Professor Peter Davis

Brands allow businesses to reach consumers directly with messages regarding emotion, identity, and self-worth such that consumers are no longer buying a product but buying a brand. Introduction The purpose of this chapter is to provide a brief review of the economics of the competitive effects of branding. Since Marshall (1890, 1919), economists have thought about at least two roles that brands can play, one largely positive the other potentially negative: 1. Informing and Signalling: Brands may convey information about a product's price or quality to consumers. As such branding may involve choice of names, terms, symbols and designs which signal the quality of the goods of a particular seller and thereby attempt to differentiate them from those of its competitors. Customers may recognize a brand even when they know little about the product. 2. Persuading: Branding may seek to persuade customers to buy a product that they would not have otherwise purchased; branding may seek to create new demand. In terms of the first role, consider, for example, an experience good, such as a new shampoo, where the quality of the product can only be observed after purchase. For such products, a brand may indicate to consumers that a new product is of high quality. Another example is provided by the franchising literature, which seeks to understand why, for example, potential entrepreneurs pay to open a Subway or McDonalds store rather than open an independent restaurant. One reason may be that the brand signals that products will satisfy a minimum quality - such minimum quality levels will be enforceable since they will form a part of the contract between franchisee and franchisor. The result is that customers know that products purchased from outlets with which they do not have experience will not be too different from the products sold by those with which they do. The brand signals a minimum quality, in this case across locations. In terms of the second role, the potential persuasive effect of advertising has long been a source of concern to both policymakers and economists. Economists would typically welcome an outcome where a customer is persuaded of the merits of a good because it fits with her wants.

Purpose: Off-site manufacturing (OSM) has emerged as a method of modern construction that provides several benefits including achieving lower costs, a quicker schedule and environmentally friendly solutions. Although numerous researches are available that advocate the adoption of OSM, the devotion towards OSM safety is somewhat limited. However, OSM invariably generates safety risks, including dynamics and uncertainty in safety management. There is a unique call to have an investigation on the identification of OSM safety risks. Design/methodology/approach: To provide a full picture on the OSM safety, a systematic literature review was adopted based on interpretivist philosophical stance. The literature search was conducted in key electronic databases to identify OSM safety-focused publications. Bibliometric analysis was adopted to identify co-occurrences of keywords and collaboration among authors in OSM safety-related research publications. Content analysis was conducted to provide a taxonomy of OSM safety risks. The identified studies were critically analysed to determine the focus of OSM safety research and provide future research directions. Findings: The results demonstrated frequently appeared OSM safety aspects while highlighting the limitedness of collaborative research outputs in common authorships. Content analysis subsequently unveiled safety risks in OSM under human, organisational and work environmental factors. A critical analysis of extant literature revealed seven research classifications of OSM safety. Directions were offered to enhance OSM safety by applying principles of targeted safety management concepts, technology-driven safety measures and bespoke training programs. Originality/value: This study provides a comprehensive review on the identification of safety risks throughout OSM while presenting the avenues useful for the development of OSM safety management strategies.

Falling from height (FFH) is blamed for causing significant injuries and deaths on construction sites. Previous research has outlined a broad range of technological advances facilitating the management of the FFH safety risk. However, the extant literature lacks a comprehensive assessment to investigate the contribution of various FFH technologies, as well as their implementation feasibility on construction sites, which provides rationale for this study. The study aims to assess recent safety technologies which can be used to control the risk of FFH on construction sites, especially in urban building construction projects. A scoping review was conducted to identify such technologies and provide insight into their application in the construction industry. As a result of searching Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar databases between 2010 and 2021, a total of 86 representative studies were selected and reviewed. Following this stage, an assessment of their feasibility was carried out based on a set of criteria from the literature. A total of 7 FFH technologies were identified, characterising the contribution of recent technologies to the prediction, prevention, and mitigation of FFH risks. These technologies include (1) Safety risk assessment and propagation, (2) real-time sensing and monitoring, (3) automated prevention through design, (4) ontology and knowledge modelling, (5) virtual reality for FFH training, (6) personal fall arrest systems, and (7) collective fall protection systems. This research contributes to an improved understanding of the status of FFH technologies. The feasibility assessment provides insight into suitable technologies for construction projects of various sizes and features.

