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The purpose of this paper is to discover similarities and differences in the construction industry in China and the United States by using data analytic tools on data crawled from social media platforms.

The method comprised comprehensive data analytics using network link analysis and natural language processing tools to discover similarities and differences of social networks, topics of interests and sentiments and emotions on different social media platforms.

From the research, it showed that all clusters (construction company, construction worker, construction media and construction union) shared similar trends on follower-following ratios and sentiment analysis in both social media platforms. The biggest difference between the two countries is that public accounts (e.g. company, media and union) on Twitter posted more on public interests, including safety and energy.

The research contributes to knowledge about an alternative method of data collection for both academia and industry practitioners. Statistical bias can be introduced by only using social media platform data. The analyzed four clusters can be further divided to reflect more fine-grained groups of construction industries. The results can be integrated into other analyses based on traditional methodologies of data collection such as questionnaire surveys or interviews.

The research provides a comparative study of the construction industries in China and the USA among four clusters using social media platform data.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate and measure stakeholder engagement and interorganisational relationships involved in the project design process.

A mixed-methods design, which combined action study, focus group meetings and a survey with project stakeholders who were employees in this project to express their comments on current design processes in different sub-projects.

The transformation of the design process in the selected project can be categorised into three distinct areas: (1) people, (2) practices and (3) internal infrastructure. These three categories were a straightforward way to review, analyse and discuss this transformation. The findings revealed the major goals of the improvement process as summarised are reliability, efficiency and quality. Recommendations and future study directions were suggested by the end of the paper.

Although the project selected in this research was limited to Australia, the results could be interpreted on the design process in many other construction projects with similar size all over the world.

This research was very practical, with all data collected from the project in Australia. It summarised the difficulties met in the project and provided methods for stakeholders and industry practitioners to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the design process.

This research provided lessons learnt on the design process from a “Giga” project and provided sustainable methods to facilitate future projects into flexible and effective communication among stakeholders.

This research investigated the impacts of COVID-19 on construction enterprises and good practices adopted by the enterprises in reducing COVID-19 risks. The Sendai Framework (TSF) is widely accepted as a strategic roadmap to reduce disaster risks throughout the life cycle of a disaster. As such, with the aim of enhancing the resilience of Australian construction enterprises, the identified good practices were mapped with TSF priorities to consolidate COVID-19 risk reduction practices that can be adopted by Australian construction enterprises.

Case study research approach was used, and three case studies were conducted with small, medium and large construction enterprises. Small, medium and large enterprises were selected based on the Australian Bureau of Statistics classification of the business size. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews conducted with three executive members from the three enterprises. Data were analysed using content analysis.

The study found that construction enterprises faced demand and supply side impacts. Infrastructure projects, funded by public sector clients and larger enterprises were least affected. Investments and demand for residential and other building projects were reduced by private sector clients, affecting small and medium enterprises. Findings also show that the construction enterprises adopted good practices in identifying, managing, investing on resilience and recovery that align with TSF priorities. All three enterprises agreed on some common good practices on risk identification, risk management and effective recovery. Different views were shared on investments related to disaster resilience.

This study contributes to mitigate the COVID-19 impacts on construction enterprises and subsequent economic and social impacts.

This research found how Australian construction enterprises survived during COVID-19. The study adopted TSF to construction and COVID-19 context while consolidating COVID-19 risk reduction practices.

The aims of this study are to conduct a systematic review of public–private partnership (PPP) studies published from 2009 to 2019, to compare the results with Ke et al. (2009) who reviewed the PPP literature published from 1998 to 2008, and to trace the evolution of the PPP knowledge in the past two decades. This study also presents the possible directions that the PPP research may go towards in the future, arguably.

This study carried out a top journal-based search to identify the quality PPP articles published from 2009 to 2019. A total of 12 top-tier construction journals were systematically searched in the database of web of science (WOS), from which 279 PPP articles were identified for review.

