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The purpose of this paper is to investigate and compare in what ways different types of integrative and collaborative procurement strategies may enhance efficiency and innovation in public infrastructure projects. Further, implementation challenges are identified and discussed. Interview-based case studies were performed of ten infrastructure projects in Sweden and the Netherlands. The projects involve four types of collaborative procurement strategies - collaborative Design-Build (DB) contracts, Early Contractor Involvement (ECI) agreements, Design-Build-Maintain (DBM) contracts and Design-Build-Finance-Maintain (DBFM) contracts. The findings indicate that the duration of the collaboration is fundamental in setting the limits for innovation and that early involvement as well as long-term commitments open up for more innovation. Naturally, the potential for increased efficiency is higher than for innovation and also occurs in collaborations with limited duration. These integrated project approaches, however, still appear to be in an early stage of learning. For a public repeat client to realise the full potential of a new strategy, it is important to have a long-term perspective and capabilities to analyse and learn from the experiences.

In today’s construction industry we witness an increase in public private collaboration in the delivery of public goods. By transferring operational responsibility to private contractors, public construction clients have fewer possibilities to directly influence and steer the outcomes of these processes while remaining socio-political responsible.In this paper we aim to explore how public construction clients try to find a balance in public value management activities by rethinking their roles and responsibilities in the client-contractor relationship. This paper results of a set of semi-structured interviews with different actors playing a part in commissioning of organisations with different degrees of publicness are presented. Results indicate that the alignment of the client role and change in responsibilities should be rather flexible in order to deal with the restrictions that procedural values such as lawfulness, reliability and transparency bring along. This requires significant changes in the interpretation of the commissioning profession and the transformation of the collaborative relationship in public private collaboration. Further research should look more closely into the alignment of the shifted roles and responsibilities and organizational- and steering mechanisms that could be applied to enhance this value shift in practice.

In the construction industry clients largely depend on contractors to deliver projects. According to agency theory problems of goal conflict and information asymmetry arise in this delegation of work because both the principal and the agent are self- interested. The control-oriented governance mechanisms that agency theorists propose as a means to resolve these problems can act counterproductive and give rise to new problems. Stewardship theory offers a counterweight to agency theory and assumes a relational reciprocity between the principal and the steward. Recently, a large group of Dutch public construction clients and contractors have collaboratively expressed their desire to improve their relationship in a manifest called ‘the market vision’. This phenomenon can be interpreted as a desire to shift from a principal- agent towards a principal-steward relationship. The aim of this paper is to explore how public clients engage in stewardship relationships with contractors. This research is based on a case study of one of the most ambitious projects under the umbrella of this market vision trajectory. The analysis of the documents, observation notes and semi-structured interviews with project team members indicate that they developed a relationship which can be characterised as a principal-steward bond. By investing in relationship-building from the pre-commercial phase, throughout the tender phase and the execution phase, they put their individual differences beside in order to reach their initially defined common goal. It remains however to be seen whether this can be considered as a complete stewardship relation.

Architectural firms experience difficulties to establish healthy and sustainable business models as they have to reconcile the often-competing value systems that they are based upon. Organizational members continuously negotiate professional values and beliefs with the firm's commercial goals, resulting in identity-strategy struggles. This study adopts a 'work lens' to investigate the reciprocal tensions between identity and strategy in 17 business model design workshops with members of architectural firms. Observational data show that practitioners collaboratively construct their business models around professional values, thereby strengthening organizational identity but constraining innovation in their business models. The research contributes to the literature on strategic management of architectural firms by articulating how professional aspects of identity enable and constrain practitioners to shape and be shaped by their strategic actions and decisions.

Using a large administrative data set from Chile, we find that, on average, boys perform better than girls in mathematics. In this paper, we document several features of their relative performance. First, we note that the gender gap appears to increase with age (it doubles between fourth grade and eighth grade). Second, we test whether commonly proposed explanations such as parental background and investment in the child, unobserved ability, and classroom environment (including teacher gender) help explain a substantial portion of the gap. While none of these explanations help in explaining a large portion of the gender gap, we show that boys and girls differ significantly in perceptions about their own ability in math. Conditional on math scores, girls are much more likely to state that they dislike math, or find math difficult, compared to boys. We highlight differences in self-assessed ability as areas for future research that might lead to a better understanding of the gender gap in math.

This paper studies the effect of improved neonatal health care on mortality and long run academic achievement in school. We use the idea that medical treatments often follow rules of thumb for assigning care to patients, such as the classification of Very Low Birth Weight (VLBW), which assigns infants special care at a specific birth weight cutoff. Using detailed administrative data on schooling and birth records from Chile and Norway, we establish that children who receive extra medical care at birth have lower mortality rates and higher test scores and grades in school. These gains are in the order of 0.15-0.22 standard deviations.

This paper provides new evidence on the effect of school construction projects on home prices, academic achievement, and public school enrollment. Taking advantage of the staggered implementation of a comprehensive school construction project in a poor urban district, we find that, by six years after building occupancy, $10,000 of per-student investment in school construction raised reading scores for elementary and middle school students by 0.027 standard deviations. For a student receiving the average treatment intensity this corresponds to a 0.21 standard deviation increase. School construction also raised home prices and public school enrollment in zoned neighborhoods.

