Santoso examines issues that may rise in the multicultural working environment of the construction industry, with a focus on those which involve minority migrant workers. Using focus group discussions in a construction project in Brunei, Santoso shows that besides factors that directly related to construction activities such as language barriers and unfair treatment, religion and belief also have important roles in multicultural interaction that influence work productivity and morale. The author argues that if managers give more attention to ensuring fair treatment and to problems reported by workers, then a more productive and harmonious working environment can be created.
Lau and Rowlinson take a new direction in interpreting trust using validated psychological scales. They provide a framework for trust scoring systems for interpersonal and inter‐organizational forms of trust which can be applied in client‐contractor collaboration, or in multi‐party working situations which are common in construction management. Their research shows that foundations for interpersonal trust and inter‐firm trust are similar but have different attributes. While the partnering model is taken as a way to balance multi‐party interests, interpersonal trust is separated from inter‐firm trust, whereas in non‐partnering, trust is an integrative perception of interpersonal trust and inter‐firm trust in which trust‐based reliability is earned over time. The authors suggest that middle managers should be properly trained and rewarded for the ‘unspeakable’ difficulty of relationship problems in multi‐party working situations given the difficulties that they face.
Clarke, van der Meer, Bingham, Michielsens and Miller explore the problems of disability in construction, a subject which they argue has been neglected given the high health and safety risks in the sector. The authors seek to identify not only the ways in which construction is disabling in both the Netherlands and Britain, but the very different approaches taken to disability and to enabling those with disabilities to remain within the labour market. Above all they show how the Netherlands tends towards a more social model of disability, regarding disability as attributable to the workings or malfunctioning of the labour market, which has gone together with the introduction of sectorally‐specific inclusive measures. By contrast, Britain still tends towards what is known as a ‘capabilities’ approach, which, in conceptualizing the disadvantage experienced by individuals in society and their capability to carry out a range of activities, has tended to ignore the sectoral level. On the basis of this, the authors conclude that a construction‐specific disability policy is needed, defining the degree of disability in relation to the kind of work carried out and placing greater responsibility on the sector to include those with disabilities, so bringing Britain more in tune with the social model.
Li, Li, Skitmore, Wong and Cheng investigate the factors that influence competitiveness of real estate market in China. They argue that China's real estate industry has made great progress over three decades of development. However, the execution of ‘macro‐adjustment’ policies by the Central Government to cool down the overheated real estate market has created an unfavourable operating environment for real estate developers in Mainland China in the past few years. Real estate developers in China have faced considerable pressure in their business operation as a result of the structured market and squeezed profit margins. Competition amongst real estate developers has intensified and many have struggled for survival under the re‐structured real estate economy. Undertaking self‐appraisal and creating new forms of competitive advantage has become a major area of concern for real estate companies in China. The authors found that developer's financial competency, market coverage and management competencies are vital to the competitiveness of real estate developers. Their study also highlights the importance of industry recognition/award, share in different types of property sales/development projects, profit after tax, growth rate of their securities price, and diversification of R&D in reflecting the competitiveness of real estate developers in China. The findings provide practitioners with insights into the factors which influence competitiveness within this context. They also provide suggestions to policy makers for planning and directing governmental efforts to improve the competitiveness of the real estate industry.
Huang presents the findings of an empirical study of the applicability and viability of structural models of credit risk in the Taiwanese construction industry. He argues that they provide a quantitative approach to support contractor prequalification, credit rating and performance security pricing. They derive from the contingent claims theory of option pricing, which is widely viewed as an advantage over a‐theoretical statistical techniques. However, Huang suggests that their applications require empirical specification of default boundaries that in theory are determined by a variety of endogenous and exogenous factors. He further argues that they also require estimation of asset value and volatility using market data, which are not observable for privately held construction companies. The results show that market‐value‐based default boundaries can produce excellent discrimination of default, but they can cause substantial prediction errors even when calibrated to minimize the errors. The author recommends using multiple default triggers to improve prediction accuracy, especially the inclusion of economic factors. When market data is not available, he suggests that cash flow measures can produce satisfactory default discrimination.
Walraven and de Vries argue that the inclusion of product performance in the evaluation of a bid requires insight into the clients' needs, and a structured approach for quantification of the performance of the design. They propose a procedure to generate data for the ‘House of Quality’ (HoQ) matrix through a questionnaire. They suggest that analyzed data are applicable by a client for a specific building type in a building project. They argue that completing the HoQ matrix will result in a qualitative measure for the value of a bid. Hence, bids are comparable by calculating their value/price ratios instead of just the price as in traditional procurement practice.