The number of the identified articles, the titles of the journals, institutions, the most cited papers, and prevalent research methods were analyzed and compared. The existing PPP studies in construction journals were classified into seven streams. Through analysis of the PPP research status and gaps, five future research directions were revealed.

This study contributes to the current body of knowledge by revealing the research trend of PPP from 2009 to 2019. It presents the change of PPP development trend in the past decade through comparison with Ke et al. (2009). It also reveals the major research streams and points out the directions that the PPP research may go towards in the future. Moreover, this study is helpful to the practice as well. It can enhance the practitioners' understanding of the PPP development in the past decade. In addition, it identified the research institutions contributing the most in the area of PPP, which may serve as valuable reference for practitioners to locate the best institutions for consultancy or collaboration.

This study investigates the influence of social trust on the attainment of corporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) objectives.

This study conducts panel regression analysis on a distinctive dataset for 2009–2017 on Chinese firms.

The analysis reveals a significant positive association between social trust and firm-level ESG practices. Moreover, the impact of social trust on shaping ESG outcomes is further amplified by factors such as economic growth, corporate governance standards and institutional quality. This relationship remains statistically positive when the authors employ alternative measures and methodologies, such as the instrumental variables, propensity score matching and difference-in-differences approaches. Notably, the results of heterogeneity tests indicate that the Trust–ESG nexus is more prominent for state-owned enterprises and firms with substantial market capitalization, superior profitability and higher leverage.

This study expands the comprehension of the determinants of ESG and underscores the influential role of social trust as an informal institution in enhancing a firm's ESG performance.

This paper originally proposed the fuzzy option pricing method for green bonds. Based on the requirements of arbitrage equilibrium, this paper draws on Merton's corporate bond option pricing model.

Describing the asset value behavior of green bond issuing enterprises through diffusion-jump processes to reflect the uncertainty brought by carbon emission reduction policies and technologies, using approximation methods to get the analytical pricing formula and then, using a fuzzification technique of Choquet expectation under  λ-additive fuzzy measures after considering fuzzy factors, the paper provides fuzzy intervals for the parity coupon rates of green bonds with different subjective levels for investors.

The paper proposes and argues the classical and fuzzy option pricing methods in turn for both corporate ordinary bonds and green bonds, considering carbon risk or climate risk. It implements the scenario analysis varying with industry emission standards and discusses the sensitiveness of the related key parameters of the option.

The fuzzy option pricing for the green bonds provides the scope of the variable equilibrium values, operational theoretical supports and some policy implications of carbon reduction and promoting green funding.

The logic of introducing the fuzziness of the option pricing for the green bonds lies with considering the existence of fuzzy information about the project supported by the green bond and the subjectivity of investors and it also responds to changes in technological uncertainty and policy uncertainty in the process of “carbon peaking and carbon neutrality.”

Assembly is the last step in manufacturing processes. The two-sided assembly line balancing problem (TALBP) is a typical research focus in the field of combinatorial optimization. This paper aims to study a multi-constraint TALBP-I (MC-TALBP-I) that involves positional constraints, zoning constraints and synchronism constraints to make TALBP more in line with real production. For enhancing quality of assembly solution, an improved imperialist competitive algorithm (ICA) is designed for solving the problem.

A mathematical model for minimizing the weighted sum of the number of mated-stations and stations is established. An improved ICA is designed based on a priority value encoding structure for solving MC-TALBP-I.

The proposed ICA was tested by several benchmarks involving positional constraints, zoning constraints and synchronism constraints. This algorithm was compared with the late acceptance hill-climbing (LAHC) algorithm in several instances. The results demonstrated that the ICA provides much better performance than the LAHC algorithm.

The best solution obtained by solving MC-TALBP-I is more feasible for determining the real assembly solution than the best solution obtained by solving based TALBP-I only.

A novel ICA based on priority value encoding is proposed in this paper. Initial countries are generated by a heuristic method. An imperialist development strategy is designed to improve the qualities of countries. The effectiveness of the ICA is indicated through a set of benchmarks.