Sustainable procurement management (SPM) as an approach to integrating sustainability into project procurement takes into account the social, ecological, and economical consequences of procurement decisions. Several challenges hinder the proper achievement of SPM objectives in the construction industry. Previous studies have delved into such barriers in the public sector while the private sector is still less explored and requires further in-depth investigation. Regarding limited research in this area, the purpose of this study is to identify barriers hindering SPM in the private sector through an empirical study. A case study analysis based on interviews was conducted to solicit the viewpoints of construction professionals in a high-profile construction organization. Two categories of intra-organizational and extra-organizational barriers were identified; The intra-organizational barriers relate to the mechanisms, resources, and capacities within an organization while extra-organizational barriers relate to a broader environment in which an organization interacts with stakeholders in an integrated supply chain. The findings provide an improved understanding of SPM obstacles and shed light on the possible solutions, which can be used by both academics and practitioners to improve the current status of SPM practice.

Today¿s project management offices (PMOs) in the construction sector need to be equipped with breakthrough capabilities necessary for making a difference in multi-project management. Although there is an upward trend in academic research on PMOs, a comprehensive framework of potential success variables is still lacking in the literature. This research aims to assess the extant literature from the perspective of the construction sector to provide a single consolidated overview of potential PMO success variables. A systematic search process was adopted to retrieve publications and narrow them down to eligible studies followed by a qualitative synthesis. A set of 32 success variables was synthesized and inductively categorized under four emerging themes of (1) establishing PM infrastructure, (2) promoting PM practices, (3) PMO structuring, and (4) organizational support. This set of variables refers to three kinds of functional, structural, and contextual variables characterizing potential features of successful construction PMOs. These variables were compared between the construction industry and other industries to reflect contextual contrasts and similarities. A research agenda was proposed to encourage empirical studies on examining success variables. This study contributes to an improved understanding of PMO success variables in the construction industry and directs future research towards the most important topics.

The emergence of Building Information Modelling (BIM) has revolutionized the infrastructure construction industry by introducing real-time and collaborative information management tools to be used throughout the lifecycle of projects. The importance of BIM in this industry has been emphasized in previous research. However, strategies for the implementation of this system is still less explored, which requires more elaboration and validation. The purpose of this paper is to investigate such strategies considering all necessary dimensions of the BIM system in infrastructure construction projects. The findings are based on theoretical discussion and semi-structured interviews in a case study project in New South Wales, Australia. The results revealed that BIM integrates various elements of infrastructure construction, which include but are not limited to risk, time, cost, energy, safety, and sustainability. It was found that implementation strategies should focus on improving the contribution of the BIM system to infrastructure construction in terms of improved (1) integrity and automation, (2) collaboration, and (3) optimization. Identification of seven technical and managerial implementations strategies is the core contribution of this research. These strategies provide practitioners with insight into technical and managerial measures to be taken for the successful implementation of the BIM system.

Environmental and ecological impacts associated with construction activities have become an ever-increasing concern, especially the considerable amount of waste generated on construction sites. Regulations and growing client pressure on meeting environmental standards have led contractors to adopt sustainable practices and try to embed this concept in their processes. Sustainable procurement management (SPM) as a potential solution takes the environmental consequences of procurement decisions into account and integrates sustainable practices into project procurement to bring positive environmental outcomes. Previous research has mainly focused on the public sector in achieving green procurement, yet this study attempts to highlight internal capacities that help private organisations manage the requirements associated with practicing sustainability. It is theorised that robust management structures, specifically project management offices (PMOs), would enhance the oversight capabilities of contractors in implementing the SPM process. The objectives of the current study are to (1) identify the requirements of a sustainable project procurement process in construction sites based on a literature review, and (2) explore the facilitative role of PMO units in achieving these requirements in the private sector. A literature review was conducted followed by a qualitative survey to solicit the viewpoints of construction professionals in principle contracting firms. As a result of the study, we identified 17 sustainability requirements and found that PMOs boost collaboration and improve the quality of decision making towards sustainable procurement. The findings (1) explain how PMOs support sustainability, (2) provide insights on implementing sustainable practices in project purchases, and (3) improve theoretical understanding of the SPM principles.

