Academic literature on the topic 'Construction organizations- India'

Purpose The Indian public sector construction industry is normally driven by traditional contracting practices. Though no formal partnering agreement is being used in public sector projects in India, improvement in Indian public sector organizations could be observed in the post-liberalization era, as they get the opportunities to work with multinational companies from countries with experiences in partnering. The purpose of this study is to explore the extent of partnering strategies being adopted by Indian public sector organizations and identify factors hindering the adoption of formal partnering. Design/methodology/approach Critical success factors for successful partnering were first identified through literature review. This guided the collection of primary data through semi-structured interviews with 36 top management personnel and secondary data in the form of organizational documents and site reports from several site visits of four public sector construction organizations. The evidence collected from four cases were arranged and compared against organizational strategies of successful partnering. Findings Most of the strategies adopted by the organizations were found to be in line with the suggested partnering practices. However, partnering performance of these organizations was found to be not satisfactory. This study has identified 14 factors hindering effective partnering such as reservations over joint risk-sharing process, limited bid evaluation criteria, difficulty in time-bound payment to contractor, absence of incentive mechanism, obsolete training procedures and absence of time-bound dispute resolution mechanism. Research limitations/implications The research findings are based on a case study with four public sector organizations only. Additional cases need to be undertaken to generalize the findings. Further study should also be undertaken to explore partnering relationships between contractors and subcontractors in public sector projects. Practical implications To improve project performance, top management of public sector organizations in India can take these factors into account while formulating strategies on introduction of project partnering in their organizations. Originality/value The work is novel providing insights into organizational strategies promoting and hindering partnering in Indian public sector construction organizations.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to establish the relationship between organizational culture (OC) and total quality management (TQM) practices in the Indian construction industry. Design/methodology/approach A questionnaire survey was conducted to draw valid empirical data from 200 construction firms in India. The dominant culture was identified using cluster analysis. Findings The findings of cluster analysis show four emergent clusters, namely, internal, flexible, comprehensive and control. The OC profile of the Indian construction organizations is dominated by internal focus characterized by the features of both group and hierarchical cultures of Competing Values Framework (CVF). Furthermore, the results revealed that the comprehensive focus culture is the most suitable culture in addition to the internal and flexibility focus cultures for the implementation of TQM in India. Practical implications Before implementing the TQM practices, managers in construction organizations need to be aware of cultural orientation emphasized in their organizations to facilitate the effective implementation of TQM. Originality/value This paper contributes to the existing literature by providing empirical evidence that leads to the association between OC and TQM practices. The study proposes besides the internal and flexibility focus cultures, the comprehensive focus culture within the Indian construction industry are key drivers for the successful implementation of TQM practices.

AbstractConstruction industry is highly exposed to accidents than other industries. Due to the multi-disciplinary nature of the construction industry, more than one task is required to be performed at the same time. If safety planning is improper, it may lead to serious accidents on-site, directly affecting overall productivity. Recent technologies such as Building Information Modeling (BIM) have the potential to manage safety on the construction site. This study deals with the status check of the awareness of BIM in Indian construction along with benefits, barriers faced in Indian construction. This study also presents the benefits that BIM implementation can bring for safety management. In this study, a questionnaire was designed to ascertain the level of awareness of BIM in the Indian construction industry. The questionnaire was distributed to construction professionals from all over India. A total of 171 valid responses were received from all the corners of India. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences analysis (SPSS) has been used for data analysis. The survey concludes that the Indian construction sector needs to work on the three main aspects that include awareness of BIM and its benefits for organizations, accumulation of BIM in the tertiary education system, and delivering corporate training in construction organizations for a successful realization of benefits by the implementation of BIM.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to identify, analyse and categorize the major factors affecting lean procurement (LP) in a construction project of a company in India using total interpretive structural modelling (TISM) approach. The readiness factors identified help the managers to recognize the areas that lack, i.e. purchase, stocks and receipts, and provide importance to the successful implementation of LP in those areas. This study further intends to examine the hierarchical interrelationships among the factors identified using dependence and driving power. Design/methodology/approach Ten factors were identified from literature review, and expert opinions were collected from the organization which is in construction phase in India. Scheduled interviews were conducted based on questionnaire survey in the organizations to identify the relevance of the relations among the factors. Matrix impact cross-multiplication applied to classification analysis uses dependence and driving power to understand the hierarchical relationship among the factors identified. Findings Results indicate that supplier selection is the key readiness factor for LP. The manager needs to concentrate more on readiness factors to formulate execution process of LP for the betterment of the construction project undergoing organization in India. The readiness factors help the manager to identify the target area for LP execution. Practical implications This study would be useful for researchers and practitioners to understand the readiness factors before starting the implementation process of LP in construction projects. The managers of companies undergoing construction project can use the outcome of the present study to implement LP in a competent way. Basing the priorities of attention on the ten readiness LP factors in the appropriate order of importance, as suggested by this study, can give project managers a more scientific basis in which to specify the level of attention required for each of the factors to implement readiness in LP. Originality/value The present study identifies the readiness factors related to LP, especially for construction project. None of the researchers have studied readiness factors of LP for organizations undergoing construction projects. This is the first attempt made to analyze the relationship between LP readiness factors and TISM approach in construction project organization.

The construction industry is one of the booming industries in India. The engineers working in an organization plays significant role in implementing the project. The main objective of the engineer’s is to construct a quality product with the use of techniques, tooling and equipment to reduce the cost and time of construction. The organizations need skilled engineers to complete their projects in time. In this research discriminant analysis technique has been employed to study about retention of engineers in the construction industry. A method is proposed which can be applied for existing engineers to ascertain whether they will continue in the same organization or not and the same procedure may applied for the new recruitment also.

