Purpose Due to the increasing risk and uncertainty of construction projects, contractual flexibility has been considered as an effective tool to cope with emergences and to promote cooperation between owners and contractors. However, in practice, owners often failed to build an efficient cooperative relationship via contracts, resulting in a lacking of appropriate justice. Furthermore, due to a lack of available empirical research, the influence of contractual flexibility on the cooperative behavior of contractors requires further investigation. The purpose of this paper is to fill this gap by conducting empirical research from the perspective of justice perception. Design/methodology/approach A theoretical model was developed and a series of hypotheses were proposed. Then, partial least squares structural equation modeling analyses were conducted on a sample of 188 respondents. Findings The results show that contractual content and executing flexibility both have a positive influence on the cooperative behavior of a contractor, which was partially mediated by distribution, procedural, and interactional justice perceptions. Moreover, content flexibility has a significant impact on all three types of justice perception, and the execution of flexibility has more impact on interactional justice compared to other justice perceptions. Originality/value The findings contribute to an improved understanding of how contractual flexibility affects the cooperative behavior of contractors, indicating that the owner could develop a fair exchange relationship through flexible contracting and motivation of the other party.

Abstract:The aim of this paper was to evaluate the research status of knowledge management (KM) and identify the characteristics of KM in the literature. We selected and studied in detail 7628 original research articles from the Web of Science from 1974 to 2017. Although many studies have contributed to the evolution of the KM domain, our results showed that a comprehensive bibliometric and visualization investigation was required. The literature on KM has grown rapidly since the 1970s. The United States of America, as the original contributing country, has also internationally collaborated the most in this field of study. The National Cheng Kung University has made the highest number of contributions. The majority of authors contributed a small number of publications. Additionally, the most common category in KM research was management. The main publications for KM research include Journal of Knowledge Management, and Knowledge Management Research & Practice. A keywords analysis determined that "knowledge sharing", "innovation", "ontology", and "knowledge management" were consistent hotspots in knowledge management research. Through a document co-citation analysis, the intellectual structures of knowledge management were defined, and four emerging trends were identified that focus on new phenomenon, the practice of knowledge management, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) management based on knowledge perspective, innovation and performance, and big data-enabled KM. We also provide eight research questions for future studies. Our results will benefit academics, researchers, and research students who want to rapidly obtain an overview of knowledge management research. This study can also be a starting point for communication between academics and practitioners.

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Wearable strain sensors with water repellency can enable the monitoring of human health and body motions when in contact with water; however, realization of such sensors with both high sensitivity and dynamic wetting behaviors simultaneously in air and underwater environment is a challenging task. Herein, a superhydrophobic, breathable, and wearable microfiber composite (SBWMC) strain sensor is fabricated using a stearic acid functionalized multi‐walled carbon nanotubes/TiO2 modified textile. The resultant network of hierarchical micro/nano structure endows the SBWMC surface with excellent conductivity and water damage prevention, and it maintains superhydrophobicity after mechanical abrasion, illumination, and water soaking. More importantly, the SBWMC strain sensor simultaneously achieves the wide sensing ranges (strain over 100%) and superior sensitivity (gauge factor of 461.5) in air, and it can efficiently monitor real‐time bending of human joints in air. Compared to traditional sensors, this SBWMC strain sensor also exhibits superior sensitivity in underwater environment, even comparable to that in air. Undoubtedly, such smart sensor offers broad application prospects in next generation of wearable electronic devices in extremely humid environments.

The flexible contract is an important mechanism for owners to govern contractors in construction projects. Given the limited explanatory power of the justice mechanism and the important role of relational factors, this study explored the role of ongoing trust and justice perception in the relationship between contractual flexibility and the contractor’s cooperative behavior and aimed to further reveal the potential influence paths through an empirical analysis. We found the following: (1) apart from justice perception, ongoing trust is another crucial mediation factor in the relationship. (2) Together with the former, ongoing trust plays significantly multiple mediation effects and constitutes the main indirect influence paths, among which the parallel one is strongest and the chain one comes third. (3) Moreover, both factors are more likely to be impacted by contract executing flexibility, compared with contract content flexibility. These findings enrich relational mechanism research and provide some guidance for the owner to build contractual flexibility to govern contractors’ behavior.