Towards Adoption of Smart Contract in Construction Industry in Malaysia

The revolution of Malaysian Construction 4.0 through emerging technologies has brought a paradigm shift that has digitalized the construction sector. There is a need to adopt a computerized protocol to assist in automating the performance of a contract to meet future digital challenges. Therefore, this paper aims to serve as a pioneer study to investigate the implementation of the Malaysian construction industry to adopt smart contracts. This study adopted a qualitative scientific methodology, whereby a systematic review was conducted to gather the benefits and challenges of implementing smart contracts in the construction industry. Further, interview sessions were arranged to collect data from the construction contract management experts. The research findings unveil that due to the self-executing attribute of smart contracts, the implementation of smart contracts could provide a better apportionment of risks in a contract. The study also finds that the challenges in implementing smart contracts are severe. For instance, the smart contract is irreversible and immutable and prone to human error. The study concludes that it is more suitable to apply and implement a smart contract to a short-term contract that is not subjected to variation. Furthermore, a smart contract can enhance the efficiency in managing the contracts, such as reducing time and managing the conflicts and disputes that arise during the contract duration. The developed implementation framework is significant for the construction personnel, especially those dealing with the contract administration. The implementation of smart contracts in construction could boost contract administration and management discipline via investment in this new technology.

Old Media, New Gigs: The Discursive Construction of the Gig Economy in Australian News Media

This article analyses the representation of the gig economy in three Australian newspapers from 2014 to 2019. ‘Gig work’ is defined as short term, contract or freelance employment and is seen by many social institutions as the future of work. Drawing on a corpus of 426 articles, Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory is used to examine the construction of the ‘gig economy’ in the cultural imaginary. Five key elements emerge, including: demographics of workers; working conditions; workers’ rights; resistance and regulation; and change and disruption. Despite multiple competing discourses evident across the newspapers, each constructs the gig economy as an inexorable phase in the evolution of the relationship between capital and the worker. The article critically analyses the construction of the discourse, including the difficulties of regulating gig economy platforms and the narrative of inevitability used to describe changes to work and life brought about by technology.

Casualization in Occupational Settings: An Investigative Study

Introduction: This research explored the Effects of Casualization on the Welfare of Workers using a de-identified multinational oil company in Nigeria as a representative case. Objectives: The objectives of the study were to examine the effects of casualization of workers, associated irregularity of work, and deprivation of workers’ right. Methodology: A close-ended questionnaire was used to collect primary data. Out of 150 copies of the questionnaire administered, 122 were dully filled, returned and analysed using descriptive statistics. Results & Discussion: Three hypotheses were proposed and analysed using multiple regression of ordinary least square (OLS) statistical method and tested at 0.05 level of significance for the hypotheses. The result showed that there were significant negative effects of casualization of workers for a short-term contract work, irregularity of casualization of work, and deprivation of workers right to negotiate. Conclusion: Hallmarks of casualization of labour include short term contract work; irregularity of work; and deprivation of workers’ right to negotiate adversely affects the welfare packages of workers. These practices have inherent occupational health implication on workers. Recommendations: Casualization of labour as seen in this study is a despicable model that should be discontinued. However, if it must be practiced, the human resources, industrial relations, labour union and occupational health experts in such organizations should repackage such contracts to include allowances, job security, negotiation rights, dignity, benefits and welfare clauses as in permanent full time employment.

The contract-type choice for short-term software development outsourcing: The role of behaviour-based formal control