Academic institutions play a prominent role in nurturing resilience skills in their graduates especially in fields, such as construction management (CM), which deal with a challenging work environment. Although resilience is a well-established topic in the literature, there is still a paucity of research that examines the importance of academic resilience interventions in the CM discipline. To address this research gap, this study aims to analyse the importance of academic resilience interventions (ARI) from the perception of CM students. First, the literature on ARIs in relevant contexts was reviewed followed by a quantitative survey to obtain the viewpoints of undergraduates undertaking CM programs in Australia. This paper is based on the survey data collected from 105 undergraduate students from five universities. Applying an exploratory factor analysis (EFA), three latent variables were found: (1) industry engagement; (2) raising awareness; and (3) readiness and empowerment to represent the identified ARIs. An importance analysis using the 2D quadrant method revealed that the ARI measures labelled ¿site visits,¿ ¿role model,¿ and ¿self-assessment¿ from the industry engagement aspect (factor1), ¿role-playing¿ from the raising awareness aspect (factor2), and ¿case study¿ from the readiness and empowerment aspect (factor3) are the most important ARIs from the perception of students. An independent-samples t-test revealed that there is no significant difference between the perception of male and female students on the importance of each ARI. The study provides an enhanced understanding of resilience interventions that can be leveraged for improving the CM curricula.

A Psychological Contract of Safety (PCS), based on mutual obligations between supervisors and workers, has been observed in an Australian construction context applied to safety. It has been described in recent research explaining the influential role of supervisors. In the past, there have been numerous studies establishing that the mainstream theory of the Psychological Contract (PC) affects behaviour when applied to various cultural backgrounds. Despite this, there is no established theory that explains how PCS may influence workers¿ behaviour in alternative cultural backgrounds. To test this theory, data were collected from construction projects in two divergent cultures, Australian and Chinese. A sample of 352 Australian and 374 Chinese construction workers completed a survey related to PCS and its influence on safety behaviour. Results from using Structural Equation Modelling show that there is a strong influence of the PCS on the safety behaviour of individual workers in both countries. Specifically, the Chinese workers placed higher PCS influence on both compliance and participation behaviour than the Australian workers. The research findings have been contextualized with managerial and cultural implications allowing practitioners to apply the mechanism to improve safety behaviours of workers in their respective cultural contexts. Conceptualising the extant PC theory as a framework from which to leverage PCS management initiatives brings a new approach to construction safety studies, revealing the influential role of supervisors in interpreting safety obligations in a cross-cultural construction setting.

Previous research enables managers to apply appropriate safety management factors for increased site safety. However, the heterogeneity of such factors in contemporary studies makes it difficult for practitioners to keep up to date with relevant alternatives. There is a paucity of systematic reviews that examine factors, map out their relationships, categorize research gaps, assess the practicality of research findings, and offer direction for future research. In this paper, a systematic review of 2574 articles published between 2010 and 2020 and a full-text examination of 75 quantitative surveys were conducted to catalogue, synthesize, and assess safety management factors in contemporary literature. Thematic analysis subsequently revealed 38 interrelated safety management factors to be classified under three individual, workgroup, and organizational groups. A critical content analysis of the representative studies was conducted to identify five future research trends as well as associated research gaps and directions on construction safety management in the form of an agenda suggesting a shift in research emphasis from physical safety issues to organizational and culture-related factors that have the potential to systematically enhance the overall safety performance. Furthermore, directions are provided to safety practitioners concerning the useful implementation of safety management factors.

