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This study aims to investigate technology-based health and safety (H&S) management to control the spread of disease on construction sites using a partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) approach.

An extensive literature review is conducted to develop a conceptual framework. The variables identified from the literature review are included in a cross-sectional survey which gathered a total of 203 valid feedback. The variables for challenges are grouped under their relevant construct using exploratory factor analysis. Then, a hypothesized model is developed for PLS-SEM analysis using Smart PLS software. Later, the outcome of the model is further validated by nine construction experts using a semi-structured questionnaire survey.

The results rationalized the relationships between the COVID-19 H&S measures, challenges in implementing COVID-19 H&S measures on construction sites and the innovative technologies in transforming construction H&S management during the COVID-19 pandemic. The possible challenges that obstruct the implementation of H&S measures are highlighted. The potential technologies which can significantly transform H&S management by reducing the impact of challenges are presented.

The findings benefited the industry practitioners who are suffering disruption in construction operations due to the pneumonic plague.

By developing a conceptual model, this study reveals the contribution of technology-based H&S management for construction projects during the COVID-19 pandemic, which remains under-studied, especially in the context of the developing world.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the significance of branding management by property developers in the Malaysian housing market and to examine the pivotal brand identity traits of property developers.

An explanatory sequential mixed-methods research approach was adopted. The quantitative data from the questionnaire survey were subjected to descriptive statistics, and the ranking with category of significance of the hypothesised branding traits was determined using relative importance index technique. The findings were further validated through semi-structured interviews with five experienced industry practitioners.

Results showed that the extremely significant (ES) branding identities are value for future investment and location, while the very significant (VS) traits are quality assurance, near to supporting infrastructure, reliability, professionalism, experience, warranties and technical ability. Industry experts affirmed the prospect of exploiting branding in enticing property buyers.

It is reasonable to infer that good branding positively stimulates buyer’s decision-making on purchasing residential property. This study attempts to discover the critical brand identity traits for property developers apt in the context of Malaysian housing market.

Apart from the archetypal locational and financial factors, the findings suggested that top developers should emphasise innovative family-oriented design with an acceptable level of quality score for brand differentiation to further enhance the future value of their end products.

The efficacy of brand management in the housing market has not yet been fully explored in research. This paper is expected to offer more profound insights into the strategic brand management towards “branded” property developers in the context of Malaysia and perhaps other countries with comparable backgrounds.

This study explored the ramifications of COVID-19 on construction operations in Malaysia.

Following a detailed literature review, 37 ramifications are identified and divided into nine aspects. A self-designed survey is then employed to seek the perceptions of construction practitioners around the Klang Valley region regarding the significance of the ramifications. A total of 203 valid responses are subjected to statistical analyses to prioritise the ramifications.

All the potential ramifications are perceived to be significant, with the five utmost critical ramifications being rescheduling the project timeline, compliance with government SOP, delay in the handover project, compulsory COVID-19 test for all workers and the extra cost incurred to provide COVID-19 test for workers.

This study highlights the ramifications of COVID-19 on construction operations and deliberately informs construction organizations regarding the shortcomings of recent construction management. Besides, the insights suggested that industry practitioners devise corresponding strategies for project sustainability in future similar crises.

The findings serve as a valuable reference and are benign to industry professionals and researchers from developing nations, especially nations that share similar characteristics to Malaysia.

The capital markets witness phenomenal shifts of corporate control. With the shift of world economy into a global one, there has been a rapid increase in the volume of acquisitions. The previous studies shed light on the motives behind acquisition and impact of acquisition on both bidding and target firms. The purpose of this study is to bridge a gap in literature by exploring the factors affecting the acquisition ability (AA) of the firms. The study has analyzed the role of financial strength, corporate governance and regulatory influence on AA of acquiring firm.

Cross-sectional data has been analyzed with respect to Pakistan stock exchange for a period of 2004-2017 by using logit regression.

Analysis indicates that firm-specific variables are important determinants in firm’s decision to acquire. Chief Executive Officer duality and presence of institutional shareholders on the board contribute to this important phenomenon in the life of the acquiring firms. Bidding firm’s financial strength is also another important consideration while going for corporate control transfer transactions. The empirical results indicate the better AA for firms characterized by minimum capacity usage, lower level of intangible assets, lower debt levels and lower advertising expenses. However, the regulatory factor has no significant role in firms’ AA. The findings of the study are helpful for managers, regulators and policymakers.

Analyzing the role of financial strength, corporate governance and regulatory influence on AA of acquiring firm is a rare study, especially in an emerging country such as Pakistan.

This paper aims to analyse how both Lin’s birthplace identity and his Christian identity contributed to his fruitful public career and to ascertain which identity became the most significant.

Archival research is the main method used in this paper. The most important archives drawn from are the Daniel Tse Collection in the Special Collection and Archives of the Hong Kong Baptist University Library. Oral history has also been used in this paper to uncover more material that has not yet been discussed in existing scholarly works.

This paper argues that although Lin’s birthplace identity and social networks helped him to start his business career in Nam Pak Hong and develop into a leader in the local Chaozhou communities, these factors were insufficient to his becoming a respectable member of the Chinese elite in post-war Hong Kong. He became well known not because of his leading position in local Chaozhou communities or any great achievement he had obtained in business but because of his contribution to the development of Christian education. These achievements earned him a reputation as a “Christian educator”. Thus Lin’s Christian identity became more important than his birthplace identity in contributing to his successful public career.