With this article, we contribute to the recent debate regarding the role of transaction cost economics in IT outsourcing and software development outsourcing research. Our focus is on the contract-type choice for short-term software development outsourcing. For this purpose, we critically examine transaction cost economics and the extant IT outsourcing/software development outsourcing literature and propose a framework which classifies software development outsourcing transactions according to transaction frequency and transaction investment characteristics. The framework identifies short-term software development outsourcing as an occasional, idiosyncratic transaction. Based on this groundwork, we clarify the concept of short-term contract and put forward that such a transaction is governed by a short-term contract. Following transaction cost economics and control theory, our resulting theoretical considerations infer that for short-term software development outsourcing, the vendor’s high human asset specificity and the resulting behaviour-based outcome control, the monitoring of the developer staff, are the triggers for contract-type decisions. Accordingly, staff monitoring by the client should result in Time & Material contracts, whereas staff monitoring by the vendor should result in Fixed Price contracts. We develop corresponding hypotheses which we test with 468 specific contract records for short-term software development outsourcing. The results confirm the transaction cost economics–based recommendations for contract-type choice. We therefore conclude that the advice of the transaction cost economics to use certain governance structures according to transaction attributes is also applicable to IT outsourcing/software development outsourcing transactions. We suggest further exploration of specific contract records to substantiate our results.

Analisis Penerapan Pengakuan Pendapatan Kontrak Konstruksi Berdasarkan PSAK 34

This study aims to analyze the implementation of contract revenue recognition based on PSAK 34. The problem that is often faced by companies that are particularly engaged in the field of construction services in the recognition of income is the method of revenue recognition what should be used or applied, because there are differences in recognition between the one method with others. Especially if a project is done is more than a year or the so-called Long-term project. In addition, the presentation of financial statements of income recognition in each accounting period must be reported in accordance with generally accepted Accounting Standards (PSAK No. 34 concerning Construction Contracts). There is only one method used or applied that is the percentage completion method. The percentage method recognizes income with two approaches, based on physical progress and cost-to-cost. PT X as a construction service company uses the percentage of completion method with a physical progress approach (Physical progress) in the recognition of his opinion for both long-term contract and short-term contract. The results of this study conclude that the accounting treatment of the application of revenue recognition of construction services by using the percentage of completion method with physical progress approach on PT X is in conformity with the accounting standards set in PSAK No. 34. However, when compared to revenue recognition using the percentage of completion method with a cost-to-cost approach the firm can recognize the revenue and expenses more to illustrate or show a more proportional calculation because it corresponds to the costs incurred or poured out. Keywords: revenue recognition, expense recognition, PSAK no. 34

“The world’s greatest center of … propaganda”

The years 1934-37, during which Dos Passos undertook three film projects, were critical in Dos Passos’s literary career and political thought. He believed that capitalism was another of the monolithic forces of the machine age, like the military, that could eradicate individual self-determination. But he saw increasing danger in Stalin’s repressive regime and what he considered American Communists’ subordination of workers’ interests to Party ideology. His nascent political ambivalence emerges in the first two volumes of U.S.A., The 42nd Parallel (1930) and 1919 (1932). By 1934, when he accepted a short-term contract as screenwriter for Paramount, he was engaged in work on the third volume, The Big Money (1936), and his experiences while working on a film vehicle for Marlene Dietrich, The Devil Is a Woman (1935, dir. Josef von Sternberg), solidified his conviction of the complicity between the Hollywood “dreamfactory” and capitalism to stoke American consumer culture. While the manuscript of the Paramount film shows signs of Dos Passos’s aesthetics, it is The Big Money’s film-inflected narrative representation of the corruption of the industry that articulates the impact of both the formal and the cultural dynamics of film on his work.

Encultured Biases: The Role of Products in Pathways to Inequality

Recent sociological work shows that culture is an important causal variable in labor market outcomes. Does the same hold for product markets? To answer this question, we study a product market in which selection decisions occur absent face-to-face interaction between intermediaries and short-term contract workers. We find evidence of “product-based” cultural matching operating as a pathway to inequality. Relying on quantitative and qualitative observational data and semi-structured interviews with intermediaries in trade fiction publishing, we show intermediaries culturally match themselves to manuscripts as a normal feature of doing “good work.” We propose three organizational conditions under which “encultured biases” come to the fore in product selection, and a fourth resulting in inequalities along demographic lines and other markers of perceived cultural proximity and distance. We close with a discussion of other settings in which product-based cultural matching is likely to occur, call for the investigation of cultural matching beyond previously theorized conditions, and argue for the inclusion of cultural products in the broader movement toward reconsidering culture as a causal factor.