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Global construction has been blighted by productivity inertia caused by behavioural bias for decades. While other industry sector productivity has grown more than fifteen-fold since 1960, construction has stagnated with no more than a seven to ten percent overall growth. McKinsey Global Institute's report Reinventing Construction: A Route to Higher Productivity, reported infrastructure construction amongst a small group of outperforming market sub-sectors at 15 to 20 percent. This paper, which charts the development of a unique procurement model designed for high productivity, builds on that performance using behavioural insights to counter damaging and habitual biases. The new model changes trading relationships using a nudged 'opt-out' contract structure creating a different responsibility dynamic between client and supplier. A recognisable but different infrastructure construction procurement model to improve productivity using recognised behavioural economics and construction economics. Highways England was set up to run England's strategic road network in 2015. The procurement model that resulted, Regional Delivery Partnerships can be refined for any infrastructure sector construction environment and sets up a key step forward in contracting based on integrated project delivery. Using a combination of counter bias strategies built from loss aversion and nudge theory this new construction procurement model uses 'opt-out' from lean construction to drive higher productivity. By setting up an integrator, to create an integrated project team, Regional Delivery Partnerships uses loss aversion as the motivational key to better innovation. It empowers the integrator to counter uniqueness bias and find and eradicate waste (process time and money) to enhance productivity. Reward is aligned to both optimised efficient design and high productivity working. As 100% of budget underspend can be kept rewarding the integrator, the potential of not achieving this triggers loss aversion and motivates change using the principles of escalation of commitment in favour of the client. Performance data is also used to motivate using reduced acquisition costs from secondary competition, long held as an inefficient market overhead. Using recognised pragmatic academic techniques, and constructionism; choice architectures were remodelled into a new outcome and value focused procurement model. Using applied research, the team used processes and techniques to develop, build, test, and deploy the model in open market competition. It can be used by any infrastructure sector construction client to replicate a sector specific version of Regional Delivery Partnerships that changes trading choice architecture towards higher productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using original documents, this paper describes and analyses the case study of one of the productivity bargaining agreements from a leading exponent of productivity bargaining, Mobil's Coryton Refinery. As well as being important in the UK oil industry these agreements spread throughout the economy. They resulted in major concessions by the unions to relax inter-craft and craft-production trade boundaries and to changes in work methods. These are illustrated in detail and placed in context. Such changes were heralded as 'new look industrial relations' and as such were based on a conception of joint regulation. However, other interpretations are possible, and these are then explored and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a previous issue of the International Journal of Sustainable Development and World Ecology I described how competing visions of sustainable agriculture are currently battling for hegemonic status (Johnson 2006). One vision seeks to break the hegemony of productionism and the other seeks to continue down its path with a greater emphasis on biotechnology. In this paper, I wish to explore these visions further as they apply to actual existing strategies for sustainable farming and food in the UK. This paper uses discourse analysis to compare the UK government's vision for sustainable farming and food sectors with that of two NGOs: Friends of the Earth and Corporate Watch. The language and discourse in the government's and NGOs' strategy documents is examined for evidence indicating their ideological conception of agricultural sustainability. The paper concludes that, whilst the NGOs are pursuing a strong vision of sustainability, seeking to break productionism's hegemony, the UK government is pursuing an ideologically weak-to-moderate conceptualisation of sustainability, pursuing the high-technology modified version of agricultural productionism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article revisits one of the most significant questions in the historiography of British West Indian slavery and abolition. It examines the argument that the relatively weak state of the British West Indian economy from the 1780s onward was the main reason why Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807. In confronting this question of decline, the article analyzes the largest and most important slave plantation economy – Jamaica – during the early eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Using newly generated indicators such as total factor productivity and national income, the paper constructs a case for the dynamism and efficiency of the plantation system in Jamaica right up to abolition in 1807. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines whether receipt of a Regional Selective Assistance (RSA) grant has a causal impact on plant total factor productivity (TFP). To tackle the problem of self-selection into the treatment group, propensity score matching is employed. In order to control for the endogeneity of other variables in the model, estimations are performed using the system GMM estimator. The results show that for low technology manufacturing, receipt of an RSA grant leads to a fall in TFP. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