Public and private organizations are distinct in terms of ownership structure and stakeholders because they approach project management processes and structures differently. Thus, it is likely that they operate project oversight structures such as a project management office (PMO) differently and focus on a diverse set of functions. This study is dedicated to investigating PMO functions in these two cohorts of organizations to highlight their functional contrast through a quantitative survey in the Australian construction industry. The sample includes PMO units in high-performing organizations delivering successful projects in the construction industry. A literature review was conducted to identify possible functions followed by an empirical survey to solicit expert comments on the importance of each function. The results of an independent-samples t-test revealed a significant difference in the importance of three functions including (1) benchmarking best practices, (2) project management compliance, and (3) project governance, which indicate a distinction between the underpinning role that PMOs play in the public and private sectors. Following this test, the relative importance index (RII) was calculated to compare the importance level of functions and rank them across two sets of public and private organizations. The unique value that this work contributes to the construction engineering and management global community includes (1) exploring similarities and differences of PMO practice in the public and private sectors and (2) revealing the most important PMO functions in high-performing organizations, which can be applied to enhance the chance of PMO success. The findings address a research gap in the literature and contribute to the extant body of knowledge on how to configure effective PMOs in the construction context.

Purpose: Safety climate and its impact on safety performance is well established; however, researchers in this field suggest that the absence of a common assessment framework is a reflection of the state of development of this concept. The purpose of this paper is to propose a five-factor model that can be used to diagnose and measure safety climate in construction safety research and practice. Design/methodology/approach: A systematic review was adopted, and following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines, 574 articles were selected at the start of the study based on a developed review protocol for investigating safety climate factors. While examining the factor analysis of different studies, data reliability and data validity of the individual research findings were considered and frequency of factors uploaded was used to determine the significance as a quantitative measure to develop the ranking of safety climate factors. Findings: The review identified that, from the established measures of safety climate in construction, there is little uniformity on factor importance. However, management commitment safety system role of the supervisor; workers¿ involvement and group safety climate were found to be the most common across the studies reviewed. It is proposed these factors are used to inform a five-factor model for investigating safety climate in the construction industry. Originality/value: The findings of this study will motivate researchers and practitioners in safety to use the five-factor safety climate model presented in this paper and test it to develop a common factor structure for the construction industry. The fact that the model is comprised of five factors makes it easier to be used and implemented by small-to medium-sized construction companies, therefore enhancing its potential use.

Innovation is key for productivity improvement and advancements in different sectors of the economy, including the construction sector. The criticism of the slow pace of innovation in construction industry may be unwarranted, considering the structure of the industry and nature of the construction business. The loosely coupled nature of firms, mostly Small and Medium Enterprises (SME¿s), delivering ¿projects¿ through partial engagement, together with the distinction between the project innovation and firm innovation makes it difficult to extract innovations in a meaningful way. The problem also lies in conceptualising, defining, articulating and assessing innovation in construction. The literature is replete with research into construction innovation, however, there is limited research into understanding how innovation is perceived and narrated in practice. The paper aims to explore how innovation is assessed and narrated in construction, specifically analysing theory and practice perspectives. A theoretical model was constructed from a structured literature review illustrating existing discourse and narratives of construction innovation assessment. A qualitative analysis of ¿Professional Excellence in Building¿ submission documents to the Australian Institute of Building was performed to identify the practice perspective of innovation. The findings suggest that internal organizational and process innovation account for the majority of improvements identified. Importantly a taxonomy of narrative is developed that articulates how the construction industry in Australia views industry innovation.

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) have been used widely to deliver economic and social infrastructure projects. There has been widespread debate about the factors that contribute to their success and failure. Critical to their successful implementation is effective performance measurement of the projects. With this in mind, a comprehensive review of the normative literature in association with PPPs (e.g., critical success factors, roles of public sector, concessionaire selection, risk management, cost and time issues, and finance) is undertaken and a conceptual framework for dynamic life-cycle is proposed. The paper provides both public sector and private entities with an insight into effective and efficient performance measurement within the context of PPP infrastructure projects.