This paper has value in showing how Christian influences interacted with various cultural factors in early Hong Kong. It also offers insights into Lin’s life and motivations as well as the history of the institutions he contributed to/founded. It not only furthers our understanding of the Chinese Christian business elite in early Hong Kong but also provides us with insights when further studying this group of people in other British colonies in Asia.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the comparative effect of transformational and servant leadership and to determine incremental variance that servant leadership can explain in employee innovative behaviour above and beyond transformational leadership. This research also examines the competing mechanisms by which transformational and servant leadership influence innovative behaviour.

The data were gathered from 338 employees working in information technology firms of Pakistan and the proposed relationships were tested through partial least squares technique using SmartPLS software.

The results reveal that servant leadership not only exerts stronger influence on innovative behaviour, but also explains an incremental variance in innovative behaviour above and beyond transformational leadership. The findings further indicate that the impact of transformational leadership on innovative behaviour is better transmitted by affective commitment. On the contrary, the impact of servant leadership is better translated through creative self-efficacy.

This research unravels the role of transformational and servant leadership in fostering innovative behaviour in knowledge-intensive organizations. Findings of this investigation also suggest that by following a two-pronged leadership strategy, managers can augment innovative behaviour by enhancing employees' creative self-efficacy and affective commitment.

This research provides initial empirical evidence regarding the incremental variance that servant leadership can explain in innovative behaviour above and beyond transformational leadership. Moreover, this research adds to leadership and innovation literature by unravelling the comparative effects of these two forms of leadership on innovative behaviour through theory-driven competing mechanisms.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the urgency to ensure the preservation of the news archives of the crisis-packed Hong Kong-based Asia Television (ATV), the first Chinese television station in the world. This paper also explores the life and times as well as the future of the historical collections of the ATV archives, which is a treasure trove that covers key events in Hong Kong’s history since 1957, a decade before its major rival Television Broadcasts Limited began to go on air.

Adopting the qualitative approach with in-depth face-to-face interviews, the now defunct ATV News’ longest-serving as well as its very last Chief Librarians discusses the bleeding of priceless history in the 62-year-old news archives which contain Hong Kong’s collective memories.

An important role of the old news footage is to capture the public’s memories and to take people back to the actual unfolding of landmark events. The interview answers open the way for readers to understand the ways television archives hold immense historical value for a city’s memory and what could be done and preserved before their disappearance.

This paper will be of interest to those historians, journalists, scholars and archivists, including news librarians, who are interested in learning how the ATV’s half-a-century-old archival news footage is a significant asset and cultural record to the former colony.

Advanced information technologies, and particularly big data, provide new affordances to facilitate inter-organizational collaboration. Rich flows of real-time data provide transparency across organizational boundaries and enable greater automation of inter-organizational routines. Taking stock of the literature and building on observations from the research in an industrial setting, the authors introduce the concept of technological embeddedness as an important characteristic of inter-organizational relationships, denoting the degree of monitoring, control, and optimization of intra- and inter-organizational tasks accomplished through technology at the interface of the inter-organizational relationship. The authors theorize how increasing technological embeddedness created by big data technologies affects the development of inter-organizational trust, mutual adaptation, and temporal structuring of collaboration. The propositions elaborate how greater technological embeddedness enables collaboration, and warn about the potential limiting effects of technological embeddedness on the development of interpersonal trust, strategic learning, and long-term orientation.

The purpose of this paper is to apply state-of-the-art machine learning techniques for assessing the quality of the restaurants using restaurant inspection data. The machine learning techniques are applied to solve the real-world problems in all sphere of life. Health and food departments pay regular visits to restaurants for inspection and mark the condition of the restaurant on the basis of the inspection. These inspections consider many factors that determine the condition of the restaurants and make it possible for the authorities to classify the restaurants.

In this paper, standard machine learning techniques, support vector machines, naïve Bayes and random forest classifiers are applied to classify the critical level of the restaurants on the basis of features identified during the inspection. The importance of different factors of inspection is determined by using feature selection through the help of the minimum-redundancy-maximum-relevance and linear vector quantization feature importance methods.

The experiments are accomplished on the real-world New York City restaurant inspection data set that contains diverse inspection features. The results show that the nonlinear support vector machine achieves better accuracy than other techniques. Moreover, this research study investigates the importance of different factors of restaurant inspection and finds that inspection score and grade are significant features. The performance of the classifiers is measured by using the standard performance evaluation measures of accuracy, sensitivity and specificity.

This research uses a real-world data set of restaurant inspection that has, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, never been used previously by researchers. The findings are helpful in identifying the best restaurants and help finding the factors that are considered important in restaurant inspection. The results are also important in identifying possible biases in restaurant inspections by the authorities.

Business Intelligence has gained a significant attraction in the recent past and facilitates managers for efficient business decision-making. Over the years, the attraction toward the cryptocurrency (CC) market has increased. Since the CC market is highly volatile, it is extremely sensitive to shocks and web data related to large events happening around the globe.

This research study provides a business intelligence model to predict five top-performing CCs. In this study, deep learning, linear regression and support vector regression (SVR) are used to predict CC prices. The sentiment of some mega-events is also used to enhance the performance of these models.

The results show that models of business intelligence such as deep learning and SVR provide better results. Moreover, the results show that the incorporation of social media sentiment data significantly improves the performance of the proposed models. The overall accuracy of the model improves approximately twofold when multiple event sentiments were incorporated.

The use of social media sentiment of global and local events for different countries along with deep learning for CC forecasting.