This article focuses on development organizations’ construction of representative roles in their work at the environment–development interface and on implications of these constructions for inclusiveness. While much of the past literature on representation has dealt with electoral representation, this article highlights the importance of nonelectoral representation. It follows a constructivist approach and is based on 36 in-depth interviews with the staff of different types of India-based development organizations working on disaster risk management. The article shows how development organizations in India contribute to inclusive development by representing groups that are vulnerable to disaster risk in diverse ways. Showing this diversity and how it is mediated by organizations, the article makes clear that representation is much more complex than literature commonly suggests. This complexity enables organizations to engage with specific dimensions of inclusive development. The article also illustrates how representation by development organizations happens through opportunities found and created through the intertwining of capacity development, service delivery, and advocacy. At the same time, the mediated nature of representation, and its embeddedness in a wide set of relations, makes representation by development organizations indirect and questionable in ways beyond the commonly understood dominance of powerful nongovernmental organizations.

The Construction industry is a challenging, competitive and rapidly growing industry. Because of urbanization, infrastructural development and people's rising expectations for improved quality of living, construction become the second largest economic activity in India. As a result there is a competition for finding efficient and talented engineers which results in increased rate of Engineers’ attrition. Engineers’ attrition affects the overall efficiency of the organization. It results in loss of productivity, profit, time; resources etc.The sample of study consists of 120 engineers working in various construction organizations in India through questionnaire. The SPSS software was used for data analysis and findings. The purpose of this study is to find out the various reasons for Engineers turnover and to suggest effective retention strategies for Engineers’ retention. This study concludes that pay, Job satisfaction, Increased job opportunities, Lack of growth opportunities, Lack of respect from superiors have a great effect on engineers attrition.

Disputes in construction projects have become an integral part of the construction process. In addition to reducing their productivity, disputes create mistrust between the involved parties. A variety of reasons that contribute to the occurrence of disputes in construction projects have been discussed in the literature. One among them is the nature of the construction contract that exists between the parties. A review of the existing literature brings to the fore two schools of thought regarding the drafting of construction contracts. While the traditional school considers the contract as those documents that contain inherent incompleteness and hence prone to disputes, the liberal school believes that construction contracts can be drafted in an efficient manner to prevent disputes. In this exploratory research, we conducted semi-structured open-ended interviews with experts in contractual decision making and contract drafting in construction organizations to understand their perspective on contract drafting/redrafting process and to classify them under the respective school of thought. The study reveals some interesting insights about the perceptions and motivations of the contract drafters and the senior management of construction organizations in India, when it comes to drafting dispute-free equitable contract documents. We believe that the findings of our study will pave the way for further research in drafting efficient construction contracts that can be practicable and dispute-resistant in the Indian context.

In India, Project Portfolio Management (PPM) is in practice as a tool for prioritizing and managing real estate projects in construction organizations. But due to insufficient funding, improper judgment of experts during the crisis situation, the selection of optimal project portfolio prototype can be viewed as a risk based decision making process involving various risk factors. The objective of this study is to analyze the importance of project portfolio management and the risks associated with it in the construction industry taking into account the impact of novel corona virus COVID 19. This research identifies the adoption of more consistent project governance, risk management techniques and way more careful project portfolio management as the core area of study. A conceptual framework for Project Portfolio Management is also designed after analyzing various parameters of Project Portfolio Management of construction industry with the help of Bayesian framework. The key motive for undertaking this part of examination on real estate sector of Indian construction industry in southern part of India to reduce the impacts and increase the return on investment from the projects by mitigating the effect of risk factors associated in the projects. Project Portfolio Management tools and techniques are very useful for managing multiple construction projects.

Leadership plays a vital role in any industry. Therefore, a positive relationship between the management and the employees is very crucial for any organization to get better turnover and recognition. The current study discusses the leadership styles used in the Construction Industry in India. The development of construction industry in India requires suitable leadership approaches of the management. In the condition of such requirement, this research paper has three-fold objectives: first, to study the leadership styles used by the higher-management levels of Indian construction companies, and second, to examine the impact of leadership styles on job satisfaction, and third, to analyze the impact of the leadership styles onorganizational commitment. A survey was designed and carried to assess the objectives of the research. A total of sixty employees were selected for the study. The survey participants were the three working groups of the three construction companies; (1) senior managers, (2) construction engineers, (3) worker supervisors. The questionnaire has a total of 25 questions that includes demographics, leadership styles assessment, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment. Confidence level, Mean, and Standard Deviation was used to analyze the results of the respondents. The results show that the higher-management of company A uses good leadership styles and the employees are satisfied with the job and committed to the organization. However, employees of company B and C were not happy with the leadership styles used by the management and unsatisfied with the job and less committed to the organization.

In the midst of unprecedented attention to gender-based violence (GBV) globally, prompted in part by the #MeToo movement, this book provides a new analysis of how higher education cultures can be transformed. It offers reflections from faculty, staff, and students about how change has happened and could happen on their campuses in ways that go beyond implementation of programs and policies. Building on what is already known from decades of scholarship and practice in the United States, and more recent attention elsewhere, this book provides an interdisciplinary, international overview of attempts to transform higher education cultures to eradicate GBV. Change happens because people act, usually with others. At the heart of transformative efforts lie collaborations between faculty, staff, students, activists, and community organizations. The contributors to the book reflect on what makes for constructive, effective collaborations and how to avoid the common mistakes in working with others to end GBV. They consider what has worked to challenge the reluctance—or outright hostility—they have encountered in their work against GBV and how their collaborations have succeeded in transforming the ways GBV is considered and dealt with. The chapters focus on experiences in Canada, the United States, England, Scotland, France, and India to examine different approaches to tackling GBV in higher education. They reveal the cultural variations in which GBV occurs as well as the similarities across cultures. Together, they demonstrate that, to make higher education a safe environment for all, nothing short of a transformation is required.

