing economy. Thus, the topic was explored through an explanatory case study of the joint distribution alliance between Uber and Hertz, formed in America in 2016. This led to the following research question: “Can sharing economy firms and traditional firms create joint value?” Transaction cost theory was deployed to analyze the impact of the alliance on the firms’ profitability. More specifically, deploying transaction cost theory to determine whether the alliance impacted Uber’s revenue, costs, and the service providers’ transaction cost. Similarly, to evaluate whether the alliance impacted Hertz‘s asset utilization, revenue, and costs. The findings revealed that Uber’s mobility segment experienced significant growth and improved profitability during the first three years of the alliance. Similarly, the American revenue and total revenue increased in this period. In addition, Uber’s total costs increased, but the rate of growth decreased in the beginning of the alliance. However, there was a reduction in marketing incentives for the mobility segment. Nevertheless, the findings revealed that the alliance contributed to a significant financial gain for Uber’s service providers due to reduced transaction costs. Moreover, the findings also revealed that Hertz experienced an increase in American vehicle utilization following the alliance. In addition, there was an increase in revenue for both the American rental car segment and Hertz Global. Nevertheless, the findings demonstrate a slight increase in the costs for the rental car segment in America. Similarly, there was an increase in total costs. However, the rate of growth of these costs decreased after the first year of the alliance. In addition, depreciation of revenue earning vehicles and lease charges significantly decreased following the alliance. The findings also illustrated that both firms should have gained significant revenue from the alliance. Given that our findings align with transaction cost theory, demonstrating reductions in transaction costs and increased revenue and asset utilization, we conclude that sharing economy firms and traditional firms can create joint value through joint distribution alliances

Strategic Alliances in The Sharing Economy

This thesis aims to explore how sharing economy firms can improve profitability while remaining asset-light. Thus, we explored the possibility of forming strategic alliances with traditional firms. Currently, in academic literature, there is a lack of research on strategic alliances in the sharing economy. This emphasizes the need for a comprehensive study. Our research identified 42 strategic alliances between sharing economy firms and traditional firms. Moreover, the research revealed that joint distribution alliances were the most common type of alliance in the sharing economy. Thus, the topic was explored through an explanatory case study of the joint distribution alliance between Uber and Hertz, formed in America in 2016. This led to the following research question: “Can sharing economy firms and traditional firms create joint value?” Transaction cost theory was deployed to analyze the impact of the alliance on the firms’ profitability. More specifically, deploying transaction cost theory to determine whether the alliance impacted Uber’s revenue, costs, and the service providers’ transaction cost. Similarly, to evaluate whether the alliance impacted Hertz‘s asset utilization, revenue, and costs. The findings revealed that Uber’s mobility segment experienced significant growth and improved profitability during the first three years of the alliance. Similarly, the American revenue and total revenue increased in this period. In addition, Uber’s total costs increased, but the rate of growth decreased in the beginning of the alliance. However, there was a reduction in marketing incentives for the mobility segment. Nevertheless, the findings revealed that the alliance contributed to a significant financial gain for Uber’s service providers due to reduced transaction costs. Moreover, the findings also revealed that Hertz experienced an increase in American vehicle utilization following the alliance. In addition, there was an increase in revenue for both the American rental car segment and Hertz Global. Nevertheless, the findings demonstrate a slight increase in the costs for the rental car segment in America. Similarly, there was an increase in total costs. However, the rate of growth of these costs decreased after the first year of the alliance. In addition, depreciation of revenue earning vehicles and lease charges significantly decreased following the alliance. The findings also illustrated that both firms should have gained significant revenue from the alliance. Given that our findings align with transaction cost theory, demonstrating reductions in transaction costs and increased revenue and asset utilization, we conclude that sharing economy firms and traditional firms can create joint value through joint distribution alliances