During the past few years there has been a growing consensus in the literature that intangible assets represent a major source of productivity growth. Intangibles facilitate the accumulation of knowledge and information via learning and innovation, allowing, in this way, modern economies to improve the efficiency with which they utilise their resources. Nonetheless, despite the proliferation of studies that investigate the territorial impact of intangibles (variously defined), the full effect of these assets on regional productivity dynamics remains elusive. National Accounts still treat most of what can be considered intangibles as intermediate expenditure entailing that they are largely excluded from conventional measures of gross value added (GVA) and investment. The present paper attempts to tackle this shortcoming not only by including intangibles as capital in the aggregate production function, but also by employing GVA data that are adjusted for intangibles as output. The aim is to investigate the role of intangible assets on the evolution of regional productivity disparities in Great Britain during the period 1995- 2004. The analysis considers the spatial effects of intangibles on both partial productivity measures and total factor productivity levels, while the regional figures are also scrutinised for the possible presence of δ-convergence and β-convergence trends during this time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper aims to design an evaluation method that enables an organization to assess its current IT landscape and provide readiness assessment prior to Software as a Service (SaaS) adoption. Design/methodology/approach: The research employs a mixed of quantitative and qualitative approaches for conducting an IT application assessment. Quantitative data such as end user's feedback on the IT applications contribute to the technical impact on efficiency and productivity. Qualitative data such as business domain, business services and IT application cost drivers are used to determine the business value of the IT applications in an organization. Findings: The assessment of IT applications leads to decisions on suitability of each IT application that can be migrated to cloud environment. Research limitations/implications: The evaluation of how a particular IT application impacts on a business service is done based on the logical interpretation. Data mining method is suggested in order to derive the patterns of the IT application capabilities. Practical implications: This method has been applied in a local council in UK. This helps the council to decide the future status of the IT applications for cost saving purpose. Originality/value: The proposed method has gauge various factors including the organizational, business, IT, SaaS assessment, risk assessment prior to SaaS adoption. SaaS providers and consumers hence can have a better understanding on the SaaS adoption from the top level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This paper examines the determinants of total factor productivity (TFP) using a GB plant-level data set. The main findings relate to whether spatial spillovers and 'place' effects are important: plants located in cities generally perform better than plants in the same region outside of these cities; but with the exception of Bristol, no city has significantly higher TFP levels than the South East. This suggests that spatial externalities associated with city location are not as important as the benefits of being situated in the South East region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper revisits the issue of the productivity performance of Britain’s railways with an improved dataset and modern cliometrics. We find a slowdown in TFP growth between 1850 and 1870, after which it stabilized at about 1.1%. An analysis of company-level productivity performance reveals large discrepancies in TFP growth and substantial cost inefficiency. The evidence suggests that there was managerial failure in companies with agency problems in a context of collusion and high entry barriers. A wider implication is that the neoclassical exoneration of late-Victorian British management may be less convincing for the services sector than for manufacturing. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this paper we explore the interrelationship between technological progress and the formation of industry-specific skills by analysing the evolution of the video-game industry in three countries: Japan, the United States, and the United Kingdom. We argue that the cross-sectoral transfer of skills occurs differently depending on national contexts, such as the social legitimacy and strength of preexisting industries, the socioeconomic status of entrepreneurs or pioneer firms in an emerging industry, and the sociocultural cohesiveness between the preexisting and emerging industries. Each country draws on a different set of creative resources, which results in a unique trajectory. Whereas Japan's video-game industry emerged out of corporate sponsorships in arcades, toys, and consumer electronics industries and drew skills from the comic book and animated-film sectors, the video-game industry in the United States evolved from arcades and personal computers. In the United Kingdom the video-game industry developed bottom-up, through a process of skills formation in the youth culture of `bedroom coders' that nurtured self-taught programmers in their teens throughout the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The construction industry is a major user of natural resources and as such has the potential to play a significant role in delivering sustainable development in the UK. Sustainability is discussed in reference to resource productivity. To measure progress towards resource productivity robust data and indicators of success are required. This paper introduces the concept of resource flow analysis as a tool and describes a study adopting this methodology to quantify the resource use of the construction industry. The total annual material resource requirement for the construction industry was identified to be over 420 million tonnes (Mt) in 1998. Data are presented on the material use, waste and emissions from the construction industry. Trends and influences on the industry in terms of resource use were examined. Design was identified as the area where the greatest degree of positive influence lies for the industry. Engineers, specifiers and product designers are ideally placed to move the resource productivity debate forward by focusing on factors such as design for longevity, flexibility of use and lean design. Recommendations are made to improve the resource productivity of the industry. It is concluded that the absence of a body able to provide strategic direction specifically for the construction industry is a fundamental obstacle to achieving resource productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the extent to which foreign manufacturing firms in the UK promote productivity growth in the domestically owned manufacturing sector through their buying and supplying relationships. Evidence for intra- and inter-regional externalities from the presence of foreign manufacturing, and intra- and inter-industry effects is brought to light. Externalities in the domestic sector are most noticeable where foreign manufacturing sells to domestic manufacturing. These externalities are, however, not wholly robust to different specifications of spatial dependence. The findings are positioned in a debate, which has tended to view backward (as opposed to forward) linkages from multinationals to domestically owned supply bases as a critical driver of indirect economic benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]