Internal and external quality auditors must perform a complex balancing act requiring good judgement, interpretation, emotional intelligence, and empathy to achieve several, often conflicting, objectives. The position of the auditor in the financial sector has been examined in the literature in detail; however, in the construction sector this area has been largely unexplored, a gap in knowledge that this paper aims to help fill. This review considers Power's theory of 'The Audit Society' and the rich financial auditing literature to examine the position and actions of internal and external construction quality auditors. The findings show that the audit is a complex construction of performance and judgement and that the 'facticity' of the audit should not be taken for granted. Auditor independence and competence can be difficult to achieve within the current construction quality regulatory system. Construction quality auditing takes place behind closed doors - greater exposure is needed of auditing practice.

As part of the effort at making a climate neutral economy, the EU has developed a sustainable finance taxonomy to steer capital flows towards sustainable activities, connecting financial and environmental elements of sustainability in a new way. Here we study how the taxonomy regulation, affects the field of construction. The research builds on institutional theory and empirical material from interviews and annual reports. This is done to establish a broad understanding of the field structure, and how the organisations in the field respond. The taxonomy presents new challenges and barriers. It is concluded that even though the purpose of the regulation is to motivate companies to document their sustainable activities and develop more sustainable businesses, the company responses have so far been diverse, to some extent reluctant and for some even evasive. The taxonomy will change notions of sustainability, but it is likely that it will enter a heterogeneous rather than a uniform direction. As part of the effort at making a climate neutral economy, the EU has developed a sustainable finance taxonomy to steer capital flows towards sustainable activities, connecting financial and environmental elements of sustainability in a new way. Here we study how the taxonomy regulation, affects the field of construction. The research builds on institutional theory and empirical material from interviews and annual reports. This is done to establish a broad understanding of the field structure, and how the organisations in the field respond. The taxonomy presents new challenges and barriers. It is concluded that even though the purpose of the regulation is to motivate companies to document their sustainable activities and develop more sustainable businesses, the company responses have so far been diverse, to some extent reluctant and for some even evasive. The taxonomy will change notions of sustainability, but it is likely that it will enter a heterogeneous rather than a uniform direction.

This study discusses how digital infrastructures in the Danish building industry affect the mental work environment in a project organisation, by focusing on the information and communications technology agreement as a term of reference for the division of labour and the specification of digital work. Based on interviews from a case study, namely a renovation project from a major Danish real estate owner, this paper studies the interactions between social and technical practices in a network and draws on concepts from actor-network theory to analyse the findings. The study sheds light on how the network around the information and communications technology agreement is dominated by one enactment, and it is found that displacements occur when one enactment becomes dominant. In these displacements, the mental work environment is pressurised, which leads to stressors, shifts in core activities and employees' struggle to find meaning in their tasks. However, the study also points out how digital tools can help to ensure a good mental work environment by strengthening project collaboration.

Construction companies are commonly portrayed as project-based organisations that respond to client requirements and deliver standardised works and services determined by the traditional construction trades. However, modern construction companies are also partaking an increasingly important role in delivering sustainable solutions to social and environmental problems. The objective of the study is to provide insights into the efforts of a Danish construction company in delivering sustainable solutions by devising social and environmental ventures. In this regard, we have a special interest in understanding the role of the marketing department. The empirical material of the study is based on observations and conversations with employees in the marketing department gathered between 2018-2022. In the analysis, we examine two distinct ventures devised by the marketing department through an institutional work framework. On this basis, the study concludes that the marketing department plays a critical role in devising new social and environmental ventures that affect regulative, normative, and cultural-cognitive prescriptions in construction.

Introducing digital objects in facility management enables professionals to coordinateoperation and management tasks. However, using digital objects is not a "neutral"matter. Instead, digital objects shift the distribution of responsibilities and create newways of visualising professionals' work performance that create frustrations anddiscontent among the facility managers. Building on ethnographic fieldwork andinspiration from the Science and Technology Studies field, the study investigates acase concerning the operation and management of an office building in Copenhagen,Denmark. Findings show that the operation and management professionals getfrustrated when the technical and digital systems of the building cannot solve theissues experienced by the building users. Limited access to systems obstructs theprofessionals in their work, and the systems create distance between the building andthe means to solve the experienced problems. The study suggests paying moreattention to digital systems' effects on professionals' mental health within facilitymanagement. Introducing digital objects in facility management enables professionals to coordinate operation and management tasks. However, using digital objects is not a "neutral" matter. Instead, digital objects shift the distribution of responsibilities and create new ways of visualising professionals' work performance that create frustrations and discontent among the facility managers. Building on ethnographic fieldwork and inspiration from the Science and Technology Studies field, the study investigates a case concerning the operation and management of an office building in Copenhagen, Denmark. Findings show that the operation and management professionals get frustrated when the technical and digital systems of the building cannot solve the issues experienced by the building users. Limited access to systems obstructs the professionals in their work, and the systems create distance between the building and the means to solve the experienced problems. The study suggests paying more attention to digital systems' effects on professionals' mental health within facility management.

The construction industry has been severely affected by COVID-19 restrictionsresulting in several challenges in form of supply chain disruptions, performance loss, and limited workforce interactions. The construction industry initially needs to understand and quantify the impacts of COVID-19 on each aspect of the industry. Simulation techniques are powerful tools for this purpose, which enable modellers to run construction projects virtually and assess their performance under different circumstances, scenarios or settings. In this paper, a hybrid simulation framework is developed using agent-based modelling (ABM) and Monte Carlo simulation techniques (MCS) to evaluate the impact of the spread of COVID-19 on the performance of construction projects. The proposed simulation framework enables the construction modellers to capture the interactions between construction workers effectively and to determine the impact of restrictions on the overall project performance. It also helps practitioners in the post-COVID-19 era by testing multiple virus spread scenarios on construction sites and minimize the adverse impacts of restrictions on the project performance.