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) have been widely used in the procurement of economic and social infrastructure projects. Since the operation of more and more PPP projects, there have been a number of explorations on the factors that contribute to their success. Project success is often expressed by the quality of the product and project management success. Bearing in mind these perspectives, the critical success factors (CSFs) of PPP infrastructure projects under the auspices of the project management success perspective are identified and examined. A life-cycle CSF framework with embedded "learning mechanisms" is developed. The proposed framework will enable public and private sector stakeholders to possess an ameliorated understanding of the factors that are critical to successfully implementing a PPP contract strategy.

PurposeA considerable amount of research has been undertaken with regard to the dispute causation within construction project management. Research has eschewed identifying the interrelatedness of variables, which has blurred researchers understanding of dispute causation and lead to latent work practices being embedded within the contracting environment within which projects are procured. With this in mind, this paper attempts to identify the underlying dynamics influencing disputes through the use of causal modeling. Design/methodology/approachUsing the concept of system dynamics a series of causal models are developed from the literature to demonstrate the complexity associated with dispute causation. FindingsIt is revealed that project management, organization and people are the main sources of disputes. Causal models are constructed for each of these constructs and a series of strategies for avoiding disputations identified. Originality/valueThe research has demonstrated the inherent complexity associated with disputes and identified the interrelatedness of factors that can lead to their causation. It is suggested that further empirical research is required to determine the recurring latent conditions that contribute disputes. Once these conditions are examined then effective strategies for dispute avoidance can be identified and advancement toward improving the performance of construction projects made.

This article describes a number of the issues that played a central role in the UK Competition Commission's investigation into the UK Groceries Sector. We describe the questions at issue, the evidence collected to address those questions, and the conclusions drawn. We go on to describe the CC's remedies both vertically vis-àthe supply chain and horizontally vis-àmarkets of high local concentration. © 2010 International Association of Agricultural Economists.

Purpose The aim of this paper is to propose a way that the development of human social relationship capital can be identified and measured in a construction project environment. Design/methodology/approach Theory on the creation of social capital and consequent intellectual capital between parties to collaborative project procurement is explored. This is an exploratory study using grounded theory. Findings A proposed capability maturity model (CMM) is posited that can be used to measure improvement in developing human social capital, and assisting in project strategy formulation. Two recent Australian alliance projects are analysed using the model to gain insights into how the quality of relationships within project alliances can be assessed. Practical implications The model described in this paper may be used to measure performance or as an initial step towards strategising a change management plan based upon identifying a "current" situation. Originality/value Each alliance is unique and so its goals with regard to social capital will vary. Accordingly the results should be viewed accordingly. Work in this area using a CMM approach is relatively rare, and so this paper provides a novel way of measuring a complex concept such as social capital. Copyright © 2009 Emerald Group Publishing Limited. All rights reserved.

Using a large and comprehensive theater level database covering over $18 billion in theater revenues over a five year period, I document the extent and nature of business stealing, revenue cannibalization and market expansion that occurred during the height of the 1990's boom in movie theater construction. © Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2006.

This paper presents a theoretical framework that allows estimation of game theoretic models of quantity competition, including a non-trivial class of differentiated product quantity games. The simplest examples of quantity games are entry games, where the strategy each firm i makes is discrete, si ¿ Si = { 0, 1 } (do not enter/enter). I consider a general class of games where strategy sets are "chains", which includes the situation where they are a finite set of integers, Si = { 0, 1, ..., M }. In addition, I assume that profits of each firm can be written as a function of the firm's own strategy si and a possibly parametric index of market output, Q (si, s- i ; ¿1), so that pi (si, s- i ; ¿) = ¿i (si, Q (si, s- i ; ¿1) ; ¿2) where ¿ = (¿1, ¿2) . The main theoretical result in the paper establishes easily verifiable conditions under which the index of market output Q (si, s- i ; ¿1) is uniquely determined within the set of Nash equilibria of the game. The model's parameters may then be estimated by comparing the predicted index of market output in a cross section of markets. The paper provides both a generalization and an extension of the theoretical results developed by Bresnahan and Reiss (1991. Empirical models of discrete games. Journal of Econometrics 48, 57-82.) and Berry (1992. Estimation of a model of entry in the airline industry. Econometrica 60 (4), 887-917.), which allowed estimation of the homogeneous products entry game and where the index of market output was the number of active firms, Q (si, s- i) = ¿i = 1N si, with si ¿ { 0, 1 } . I illustrate one member of the class of models that these results allow us to estimate by developing a model of discrete quantity competition using count data from the supermarket industry. The discrete quantity game is the game theoretic analogue to ordered LDV models such as the ordered probit model. © 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

