In the process of internationalization of construction contractors, international enterprises as main contractors (IMC) need to consider whether part of the contract should be subcontracted to local subcontractors (LSC) to gain a competitive advantage when competing with local main contractors (LMC). The involvement of local subcontractors can usually help reduce cost through the cost spillover effect. However, it should be noted that the share of local subcontractors with local main contractors with an inferior quality may lead to quality spillover. The Hotelling model is therefore adopted to investigate the subcontracting decisions of main contractors considering both cost and quality spillover effects. Many scenarios are simulated and the results show that LMCs with inferior quality can always choose the subcontracting strategy to obtain increased profit regardless of the strategy that IMCs adopt. On the other hand, IMCs need to balance the cost spillover of subcontracting and the quality spillover for improving the quality level of LSCs. The results are useful for contractors to make decisions that are relevant to the adoption of subcontracting strategies to obtain competitive advantages.@en

As one of the most important sustainability project management practices, prefabrication has been drawing increasing attention to project construction practitioners. However, due to the needs of high technology and large capital investment, there is a great challenge for suppliers to adopt prefabrication in mega project construction. Therefore, designing an adequate incentive mechanism has become a daunting task for the project owner, which aims to ensure a socially and environmentally friendly project delivery. In this study, an incentive model with reputational concerns from the perspective of the project owner was established and how this incentive affects supplier's effort and project owner's profit was investigated. By contrasting to the incentive model without reputational concerns, when the reputation incentive is considered in the incentive contract, both supplier's effort and project owner's profit increase. In addition, adding reputation incentive implies more expenses, thus the project owner may not want to take this strategy due to the potential expense increase. Therefore, the study also considered an incentive mechanism with constant total incentive intensity. By comparison, the result shows that this strategy is also useful which can improve supplier's effort and project owner's profit.

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The large scale of construction in mega projects leads to significant environmental and socioeconomic impacts; thus, the projects should also exhibit greater social responsibility. Adopting green supply chain management in the construction process is an important way to realize the goal of sustainable development of mega projects. Because the green supply chain behavior during construction is mainly demonstrated by contractors, it is especially important to study the evolutionary trend of their behavior. Thus, to explore the cooperative relationship among contractors, this paper considers a lengthy construction period, multi-agent participation dynamics, and opportunistic behavior-all are key features of mega projects-and establishes an evolutionary game model. Specifically, a replicator dynamic equation is used to describe the long-term effects of the contractor's decisions. Equilibrium determinants are then analyzed and simulated. The results show that the initial probabilities of the two types of contractors (main contractor and subcontractor) demonstrating opportunistic behaviors have a significant effect on the direction of evolution of the mega project. The main contractor, who dominates the subsidy allocation by the government and project owner, should pay attention to maintaining a balance in the income distribution between him or her and the subcontractor. Additionally, there is an optimal distribution coefficient for the subsidy that minimizes the overall probability of opportunistic behavior. This paper provides a point of reference for the decisions of the main contractor and the subcontractor in the green supply chain of mega projects.

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We investigate quantum Hall stripes under an in-plane magnetic field B in a variable-density two-dimensional electron gas. At filling factor ν=9/2, we observe one, two, and zero Binduced reorientations at low, intermediate, and high densities, respectively. The appearance of these distinct regimes is due to a strong density dependence of the Binduced orienting mechanism which triggers the second reorientation, rendering stripes parallel to B. In contrast, the mechanism which reorients stripes perpendicular to B showed no noticeable dependence on density. Measurements at ν=9/2 and 11/2 at the same, tilted magnetic field allow us to rule out the density dependence of the native symmetry-breaking field as a dominant factor. Our findings further suggest that screening might play an important role in determining stripe orientation, providing guidance in developing theories aimed at identifying and describing native and B induced symmetry-breaking fields.@en