Over the last decade, globalization processes have intensified, and as such, global organizations relocated their secondary processes to new spaces specialized in operations (Peck 2018; Oshri, Kotlarsky, and Willcocks 2015). Most of the processes that are being externalized are Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and Information Technology Outsourcing (ITO) (Oshri, Kotlarsky, and Willcocks 2015). The global outsourcing hotspots are India, China and the Philippines, that concentrate over 80% of outsourced processes. At European level, Central and Eastern Europe has capitalized most of the outsourcing in the West, particularly in regards to German capital (Marin 2018; Dustmann et al. 2014). Almost half (45.4%) of the total foreign investments of German companies is outsourced to Central and Eastern Europe. In Romania 63.7% of the German foreign investments are processes that were outsourced to our country (Marin, Schymik, and Tarasov 2018). As Peck (2018) points out, the logic behind the process is finding the cheapest labor force pools. Initially, outsourcing was focused on industrialized labor, however, now it is mostly skilled and highly skilled workforce that is being outsourced (Pavlínek 2019). Even if it is work performed by white collars, it has a high level of repetitiveness; however, in sectors such as IT there are also R&D operations (Oshri, Kotlarsky, and Willcocks 2015). Cluj is an example of a city whose local economy and workforce composition changed dramatically after the 2008-2010 financial crisis. The city is one of the Central and Eastern European hubs that benefited from the globalization of outsourcing operations. In particular, Cluj-Napoca excels in four transnational fields: Information & Communications Technology, Business Support Services, Engineering, Research & Development and Financial Services. In 2018, Cluj-Napoca was one of the most developed cities in the European Union in the GDP per capita group 19.000 – 27.000 at Purchasing Power Parity, cities that made a credible commitment at European level to promote knowledge, culture and creativity. In particular, participation in global production chains has generated the emergence of two types of internal markets: An internal market for the well-paid labor force employed in internationalized sectors that consumes a series of dedicated products and services: hospitality (restaurants, cafes, bars), food stuffs (meat products, pastries, premium alcoholic products), lifestyle services (hair salons , spas, gyms), cultural services (festivals, theatres, operas), location services (real estate services, interior design services, furniture manufacturing services). A set of markets that serve the global capital in reproducing their location (cleaning services, security, construction of type A office buildings, human resources). Both domestic and internationalized markets are responsible for the impressive development of the city between 2008 and 2018. The GDP of the Cluj Metropolitan Area and the private revenues of companies have doubled in the last decade.