This paper provides empirical evidence on the relationship between local market structure and the prices charged to consumers in the U.S. motion picture exhibition market. I find that there is a statistically significant relationship between the geographic distribution of movie theaters in a market and the admission prices that they are able to charge. However, the magnitude of the price-reducing effect of local competition appears to be economically modest. Moreover, I find no evidence that increases in geographic concentration lead to increased adult admission prices. The findings are directly relevant to merger policy in the industry and pertinent because of the dramatic changes in industry structure resulting from mergers that occurred during 2002. I conclude that the available evidence suggests that popular and governmental concerns about horizontal mergers in the industry leading to dramatically increased admission prices are likely misplaced. © 2005 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

I develop simple matrix algebra techniques that simplify and unify much of the previous literature on estimating error components models (ECMs). In fact, the simple analytic results provided here are useful for analyzing a very broad set of models with complex error structures. To illustrate the techniques, I develop the algebra for three- and four-way ECMs explicitly. In addition, I provide Monte Carlo simulation evidence on the performance of several estimators for the three-way ECM and estimate the model using data from a retail market where the three dimensions of data variation are products selling in many locations over time. © 2002 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.

In this paper I provide an overview of recent advances in modeling demand for differentiated products. I illustrate the power of these techniques by developing a model of demand appropriate for the analysis of retail markets where both consumers and stores are geographically differentiated. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

There are opportunities and some drawbacks for the evolution of relationship marketing (RM) in the construction industry. Market forces have an impact on relationships and strength of RM. Commitment, trust, performance satisfaction, cooperation, and mutual goals have the ability to enhance RM. Contract strategies are of little use to a client looking for innovation, differentiation of service and value-adding to the project.

The concept of the project management office (PMO) is well-established in academic literature. This organizational phenomenon has revolutionized practices applied by organizations toward coordinating and overseeing multiple projects throughout the design, engineering, initiation, execution, and handover stages. The construction industry is one of the contexts in which more research is still needed to provide practical guidelines for achieving effective PMO functioning. This study explores several core capabilities of these entities from the perspective of construction project management practitioners working in the contracting sector. In this regard, we solicited expert judgment based on an online questionnaire followed by thematic analysis. Respondents suggested six drivers that can contribute to improving the effectiveness of construction PMOs in practice. This study provides insight into some capabilities that can be employed for delivering high-performing PMOs.

There has been an increasing interest in the concept of relational contracting (RC) in the construction industry. The performance of RC approaches in construction projects, especially in highly complex and/or time-constrained infrastructure construction projects, is not very satisfying, although there have been sporadic improvements. Hence, this paper aims to map the practices of three main RC contractual arrangements (i.e. project partnering, alliance contracting, and integrated project delivery) to Relational Contract Theory (RCT). The comparative analysis of these three RC contractual arrangements is undertaken to illustrate how different arrangements are weighted in different key elements derived from RCT. Following this study researchers can proceed to investigate situational variables that will make a particular RC approach most suitable. Industrial practitioners can use the findings as a description of the concept and a starting point to facilitate the RC practices at the procurement phase of a RC project.

In this paper I consider the role of empirical industrial organization (IO) in competition policy. In particular, I consider the effect of the institutional setting in which competition policy is developed on the diffusion of ideas and techniques emerging from the empirical IO literature. In doing so my aims are two fold. First, I aim to understand the areas of competition policy most likely to provide fertile ground for future work, and those which are less likely to have an impact. And second, I hope to make a small step towards ensuring that the important potential synergies between competition policy and empirical IO are more fully developed - to the benefit of both communities and, more importantly, the public. This paper necessarily draws heavily on my experience in the UK, but many remarks may resonate more generally. © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.