Public-Private Partnership in Qatar.

This study investigates within the context of public-private partnership (PPP), the relationship between performance (PM), critical success factors (CSFs), value for money (VFM) and corporate governance (CG) in Qatar. The study distributed an online survey to 60 employees involved in PPP projects in the private and the public sectors. Survey data was analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM), ordinary least squares regression (OLS) and factor analysis. The results revealed a significant relationship between CG and Performance. The findings led to accepting hypothesis 1 and 4. The findings rejected hypothesis 2 and 3 wherein the critical success factors and value for money have no mediating role between corporate governance and performance. The study examined whether the above measures of CSFs, VFM and CG are significantly loaded on their respective constructs. To this effect, it was found that all the construct items load on the constructs they were designed to measure. The study advances our knowledge in the area of PPP where it has a complex relationship between key players, of which, to best of the researchers' knowledge, has not yet been explored. This is especially the case when employing PLS-SEM technique to examine the above-mentioned mediation effect. Managers/owners should focus on the CFS factors highlighted by the study and consider that CG would highly improve PPP performance. Policymakers should be more concerned about regulations related to PPPs. In other words, decision-makers and policymakers should ensure that CSFs, and VFM suits CG requirements, which could lead to better performance of PPPs

How managers can build trust in strategic alliances: a meta-analysis on the central trust-building mechanisms

Trust is an important driver of superior alliance performance. Alliance managers are influential in this regard because trust requires active involvement, commitment and the dedicated support of the key actors involved in the strategic alliance. Despite the importance of trust for explaining alliance performance, little effort has been made to systematically investigate the mechanisms that managers can use to purposefully create trust in strategic alliances. We use Parkhe’s (1998b) theoretical framework to derive nine hypotheses that distinguish between process-based, characteristic-based and institutional-based trust-building mechanisms. Our meta-analysis of 64 empirical studies shows that trust is strongly related to alliance performance. Process-based mechanisms are more important for building trust than characteristic- and institutional-based mechanisms. The effects of prior ties and asset specificity are not as strong as expected and the impact of safeguards on trust is not well understood. Overall, theoretical trust research has outpaced empirical research by far and promising opportunities for future empirical research exist

Taming the ‘trolls’ : major public projects in the making

Major projects are not yet sufficiently understood, and practices in project governance and project management do not yet reflect the current state of knowledge of large, complex projects. In an attempt to understand the reasons, the authors therefore investigated the latest relevant findings documented in three countries: the UK, Norway, and the Netherlands. Their examination of the effect of implementing governance frameworks for public projects in these countries indicates that efforts to improve major projects are giving rewards: Even if complex public projects, the ‘trolls’, become more challenging, efforts to ‘tame’ them are improving. The results of the study show that project planning has improved and cost overruns are reduced. However, recent observations indicate that the effect may wear off remarkably quickly. Hence, the need for continuous improvement and change is prominent. There are fundamental limitations in the use of formal systems as they cannot detect all problems and there are limitations to humans' ability in terms of optimism bias that cannot be eliminated

Critical Evaluation of Environmental, Social and Governance Disclosures of Malaysian Property and Construction Companies

There is an increasing demand from stakeholders for higher transparency on environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosures. Yet not much is known about the state of sustainability reporting in Malaysia especially in the property and construction industry. This paper aims to fill this gap accordingly. Content analysis of corporate websites, sustainability and annual reports was adopted as the main methodology in this study. Findings show that corporate governance indicators are most reported by Malaysian construction companies compared to other environmental or social indicators. It was also found that details on actual health and safety performance of these companies and the initiatives implemented were largely absent from their reporting. Given the increasing number of rating tools in the capital markets which serve to rank and file companies based on their sustainability disclosures and performance such as the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) and FTSE4Good Index, it is questionable as to how reliable this can be done for the Malaysian property and construction market. The paper will be useful to construction management practitioners and ESG analysts with a focus on Asian markets

Global Management Effectiveness Study: Integrated Social and Ecological Report for Non-node and Node Sites

The purpose of this study is to provide a critical assessment of the implementation, impact, and performance of Marine Managed Area (MMA) projects to serve as a basis for improved planning and implementation of new MMA projects worldwide. The specific objectives of the study are (1) to determine the socioeconomic, governance and ecological effects of MMAs; (2) to determine the critical factors influencing MMA effects, as well as the impact of the timing of those factors on the effects of the MMA; and (3) to provide tools for predicting MMA effects based on ecological, socioeconomic and governance variable

ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks: a literature review

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation is a complex and vibrant process, one that involves a combination of technological and organizational interactions. Often an ERP implementation project is the single largest IT project that an organization has ever launched and requires a mutual fit of system and organization. Also the concept of an ERP implementation supporting business processes across many different departments is not a generic, rigid and uniform concept and depends on variety of factors. As a result, the issues addressing the ERP implementation process have been one of the major concerns in industry. Therefore ERP implementation receives attention from practitioners and scholars and both, business as well as academic literature is abundant and not always very conclusive or coherent. However, research on ERP systems so far has been mainly focused on diffusion, use and impact issues. Less attention has been given to the methods used during the configuration and the implementation of ERP systems, even though they are commonly used in practice, they still remain largely unexplored and undocumented in Information Systems research. So, the academic relevance of this research is the contribution to the existing body of scientific knowledge. An annotated brief literature review is done in order to evaluate the current state of the existing academic literature. The purpose is to present a systematic overview of relevant ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks as a desire for achieving a better taxonomy of ERP implementation methodologies. This paper is useful to researchers who are interested in ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Results will serve as an input for a classification of the existing ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Also, this paper aims also at the professional ERP community involved in the process of ERP implementation by promoting a better understanding of ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks, its variety and history

Performance factors for successful business incubators in Indonesian public universities

Measuring the performance of business processes is already a main concern for both faculty and enterprise players, since organizations are motivated to reach the productivity stage. Employing a performance achievement framework for the relationship between business incubator success factors will guarantee connection with commercial schemes, which support a high level of performance indicators in successful business incubator models. This research employs a quantitative approach, with the data analyzed using the IBM SPSS version 23 and Smart PLS version 3 statistical software packages. Employing a sample of 95 incubator managers from 19 universities which geographically located in Indonesia, it is shown that the image of business incubator factors has a positive effect on incubator performance. The study investigates the relationship between incubator performance and business incubator success factors in Indonesia. It was found that IT, as part of the business incubators’ facets/abilities, partially supports their performance; that the entry criteria directly support the performance of the incubators; that mentoring networks also support the performance, with good infrastructure systems as a moderating factor; that funding supports the performance of business incubators, also with good infrastructure systems as a moderating factor; and that university regulations and government support and protection enhance the performance of business incubators, with credits and rewards as a moderating factor. In addition, a variety of indicators from the local context affiliate positively to promote a community that highlighted the incubators’ strategies.N/