Nationalism: Past as Prologue began as a single volume being compiled by Ad Akande, a scholar from South Africa, who proposed it to me as co-author about two years ago. The original idea was to examine how the damaging roots of nationalism have been corroding political systems around the world, and creating dangerous obstacles for necessary international cooperation. Since I (Bruce E. Johansen) has written profusely about climate change (global warming, a.k.a. infrared forcing), I suggested a concerted effort in that direction. This is a worldwide existential threat that affects every living thing on Earth. It often compounds upon itself, so delays in reducing emissions of fossil fuels are shortening the amount of time remaining to eliminate the use of fossil fuels to preserve a livable planet. Nationalism often impedes solutions to this problem (among many others), as nations place their singular needs above the common good. Our initial proposal got around, and abstracts on many subjects arrived. Within a few weeks, we had enough good material for a 100,000-word book. The book then fattened to two moderate volumes and then to four two very hefty tomes. We tried several different titles as good submissions swelled. We also discovered that our best contributors were experts in their fields, which ranged the world. We settled on three stand-alone books:” 1/ nationalism and racial justice. Our first volume grew as the growth of Black Lives Matter following the brutal killing of George Floyd ignited protests over police brutality and other issues during 2020, following the police assassination of Floyd in Minneapolis. It is estimated that more people took part in protests of police brutality during the summer of 2020 than any other series of marches in United States history. This includes upheavals during the 1960s over racial issues and against the war in Southeast Asia (notably Vietnam). We choose a volume on racism because it is one of nationalism’s main motive forces. This volume provides a worldwide array of work on nationalism’s growth in various countries, usually by authors residing in them, or in the United States with ethnic ties to the nation being examined, often recent immigrants to the United States from them. Our roster of contributors comprises a small United Nations of insightful, well-written research and commentary from Indonesia, New Zealand, Australia, China, India, South Africa, France, Portugal, Estonia, Hungary, Russia, Poland, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and the United States. Volume 2 (this one) describes and analyzes nationalism, by country, around the world, except for the United States; and 3/material directly related to President Donald Trump, and the United States. The first volume is under consideration at the Texas A & M University Press. The other two are under contract to Nova Science Publishers (which includes social sciences). These three volumes may be used individually or as a set. Environmental material is taken up in appropriate places in each of the three books. * * * * * What became the United States of America has been strongly nationalist since the English of present-day Massachusetts and Jamestown first hit North America’s eastern shores. The country propelled itself across North America with the self-serving ideology of “manifest destiny” for four centuries before Donald Trump came along. Anyone who believes that a Trumpian affection for deportation of “illegals” is a new thing ought to take a look at immigration and deportation statistics in Adam Goodman’s The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Deporting Immigrants (Princeton University Press, 2020). Between 1920 and 2018, the United States deported 56.3 million people, compared with 51.7 million who were granted legal immigration status during the same dates. Nearly nine of ten deportees were Mexican (Nolan, 2020, 83). This kind of nationalism, has become an assassin of democracy as well as an impediment to solving global problems. Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times (2019:A-25): that “In their 2018 book, How Democracies Die, the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt documented how this process has played out in many countries, from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, to Recep Erdogan’s Turkey, to Viktor Orban’s Hungary. Add to these India’s Narendra Modi, China’s Xi Jinping, and the United States’ Donald Trump, among others. Bit by bit, the guardrails of democracy have been torn down, as institutions meant to serve the public became tools of ruling parties and self-serving ideologies, weaponized to punish and intimidate opposition parties’ opponents. On paper, these countries are still democracies; in practice, they have become one-party regimes….And it’s happening here [the United States] as we speak. If you are not worried about the future of American democracy, you aren’t paying attention” (Krugmam, 2019, A-25). We are reminded continuously that the late Carl Sagan, one of our most insightful scientific public intellectuals, had an interesting theory about highly developed civilizations. Given the number of stars and planets that must exist in the vast reaches of the universe, he said, there must be other highly developed and organized forms of life. Distance may keep us from making physical contact, but Sagan said that another reason we may never be on speaking terms with another intelligent race is (judging from our own example) could be their penchant for destroying themselves in relatively short order after reaching technological complexity. This book’s chapters, introduction, and conclusion examine the worldwide rise of partisan nationalism and the damage it has wrought on the worldwide pursuit of solutions for issues requiring worldwide scope, such scientific co-operation public health and others, mixing analysis of both. We use both historical description and analysis. This analysis concludes with a description of why we must avoid the isolating nature of nationalism that isolates people and encourages separation if we are to deal with issues of world-wide concern, and to maintain a sustainable, survivable Earth, placing the dominant political movement of our time against the Earth’s existential crises. Our contributors, all experts in their fields, each have assumed responsibility for a country, or two if they are related. This work entwines themes of worldwide concern with the political growth of nationalism because leaders with such a worldview are disinclined to co-operate internationally at a time when nations must find ways to solve common problems, such as the climate crisis. Inability to cooperate at this stage may doom everyone, eventually, to an overheated, stormy future plagued by droughts and deluges portending shortages of food and other essential commodities, meanwhile destroying large coastal urban areas because of rising sea levels. Future historians may look back at our time and wonder why as well as how our world succumbed to isolating nationalism at a time when time was so short for cooperative intervention which is crucial for survival of a sustainable earth. Pride in language and culture is salubrious to individuals’ sense of history and identity. Excess nationalism that prevents international co-operation on harmful worldwide maladies is quite another. As Pope Francis has pointed out: For all of our connectivity due to expansion of social media, ability to communicate can breed contempt as well as mutual trust. “For all our hyper-connectivity,” said Francis, “We witnessed a fragmentation that made it more difficult to resolve problems that affect us all” (Horowitz, 2020, A-12). The pope’s encyclical, titled “Brothers All,” also said: “The forces of myopic, extremist, resentful, and aggressive nationalism are on the rise.” The pope’s document also advocates support for migrants, as well as resistance to nationalist and tribal populism. Francis broadened his critique to the role of market capitalism, as well as nationalism has failed the peoples of the world when they need co-operation and solidarity in the face of the world-wide corona virus pandemic. Humankind needs to unite into “a new sense of the human family [Fratelli Tutti, “Brothers All”], that rejects war at all costs” (Pope, 2020, 6-A). Our journey takes us first to Russia, with the able eye and honed expertise of Richard D. Anderson, Jr. who teaches as UCLA and publishes on the subject of his chapter: “Putin, Russian identity, and Russia’s conduct at home and abroad.” Readers should find Dr. Anderson’s analysis fascinating because Vladimir Putin, the singular leader of Russian foreign and domestic policy these days (and perhaps for the rest of his life, given how malleable Russia’s Constitution has become) may be a short man physically, but has high ambitions. One of these involves restoring the old Russian (and Soviet) empire, which would involve re-subjugating a number of nations that broke off as the old order dissolved about 30 years ago. President (shall we say czar?) Putin also has international ambitions, notably by destabilizing the United States, where election meddling has become a specialty. The sight of Putin and U.S. president Donald Trump, two very rich men (Putin $70-$200 billion; Trump $2.5 billion), nuzzling in friendship would probably set Thomas Jefferson and Vladimir Lenin spinning in their graves. The road of history can take some unanticipated twists and turns. Consider Poland, from which we have an expert native analysis in chapter 2, Bartosz Hlebowicz, who is a Polish anthropologist and journalist. His piece is titled “Lawless and Unjust: How to Quickly Make Your Own Country a Puppet State Run by a Group of Hoodlums – the Hopeless Case of Poland (2015–2020).” When I visited Poland to teach and lecture twice between 2006 and 2008, most people seemed to be walking on air induced by freedom to conduct their own affairs to an unusual degree for a state usually squeezed between nationalists in Germany and Russia. What did the Poles then do in a couple of decades? Read Hlebowicz’ chapter and decide. It certainly isn’t soft-bellied liberalism. In Chapter 3, with Bruce E. Johansen, we visit China’s western provinces, the lands of Tibet as well as the Uighurs and other Muslims in the Xinjiang region, who would most assuredly resent being characterized as being possessed by the Chinese of the Han to the east. As a student of Native American history, I had never before thought of the Tibetans and Uighurs as Native peoples struggling against the Independence-minded peoples of a land that is called an adjunct of China on most of our maps. The random act of sitting next to a young woman on an Air India flight out