The Status of Value Management Practice on Construction Projects in Uganda and Strategies for Improvement

In many developing countries, value management (VM) is not applied widely and systematically in construction projects. This limits the achievement of value for money. The objectives of this study were to describe the state of VM practice in Uganda and suggest strategies for improvement. Based on the extant literature, a conceptual framework depicting VM practice in the lifecycle of construction projects was developed. A questionnaire containing both nominal and ordinal measures was distributed to a sample of Ugandan construction industry professionals. During data analysis, the distributions of nominal variables were expressed in terms of percentages. A univariate analysis of the ordinal variables was undertaken using measures of central tendency (mean) and dispersion (standard deviation). A bivariate analysis of the ordinal variables was undertaken using Friedman, Fisher's exact and Mann-Whitney U tests. The application of VM in Uganda was rudimentary, inconsistent and misguided, based on the reports of the respondents. This finding constitutes the first major contribution of this work to knowledge. It also led to the idea that the practice of VM in Uganda can be improved by raising awareness and the standard for VM application. Ten strategies for these two purposes have been put forward in this article. These strategies constitute the second major contribution to knowledge.

Bivariate Distributions Underlying Responses to Ordinal Variables

The association between two ordinal variables can be expressed with a polychoric correlation coefficient. This coefficient is conventionally based on the assumption that responses to ordinal variables are generated by two underlying continuous latent variables with a bivariate normal distribution. When the underlying bivariate normality assumption is violated, the estimated polychoric correlation coefficient may be biased. In such a case, we may consider other distributions. In this paper, we aimed to provide an illustration of fitting various bivariate distributions to empirical ordinal data and examining how estimates of the polychoric correlation may vary under different distributional assumptions. Results suggested that the bivariate normal and skew-normal distributions rarely hold in the empirical datasets. In contrast, mixtures of bivariate normal distributions were often not rejected.

Human Capital and Eco-Contractual Governance in Small Farms in Poland: Simultaneous Confirmatory Factor Analysis with Ordinal Variables

Human capital (HC) plays an important role in modern agriculture. The difference in efficiency of assets explains only about a half of the economic performance of agricultural farms, while the other half relies on HC. Although education and training are the main components of HC, it may also be viewed from the perspective of behavioral theories that were taken under consideration in this study. The role of HC in sustainable farming has not been sufficiently explained when it comes to contractual governance (CG). In this study, the meaning of contractual governance was extended and the eco-contractual governance (ECG) concept was proposed, which stands for CG induced by agri-environmental contracts. The main objective of the article is to confirm the latent concepts of HC and ECG and to verify their correlation in view of the standards imposed by the agricultural policy. To achieve this goal, a structural equation model was developed and simultaneous confirmatory factor analysis with ordinal variables was carried out based on the sample of 674 small farms in Poland. The analysis has confirmed a relatively strong correlation between HC and ECG. It was revealed that training plays a crucial role in this relationship, while economic dependence on agricultural policy weakens the effectiveness of both HC and ECG.