Study on Subcontract Decision-making of International Construction Enterprises Considering Spillover Effect

Author(s):  
Jianbo Zhu ◽  
Qianqian Shi ◽  
Zhaohan Sheng ◽  
Peng Wu
Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (16) ◽  
pp. 4579 ◽  
Author(s):  
Milena F. Pinto ◽  
Leonardo M. Honorio ◽  
Aurélio Melo ◽  
Andre L. M. Marcato

Big construction enterprises, such as electrical power generation dams and mining slopes, demand continuous visual inspections. The sizes of these structures and the necessary level of detail in each mission requires a conflicting set of multi-objective goals, such as performance, quality, and safety. It is challenging for human operators, or simple autonomous path-following drones, to process all this information, and thus, it is common that a mission must be repeated several times until it succeeds. This paper deals with this problem by developing a new cognitive architecture based on a collaborative environment between the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and other agents focusing on optimizing the data gathering, information processing, and decision-making. The proposed architecture breaks the problem into independent units ranging from sensors and actuators up to high-level intelligence processes. It organizes the structures into data and information; each agent may request an individual behavior from the system. To deal with conflicting behaviors, a supervisory agent analyzes all requests and defines the final planning. This architecture enables real-time decision-making with intelligent social behavior among the agents. Thus, it is possible to process and make decisions about the best way to accomplish the mission. To present the methodology, slope inspection scenarios are shown.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tengyuan Chang ◽  
Bon-Gang Hwang ◽  
Xiaopeng Deng ◽  
Xianbo Zhao

International construction projects are plagued with political risk, and international construction enterprises (ICEs) must manage this risk to survive. However, little attention has been devoted to political risk management strategies in international construction projects. To fill this research gap, a total of 27 possible strategies were identified through a comprehensive literature review and validated by a pilot survey with 10 international experts. Appraisals of these 27 strategies by relevant professionals were collected using questionnaires, 155 of which were returned. Exploratory factor analysis was conducted to explore the interrelationships among these 27 strategies. The results show that all of the 27 strategies are important for political risk management in international construction projects. Moreover, these 27 strategies were clustered into six components, namely, (1) making correct decisions, (2) conducting favorable negotiations, (3) completing full preparations, (4) shaping a good environment, (5) reducing unnecessary mistakes, and (6) obtaining a reasonable response. The 6 components can be regarded as 6 typical management techniques that contribute to political risk management in the preproject phase, project implementation phase, and postevent phases. The findings may help practitioners gain an in-depth understanding of political risk management strategies in international construction projects and provide a useful reference for ICEs to manage political risks when venturing outside their home countries.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 2320
Author(s):  
Yucai Wu ◽  
Jiguang Wang ◽  
Lu Chen

Excellent service plays a vital role in the sustainability of enterprise and supply chains development in today’s increasingly fierce market competition. However, due to the inevitable spillover effect in the competitive network, enterprises’ initiative to improve the service level is reduced. From the perspective of negative spillover effect, optimization and decision-making in the competitive network of retailer-dominated supply chain are examined in this study. Considering four competitive situations in practical operation management, the corresponding double-layer compound nested Stackelberg game models are constructed, and the optimal equilibrium solutions are derived. Employing comprehensive comparison and analysis of the results, it is found that when the negative spillover effect of service increases, the optimal profit and service level of the leading supply chain or its retailers decrease, and the optimal retail price and overall optimal profit also gradually decline. For the leading supply chain, the centralized decision-making can achieve higher profits, and also more willing to improve the level of service. However, for the following supply chain, when the negative spillover effect of service is weak, the optimal service level under decentralized decision is higher, while when the spillover effect of service is strong, the optimal service level under integrated decision is higher. In addition, the supply chain-to-chain competition can bring negative incentives to the retailer that provides services, while for the rival that does not provide services, it can generate a certain free-riding effect that benefits them, and the effect is enhanced with the increase of competition.


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