of Hyderabad, bound for New Delhi taught me that the Tibetans had something to share with the Lakota, the Iroquois, and hundreds of other Native American states and nations in North America. Active resistance to Chinese rule lasted into the mid-nineteenth century, and continues today in a subversive manner, even in song, as I learned in 2018 when I acted as a foreign adjudicator on a Ph.D. dissertation by a Tibetan student at the University of Madras (in what is now in a city called Chennai), in southwestern India on resistance in song during Tibet’s recent history. Tibet is one of very few places on Earth where a young dissident can get shot to death for singing a song that troubles China’s Quest for Lebensraum. The situation in Xinjiang region, where close to a million Muslims have been interned in “reeducation” camps surrounded with brick walls and barbed wire. They sing, too. Come with us and hear the music. Back to Europe now, in Chapter 4, to Portugal and Spain, we find a break in the general pattern of nationalism. Portugal has been more progressive governmentally than most. Spain varies from a liberal majority to military coups, a pattern which has been exported to Latin America. A situation such as this can make use of the term “populism” problematic, because general usage in our time usually ties the word into a right-wing connotative straightjacket. “Populism” can be used to describe progressive (left-wing) insurgencies as well. José Pinto, who is native to Portugal and also researches and writes in Spanish as well as English, in “Populism in Portugal and Spain: a Real Neighbourhood?” provides insight into these historical paradoxes. Hungary shares some historical inclinations with Poland (above). Both emerged from Soviet dominance in an air of developing freedom and multicultural diversity after the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed. Then, gradually at first, right wing-forces began to tighten up, stripping structures supporting popular freedom, from the courts, mass media, and other institutions. In Chapter 5, Bernard Tamas, in “From Youth Movement to Right-Liberal Wing Authoritarianism: The Rise of Fidesz and the Decline of Hungarian Democracy” puts the renewed growth of political and social repression into a context of worldwide nationalism. Tamas, an associate professor of political science at Valdosta State University, has been a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and a Fulbright scholar at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. His books include From Dissident to Party Politics: The Struggle for Democracy in Post-Communist Hungary (2007). Bear in mind that not everyone shares Orbán’s vision of what will make this nation great, again. On graffiti-covered walls in Budapest, Runes (traditional Hungarian script) has been found that read “Orbán is a motherfucker” (Mikanowski, 2019, 58). Also in Europe, in Chapter 6, Professor Ronan Le Coadic, of the University of Rennes, Rennes, France, in “Is There a Revival of French Nationalism?” Stating this title in the form of a question is quite appropriate because France’s nationalistic shift has built and ebbed several times during the last few decades. For a time after 2000, it came close to assuming the role of a substantial minority, only to ebb after that. In 2017, the candidate of the National Front reached the second round of the French presidential election. This was the second time this nationalist party reached the second round of the presidential election in the history of the Fifth Republic. In 2002, however, Jean-Marie Le Pen had only obtained 17.79% of the votes, while fifteen years later his daughter, Marine Le Pen, almost doubled her father's record, reaching 33.90% of the votes cast. Moreover, in the 2019 European elections, re-named Rassemblement National obtained the largest number of votes of all French political formations and can therefore boast of being "the leading party in France.” The brutality of oppressive nationalism may be expressed in personal relationships, such as child abuse. While Indonesia and Aotearoa [the Maoris’ name for New Zealand] hold very different ranks in the United Nations Human Development Programme assessments, where Indonesia is classified as a medium development country and Aotearoa New Zealand as a very high development country. In Chapter 7, “Domestic Violence Against Women in Indonesia and Aotearoa New Zealand: Making Sense of Differences and Similarities” co-authors, in Chapter 8, Mandy Morgan and Dr. Elli N. Hayati, from New Zealand and Indonesia respectively, found that despite their socio-economic differences, one in three women in each country experience physical or sexual intimate partner violence over their lifetime. In this chapter ther authors aim to deepen understandings of domestic violence through discussion of the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of theit countries to address domestic violence alongside studies of women’s attitudes to gender norms and experiences of intimate partner violence. One of the most surprising and upsetting scholarly journeys that a North American student may take involves Adolf Hitler’s comments on oppression of American Indians and Blacks as he imagined the construction of the Nazi state, a genesis of nationalism that is all but unknown in the United States of America, traced in this volume (Chapter 8) by co-editor Johansen. Beginning in Mein Kampf, during the 1920s, Hitler explicitly used the westward expansion of the United States across North America as a model and justification for Nazi conquest and anticipated colonization by Germans of what the Nazis called the “wild East” – the Slavic nations of Poland, the Baltic states, Ukraine, and Russia, most of which were under control of the Soviet Union. The Volga River (in Russia) was styled by Hitler as the Germans’ Mississippi, and covered wagons were readied for the German “manifest destiny” of imprisoning, eradicating, and replacing peoples the Nazis deemed inferior, all with direct references to events in North America during the previous century. At the same time, with no sense of contradiction, the Nazis partook of a long-standing German romanticism of Native Americans. One of Goebbels’ less propitious schemes was to confer honorary Aryan status on Native American tribes, in the hope that they would rise up against their oppressors. U.S. racial attitudes were “evidence [to the Nazis] that America was evolving in the right direction, despite its specious rhetoric about equality.” Ming Xie, originally from Beijing, in the People’s Republic of China, in Chapter 9, “News Coverage and Public Perceptions of the Social Credit System in China,” writes that The State Council of China in 2014 announced “that a nationwide social credit system would be established” in China. “Under this system, individuals, private companies, social organizations, and governmental agencies are assigned a score which will be calculated based on their trustworthiness and daily actions such as transaction history, professional conduct, obedience to law, corruption, tax evasion, and academic plagiarism.” The “nationalism” in this case is that of the state over the individual. China has 1.4 billion people; this system takes their measure for the purpose of state control. Once fully operational, control will be more subtle. People who are subject to it, through modern technology (most often smart phones) will prompt many people to self-censor. Orwell, modernized, might write: “Your smart phone is watching you.” Ming Xie holds two Ph.Ds, one in Public Administration from University of Nebraska at Omaha and another in Cultural Anthropology from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, where she also worked for more than 10 years at a national think tank in the same institution. While there she summarized news from non-Chinese sources for senior members of the Chinese Communist Party. Ming is presently an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice, West Texas A&M University. In Chapter 10, analyzing native peoples and nationhood, Barbara Alice Mann, Professor of Honours at the University of Toledo, in “Divide, et Impera: The Self-Genocide Game” details ways in which European-American invaders deprive the conquered of their sense of nationhood as part of a subjugation system that amounts to genocide, rubbing out their languages and cultures -- and ultimately forcing the native peoples to assimilate on their own, for survival in a culture that is foreign to them. Mann is one of Native American Studies’ most acute critics of conquests’ contradictions, and an author who retrieves Native history with a powerful sense of voice and purpose, having authored roughly a dozen books and numerous book chapters, among many other works, who has traveled around the world lecturing and publishing on many subjects. Nalanda Roy and S. Mae Pedron in Chapter 11, “Understanding the Face of Humanity: The Rohingya Genocide.” describe one of the largest forced migrations in the history of the human race, the removal of 700,000 to 800,000 Muslims from Buddhist Myanmar to Bangladesh, which itself is already one of the most crowded and impoverished nations on Earth. With about 150 million people packed into an area the size of Nebraska and Iowa (population less than a tenth that of Bangladesh, a country that is losing land steadily to rising sea levels and erosion of the Ganges river delta. The Rohingyas’ refugee camp has been squeezed onto a gigantic, eroding, muddy slope that contains nearly no vegetation. However, Bangladesh is majority Muslim, so while the Rohingya may starve, they won’t be shot to death by marauding armies. Both authors of this exquisite (and excruciating) account teach at Georgia Southern University in Savannah, Georgia, Roy as an associate professor of International Studies and Asian politics, and Pedron as a graduate student; Roy originally hails from very eastern India, close to both Myanmar and Bangladesh, so he has special insight into the context of one of the most brutal genocides of our time, or any other. This is our case describing the problems that nationalism has and will pose for the sustainability of the Earth as our little blue-and-green orb becomes more crowded over time. The old ways, in which national arguments often end in devastating wars, are obsolete, given that the Earth and all the people, plants, and other animals that it sustains are faced with the existential threat of a climate crisis that within two centuries, more or less, will flood large parts of coastal cities, and endanger many species of plants and animals. To survive, we must listen to the Earth, and observe her travails, because they are increasingly our own.