This paper aims to reflect on the special issue that has collected studies by the research community in China pertinent to the country’s recent developments in sustainability accounting, management and policy, as well as to suggest possible future avenues of studies.

This paper articulates the current status of researching sustainability accounting, management and policy in China that is instigated by the country’s regulatory initiatives under its political economy. It highlights the papers accepted for the special issue, their areas of focus and the underlying characteristics.

It points out that the accepted research papers concentrate on issues related to corporate social responsibility disclosures, sustainability reporting and environmental management in China from the perspectives of the domestic stakeholders.

Future studies are likely to be increasingly interdisciplinary in nature and requires academia, policymakers and practitioners to make better collaborative efforts in researching about China’s sustainability and the efficacy of their engagement with stakeholders.

Studies on alignment between China’s further developments and UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs) are particularly considered desirable as the country continues its globalization initiatives. Education about sustainability accounting for the working professionals and their next generation is much needed for China in support of developing a more sustainable economy aligned with UN's SDGs.

Scholars in China actively developing their research interests in this field reflect critical thinking about the country’s pursuit of sustainable development within a social-political economy that is dissimilar to the West. In the meantime, the country continues to develop into a significant stakeholder of the world’s sustainability implying expectation of transparency in sustainability performance.

With reference to the review exercise conducted for the special issue, it suggests that there are surging interests in researching accountability for sustainability across the local and international communities to facilitate much needed knowledge exchange. The country and indigenous culture of China, as well as its institutions in relation to sustainability, would require much further exploration in our world under globalization.

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between perceived inclusion (individual and group-level) and team creativity climate (TCC) and explore the role of team learning climate (TLC) and task interdependency in the above relationship.

Data were collected using questionnaires from 24 Indian organizations. The respondents were junior and middle-level employees (N = 303) working in small teams (n = 73). The cut-off criteria for sample team selection were at least three team members within a team had responded and at least 60% within-group response rate was achieved.

Perceived inclusion (PI) of employees had a positive influence on TCC via TLC. However, the negative effect of team-level differences in perceived inclusion (TPID) was also mediated by the learning climate. Task interdependency moderated the PI-TLC relationship in such a way that in a high task interdependency situation, the negative effect of TPID on learning climate is reduced, while in a low task interdependency situation, the negative effect is enhanced.

The current research has contributed to the limited literature on PI and team creativity. This paper has uniquely investigated TLC as an intervening variable in the PI-TCC relationship. The paper has encapsulated the theoretical and practical underpinnings of inclusion beliefs in the modern organizational context.

Measuring the performance of public participation is conducive to improving participation systems. However, such measurement, particularly in urban regeneration projects, is difficult because of the complex indicators and multiple stakeholders involved. The purpose of this paper is to measure the public participation level in urban regeneration projects in China.

This study adopts a perception difference-based method to measure the public participation level in urban regeneration projects in China. Specifically, an indicator system consisting of 12 indicators from three categories was first purposed. A perception difference-based method that integrates ANOVA test and Tukey test were then developed. The method was validated using five represented projects, and the results are interpreted based on a proposed measurement matrix.

Regardless of the type of indicator, the perception of the government aligns with the perception of private sector professions, however, deviates from the perception of citizens. By taking the mean score and the significance level among stakeholders of perception as two dimensions, different patterns of issues in the current participation practice in urban regeneration are manifested.

Theoretically, the proposed indicator system and perception difference-based method combined to provide a holistic view of public participation, which is verified to provide a better measurement. Practically, the authors’ methodology helps in revealing issues in current participation practice and further leading to designing coping strategies. Nonetheless, the proposed method requires further validation in participation practices in China and other countries.

By considering the perception mean and the significance level as two dimensions, a public participation measurement matrix is proposed. The performance in different indicators are classified into four stages accordingly, namely idling, starting, running-in and accelerating.