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This chapter brings to notice the general idea behind the need to consider value as a pertinent point since construction is swiftly moving towards sustainability. The introductory chapter introduces the general information about the subtopics across the parts of the book and mentions other techniques implemented in the construction industry. The value system for construction characterizes construction features into sections. The barriers often experienced in implementing value management highlight some of the difficulties encountered in applying value management or any new technique in the construction industry. The summary aspect ends the whole concept of the work discussed in this chapter.

The chapter evaluates the value of practice-based teaching and learning on a UK postgraduate unit and describes the development of conceptual models for the student practice-based experience.

Student experience is explored through the use of an in-depth case study. Student understanding is explored through an exit survey of students.

Student experience of the unit was positive and negative. Positive experiences stem from good client communications, a motivated student team, and the buzz of a real project. Positive experiences appear to lead to a perception of pride in outcomes and personal transferrable skills. Negative experiences stem from the lack of life experience, language difficulties, client unavailability, lack of subject knowledge, and literature gaps which left students feeling ill-equipped to deal with the international group context. Negative experiences lead to stress and poor group development.

The study is based on a single simple case. The methodology has sought to reduce problems with internal validity and bias. The data collection and analysis methods are repeatable and we encourage other academics to test our conceptual models and conclusions.

Conceptual models for positive and negative experience are proposed.

The study suggests there is a balance to be sought between providing a positive student experience and practical learning. Practice-based learning adds significant value to the student in terms of improved understanding of hard and soft tools, but may need to be based upon positive and negative experience.

The construction workforce plays a crucial role in the successful delivery of any construction project and, eventually, the performance of any construction organisation. Effectively managing these workforces becomes crucial. However, past studies have shown that workforce management within the construction industry has been on the back foot, with workers being seen as resources required to deliver construction projects. This situation begs the need for a construction workforce management model that can be tailored to an organisation’s situation and adopted to manage workers and improve organisational performance effectively. To this end, this chapter reviewed existing workforce management theories, models, and practices to develop a suitable approach towards managing the construction workforce. Ultimately, a strategic workforce management with a classical view using a soft workforce management approach that embraces employees’ empowerment and development through trust was proposed. Five major practices that best suit the soft workforce management approach were identified as key constructs in the proposed construction workforce management model.

The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.

Despite the privatization of its various components, the bidding process and the preparations for the Olympics are still initiated and tightly managed by central governments. Moreover, intentionally and unintentionally, governments use mega sports events such as the Olympics as a soft power medium in which to pursue their goals such as economic development and social integration and a lot of literature has already reviewed the economic and sociocultural impact of hosting the event. This chapter argues that the Olympics have been used as the medium to assist in the formation of legitimacy for a weakened authoritarian leader in the early phase of democratization in Korea. In addition, the chapter tries to explain how the bureaucracy contributed to the success of the national event and how it eventually impacted political modernization and the attitude of bureaucrats. To these ends, first, this chapter explores the influence of soft power on international competition by providing an empirical statistical analysis. Specifically, the chapter analyzes the process by which countries compete with one another for the privilege of hosting the Olympic Games as an important field of global interaction between political actors Further, the chapter discusses which components of soft power can affect international competition. To investigate the explanatory power and concrete applicability of soft power theory, the chapter looks at the influence of democratic and government dimensions of soft power on the selection of Olympic host cities and the role of bureaucracy during that process.

Due to the increasing size and complexity of construction projects, construction engineering and management involves the coordination of many complex and dynamic processes and relies on the analysis of uncertain, imprecise and incomplete information, including subjective and linguistically expressed information. Various modelling and computing techniques have been used by construction researchers and applied to practical construction problems in order to overcome these challenges, including fuzzy hybrid techniques. Fuzzy hybrid techniques combine the human-like reasoning capabilities of fuzzy logic with the capabilities of other techniques, such as optimization, machine learning, multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) and simulation, to capitalise on their strengths and overcome their limitations. Based on a review of construction literature, this chapter identifies the most common types of fuzzy hybrid techniques applied to construction problems and reviews selected papers in each category of fuzzy hybrid technique to illustrate their capabilities for addressing construction challenges. Finally, this chapter discusses areas for future development of fuzzy hybrid techniques that will increase their capabilities for solving construction-related problems. The contributions of this chapter are threefold: (1) the limitations of some standard techniques for solving construction problems are discussed, as are the ways that fuzzy methods have been hybridized with these techniques in order to address their limitations; (2) a review of existing applications of fuzzy hybrid techniques in construction is provided in order to illustrate the capabilities of these techniques for solving a variety of construction problems and (3) potential improvements in each category of fuzzy hybrid technique in construction are provided, as areas for future research.

Stuebs et al. (2021, p. 38) note that soft skills “are essential for accountants to carry out their moral agency role in society.” Indeed, calls for aspiring accounting professionals to have well-developed soft skills have been ongoing for decades (American Accounting Association [Bedford] Committee on Future Structure, Content, and Scope of Accounting Education, 1986; Accounting Education Change Commission, 1990; Albrecht & Sack, 2000; Big 8 White Paper, 1989; Lawson et al., 2014; Pathways Commission, 2012). Despite these calls, the development of accounting students’ soft skills remains elusive (Fogarty, 2019; Rebele & St. Pierre, 2019). Perhaps this is not surprising as a commonly accepted, profession-specific definition of the term is lacking, as is consensus about the corresponding capabilities comprising accounting professionals’ soft skills. Instead, those in the accounting profession have treated the term soft skills much the way Justice Potter Stewart famously described hard-core pornography: “I know it when I see it” (Jacobellis v. Ohio 1964, p. 197). The problem, of course, is that such a description is individualistic and can lead to conflicts and inconsistencies not only in identifying the phenomenon (Baskin, 2018; Goldberg, 2010) but, more importantly, particularly in the case of soft skills, in taking steps to foster its development and measuring changes in it. Thus, understanding the term soft skills and its fundamental capabilities is a necessary prerequisite to the development of the soft skills deemed critical for future accounting professionals. In this chapter, the authors advance that understanding by developing an accounting-specific definition for soft skills and identifying a set of capabilities that comprise soft skills applicable to accounting professionals. The authors also discuss the implications of the work and conclude by recommending soft skills in accounting be referred to as professional competencies.