COVID-19 left the world on the brink of a humanitarian crisis, and brought to the fore the deep-seated problems of the weak and the vulnerable— migrant populations in the Global South. In India, while governments across states have justified their efforts in addressing migrants’ issues, their plight was a culmination of an already complacent system—with a lack of inclusivity. Employing a stakeholder approach, this study explores the precarity of migrants engaged in the construction sector in India, contextualizing their “engagement/dis-engagement” with technology as they attempt to access government welfare schemes amidst the COVID-19 crisis. While factors determining access to digital tools have been explored, the potential of such tools in addressing their concerns has been discussed. This study drew on interviews with heads of labour unions, government officials, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), heads of job matchmaking platforms, and the director of a construction company, to build a deeper understanding of their challenges.

Started in 1997, Safai Karmachari Andolan (SKA) is a national movement for eradicating the practice of manual scavenging—an occupation which involves cleaning of dry latrines with tin plates and brooms and carrying of human excreta by members of lower castes. The SKA has been leading the public campaign to destroy illegal dry latrines and for the proper implementation of the Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act, 1993. In 2003, SKA, with 18 other organizations, filed a public interest litigation petition in the Supreme Court of India seeking eradication of manual scavenging, liberation of all manual scavengers from their degrading jobs, and initiation of measures for their rehabilitation. The SKA also works for the dignity and better working conditions for sanitation workers such as sewage workers, pit workers, and sweepers. This chapter seeks to record the work of SKA including its influence on the law and policymaking process.

The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were a time of significant social change, with the industrialization of society and a massive increase in population, but there was no sudden transformation of ideas about Roman Britain. During this period, significant new archaeological finds came to light as a result of development associated with the industrialization of society, including the excavation of quarries, the construction of sewers, canals, and railways, while deep ploughing located further buried remains in the countryside. Writing in 1849, Charles Tucker suggested that the scale of development since the mid 1820s had contributed ‘so extensively to more certain knowledge of the habits and manners of the early occupants’ of Britain. Improvements in public transport resulted in a wider popular interest in the past, with the creation of national and regional archaeological societies, including the British Archaeological Association, which held its first meeting in 1844. These new organizations held meetings at which antiquaries could discuss archaeological discoveries, while the published proceedings disseminated knowledge. The realization of the antiquity of the human race brought about a serious and sustained challenge to the biblical story of creation during the middle of the nineteenth century. Gradually, with the developing knowledge of geology, ‘prehistory’ was seen to represent a great depth of time and this made it possible to conceive of a chronologically based understanding of the ‘primeval’ past. Understandings of Roman Britain, however, were slower to change, since they were based on more firmly established roots derived from centuries of study of classical texts, artefacts, and sites. Nevertheless, important discoveries helped to formulate new ideas. The period from the 1780s to 1820 was highly significant with the impressive architectural remains discovered at Bath and at a number of Roman villa sites, demonstrating the wealth of some elements of society in Roman southern Britain. The context for reflection upon these archaeological remains was transformed through the actions of British collectors in the Eastern Mediterranean who, from the 1840s, brought home classical monuments and artefacts for display in the British Museum. A renewed focus of interest in ‘the Roman Wall’ developed in the mid nineteenth century, while significant new work was undertaken on the buried Roman remains at London, Cirencester, Silchester, and Verulamium.

Abstract In this chapter, the main argument is that a mix of modernity, traditionalism, and postmodernity explains why cultural and social diversity exist in nation states like India and why the country remains relevant in the world economic stage. In practical terms this implies that every organization in India has to at some point of time, has to embrace the ideal of diversity to make a constructive contribution to the nation-building process. Even a political organization that owes its roots to religious identity will have to adopt a mix of modernity and postmodernity thinking to sustain its long-term relevance. It is further argued that dynamic democracies such as India do not resist globalization—rather they co-opt them through a postmodern process. Similarly India’s IT cities like Bengaluru have a postmodern quality about them. A country is able to co-opt the forces of globalization when it embraces the facets of the traditional, the modern, and the postmodern in its day-to-day existence.

Abstract Many NGOs and Civil Society groups have played an important role in the field of environment by way of constructive activism. Civil society groups have been enlisted as participants in MEAs and trade agreements. Thanks to civil society activism, many development projects in developing countries, have been compelled to change their track and pay for social costs. It is argued that the success of sustainable development programmes and projects depends on how effectively they integrate activities in their multiple dimensions. A large number of projects and programmes that address global commons are designed and executed in a centralized fashion. Organizational centralization breeds incompetence. Unfortunately, both governmental bodies and civil society organizations do not deal with global commons oriented programmes and actions in an integrated manner. The critical challenge before civil society groups lies in being able to meld cross-cutting issues involving global conventions with national and local development priorities. Since most of the civil society groups successfully undertaking or supporting operational projects are locally or regionally based, they are able to customize projects to suit local needs and capabilities. This, in turn, creates conditions for the adoption of non-instrumental approaches to project implementation and monitoring. However, there are many grassroot organizations that do not have the capabilities of executing global commons projects. The importance of capacity building for such organizations cannot be under-emphasized.

After witnessing a year-on-year growth of 50% since its inception in 1993, Ziggurat Developers was well on its way to being the next niche, technically sophisticated, and edgy construction company in Mumbai, India. This case takes a deep dive into how winning a prestigious construction contract in the country led to Ziggurat's loss of revenue, cash flow deficits, year-on-year losses, high financing costs, loss of banking, idling of resources, loss of credibility, and high employee turnover rate. Instead of these significant contracts providing a strong foothold in the construction industry, it destroyed Ziggurat and the recovery took a decade. Performance improvement is often the study of how to improve performance when discrepancies are confined to a silo or a subset of functions within an organization. But how do you get back to exemplary performance when you are boxed in and there is no way out?

In this final chapter, we contend that despite the fact that differing constructions of the Indo-Pacific occur across matrices of space, time, and selected world-view methodologies, it is important to conclude that not all constructions and geopolitical imaginations are equal. Consequently, we prioritize the ongoing relationships between the US and China: these will largely determine the geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific region in the twenty-first century and beyond. Also, we end the book on a constructive note, exploring a regional institutional model which is the closest we have yet experienced in terms of being representative of Indo-Pacific nation-states, from the western Indian Ocean, to the western periphery of the Pacific. The case of the Indian Ocean Rim Association, now over twenty years since its inception, is an exemplar (however imperfect) of the maritime regional organization wrestling with the daily realities of what it is to operate in a new Indo-Pacific world.

The second chapter begins with an explanation of the origins, evolution, and organizational infrastructure of the Indian nuclear programme. Three Science and Technology Studies (STS) case studies deploying the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) approach are introduced in the theory section and their combined insights are used to organize various individual and collective actors in India based on their initial reactions to the nuclear deal. The chapter then focuses specifically on the debate between two powerful bureaucracies (Department of Atomic Energy [DAE] and Ministry of External Affairs [MEA] within the Indian state over the civilian-military proportions of the separation plan and the status of the fast breeder reactors). The MEA’s generalist vision and the DAE’s narrower departmental vision are observed in the form of two contending separation plans with different civil-military facility balances and rival safeguarded versus unsafeguarded statuses of the fast breeder reactor. The DAE’s tactics to win the debate are elucidated.

This chapter examines the discursive production of some spaces as ‘filthy’ and ‘criminal’ places, and thus requiring a specific form of policing. By attaching meanings to geographical spaces and people therein, such constructions create a division between a ‘self’ to be protected and an ‘other’ to be policed, and in the context of a postcolonial society ridden by hierarchies of various nature makes for easy accommodation and tolerance of violence. The chapter draws on texts of laws and court judgments, reports of state bodies and rights advocacy organizations, and personal interactions and ethnographic observations in the field. Focusing on everyday policing practices in contemporary Delhi, and conceptualizing categorizations of ‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘civilized’ and ‘criminal’, ‘clean’ and ‘dirty’ and ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’, the chapter looks for their implications in the acceptance and understanding of the role of the state in society.

Accidents in construction industry have the major negative impacts in many countries. The objectives of this paper are: (1) examine the current safety practices in Indian construction industry (2) identify the causes of accidents (3) recommend solutions to improve safety performance at Indian construction workplace. Interviews were conducted with experienced professionals in Indian construction industry. Results indicated that accidents were caused by the combination of organizational and individual factors. Based on these findings, it was suggested that adoption of information technologies in various ways would help to reduce accidents by addressing the following issues (1) safety planning, (2) safety education and (3) safety monitoring.

This paper investigates the Gülen movement’s repertoires of action in order to determine how it differs from traditional Islamic revivalist movements and from the so-called ‘New Social Movements’ in the Western world. Two propositions lead the discussion: First, unlike many Islamic revivalist movements, the Gülen movement shaped its identity against the perceived threat of a trio of enemies, as Nursi named them a century ago – ignorance, disunity, and poverty. This perception of the opposition is crucial to understanding the apolitical mind-set of the Gülen movement’s fol- lowers. Second, unlike the confrontational New Social Movements, the Gülen movement has engaged in ‘moral opposition’, in which the movement’s actors seek to empathise with the adversary by creating (what Bakhtin calls) ‘dialogic’ relationships. ‘Moral opposition’ has enabled the movement to be more alert strategically as well as more productive tactically in solving the everyday practical problems of Muslims in Turkey. A striking example of this ‘moral opposition’ was witnessed in the Merve Kavakci incident in 1999, when the move- ment tried to build bridges between the secular and Islamist camps, while criticising and educating both parties during the post-February 28 period in Turkey. In this way the Gülen movement’s performance of opposition can contribute new theoretical and practical tools for our understanding of social movements. 104 | P a g e Recent works on social movements have criticized the longstanding tradition of classify- ing social movement types as “strategy-oriented” versus “identity-oriented” (Touraine 1981; Cohen 1985; Rucht 1988) and “identity logic of action” versus “instrumentalist logic of ac- tion” (Duyvendak and Giugni 1995) by regarding identities as a key element of a move- ment’s strategic and tactical repertoire (see Bernstein 1997, 2002; Gamson 1997; Polletta 1998a; Polletta and Jasper 2001; Taylor and Van Dyke 2004). Bifurcation of identity ver- sus strategy suggests the idea that some movements target the state and the economy, thus, they are “instrumental” and “strategy-oriented”; whereas some other movements so-called “identity movements” challenge the dominant cultural patterns and codes and are considered “expressive” in content and “identity-oriented.” New social movement theorists argue that identity movements try to gain recognition and respect by employing expressive strategies wherein the movement itself becomes the message (Touraine 1981; Cohen 1985; Melucci 1989, 1996). Criticizing these dualisms, some scholars have shown the possibility of different social movement behaviour under different contextual factors (e.g. Bernstein 1997; Katzenstein 1998). In contrast to new social movement theory, this work on the Gülen movement indi- cates that identity movements are not always expressive in content and do not always follow an identity-oriented approach; instead, identity movements can synchronically be strategic as well as expressive. In her article on strategies and identities in Black Protest movements during the 1960s, Polletta (1994) criticizes the dominant theories of social movements, which a priori assume challengers’ unified common interests. Similarly, Jenkins (1983: 549) refers to the same problem in the literature by stating that “collective interests are assumed to be relatively unproblematic and to exist prior to mobilization.” By the same token, Taylor and Whittier (1992: 104) criticize the longstanding lack of explanation “how structural inequality gets translated into subjective discontent.” The dominant social movement theory approaches such as resource mobilization and political process regard these problems as trivial because of their assumption that identities and framing processes can be the basis for interests and further collective action but cannot change the final social movement outcome. Therefore, for the proponents of the mainstream theories, identities of actors are formed in evolutionary processes wherein social movements consciously frame their goals and produce relevant dis- courses; yet, these questions are not essential to explain why collective behaviour occurs (see McAdam, McCarthy, and Zald 1996). This reductionist view of movement culture has been criticized by a various number of scholars (e.g. Goodwin and Jasper 1999; Polletta 1997, 1999a, 1999b; Eyerman 2002). In fact, the debate over the emphases (interests vis-à-vis identities) is a reflection of the dissent between American and European sociological traditions. As Eyerman and Jamison (1991: 27) note, the American sociologists focused on “the instrumentality of movement strategy formation, that is, on how movement organizations went about trying to achieve their goals,” whereas the European scholars concerned with the identity formation processes that try to explain “how movements produced new historical identities for society.” Although the social movement theorists had recognized the deficiencies within each approach, the attempts to synthesize these two traditions in the literature failed to address the empirical problems and methodological difficulties. While criticizing the mainstream American collective behaviour approaches that treat the collective identities as given, many leading European scholars fell into a similar trap by a 105 | P a g e priori assuming that the collective identities are socio-historical products rather than cog- nitive processes (see, for instance, Touraine 1981). New Social Movement (NSM) theory, which is an offshoot of European tradition, has lately been involved in the debate over “cog- nitive praxis” (Eyerman and Jamison 1991), “signs” (Melucci 1996), “identity as strategy” (Bernstein 1997), protest as “art” (Jasper 1997), “moral performance” (Eyerman 2006), and “storytelling” (Polletta 2006). In general, these new formulations attempt to bring mental structures of social actors and symbolic nature of social action back in the study of collec- tive behaviour. The mental structures of the actors should be considered seriously because they have a potential to change the social movement behaviours, tactics, strategies, timing, alliances and outcomes. The most important failure, I think, in the dominant SM approaches lies behind the fact that they hinder the possibility of the construction of divergent collective identities under the same structures (cf. Polletta 1994: 91). This study investigates on how the Gülen movement differed from other Islamic social move- ments under the same structural factors that were realized by the organized opposition against Islamic activism after the soft coup in 1997. Two propositions shall lead my discussion here: First, unlike many Islamic revivalist movements, the Gülen movement shaped its identity against perceived threat of the triple enemies, what Nursi defined a century ago: ignorance, disunity, and poverty. This perception of the opposition is crucial to grasp non-political men- tal structures of the Gülen movement followers. Second, unlike the confrontational nature of the new social movements, the Gülen movement engaged in a “moral opposition,” in which the movement actors try to empathize with the enemy by creating “dialogic” relationships.