This second issue of Management, Procurement and Law for 2026 features seven articles that, collectively, challenge the construction sector to address a question underlying much of its current reform agenda: whether the industry’s human, organisational, and institutional systems are sufficiently aligned to sustain the performance levels increasingly demanded by governments, clients, and communities. Amid growing pressures, digital transformation, changing labour markets, procurement reform, and governance fragility in emerging economies, the articles presented here offer a sobering answer: the gap between what the industry strives to deliver and what its underlying systems can reliably support remains substantial. Closing that gap requires focus not only on technology and techniques but also on leadership, culture, contractual design, and institutional support integrity.The first article sets the analytical tone for the issue by focusing on leadership conditions that enable project performance. Okeke et al. (2026) present a meta-analytical review of team temporal leadership (TTL), which is the set of behaviours through which leaders manage the sequencing, pacing, and strategic use of time within project teams. Drawing on 30 peer-reviewed studies published between 2015 and 2024, the analysis identifies effect sizes ranging from 0.29 to 0.42 between TTL and project success indicators, including timely completion, team learning, and cost efficiency. These figures are substantively significant in a sector where coordination failures often lead to schedule overruns and contractual disputes. What the review clearly demonstrates is that temporally conscious leadership is not an innate trait but a skill that can be learned – one that leadership development programmes in construction have been slow to intentionally cultivate. The authors encourage practitioners to incorporate TTL principles into formal development frameworks and to treat strategic time management as a core, rather than secondary, professional skill.Building on concerns about team dynamics, the second article broadens the leadership discussion to include increasingly common distributed, digitally mediated work environments. Alkoud and Qatamin’s (2026) bibliometric analysis examines three decades of virtual team research through 413 Scopus-indexed documents, identifying five key themes – digital entrepreneurship, leadership, collaborative work, workplace dynamics, and virtual team formation – and tracking their development from experimental settings to the mainstream post-COVID workplace. Although the construction sector has traditionally resisted remote and hybrid work models, it is now undergoing this transition. The study highlights ongoing gaps in understanding how cultural diversity influences virtual team cohesion and how leadership functions without physical presence. These gaps have direct operational implications: as large infrastructure projects rely increasingly on internationally distributed teams, the inability to lead effectively across digital and cultural gaps poses a structural risk that project managers and procurement authorities cannot ignore overlook.It is precisely at this intersection of digital environments and workforce vulnerability that the third article demands attention. Verma and Yadav (2026) explore how workplace incivility affects job performance in India’s gig economy, analysing the mediating roles of organisational culture and psychological well-being, as well as the moderating impact of digital literacy. Using structural equation modelling of data from 461 gig workers, the study shows how incivility spreads through cultural and psychological pathways to reduce performance – and how digital literacy can partly break this chain. The importance of this finding goes beyond the Indian gig scene. As construction supply chains increasingly depend on platform-mediated, flexible, and informally contracted labour, the psychological and cultural conditions of that labour become strategically important. A workforce facing ongoing incivility and low digital confidence is not just a welfare issue; it is a productivity and safety concern. The study’s call for organisations to invest simultaneously in cultural climate and digital skills should be seen as a policy for procurement and human resources imperative.Expanding this view into the broader field of digital technology adoption, the fourth article provides one of the first multi-national assessments of how construction professionals perceive and value sensing technologies across various institutional and cultural settings. The cross-sectional survey by Williams et al. (2026), which analyses data from 120 professionals in three countries, reveals a consistent hierarchy of perceived benefits: improvements in project performance, enhanced safety environment, and cost savings. The fact that these findings are consistent across different national contexts is itself significant, indicating that the value of sensing technology is not dependent on culture, even if the pathways to adoption are. The study’s contribution to the idea of technology adaptation – the ongoing process by which organisations integrate digital tools into their existing workflows – highlights a managerial challenge that goes beyond borders: adoption is rarely just a simple procurement decision but an ongoing organisational learning process that requires continuous investment and cross-team leadership commitment.From the perspectives of human and technological performance, the fifth article addresses the challenge of measurement. Lee (2026) discusses a common and legally significant issue in construction management: how to prove and measure disruption damages caused by change orders. While change orders are frequent, their indirect costs – such as overall disruption, lost productivity, and schedule delays – are difficult to quantify accurately. The proposed visualisation method offers a practical way to support claims, giving project managers and legal professionals a structured, evidence-based approach to demonstrate the impact on schedule and productivity simultaneously. In an industry where disputes often lead to costly arbitration and litigation, tools that enable transparent and defensible disruption quantification are valuable for both operational efficiency and governance. This article is relevant not only to project managers but also to the education of quantity surveyors and construction lawyers. The sixth article explores framework construction agreements based on nine South African organisations’ experiences. Mojela et al. (2026) note that clients and contractors report positive outcomes like efficiency, collaboration, and cost savings. However, challenges remain: clients struggle with structural complexity, and contractors lack commercial knowledge. These issues show that moving from transactional to relational contracting requires ongoing capacity building, not just policy. In South Africa, with its focus on economic transformation, equity, and local industry, the need for institutional reform in collaborative procurement is clear.The issue concludes where the analysis of construction systems must ultimately lead: the question of governance integrity. Nguyen et al. (2026) empirically examine the socio-economic impacts of construction corruption in Vietnam, analysing data from 71 construction professionals across 16 potential impact dimensions. The findings identify the erosion of fair competition as the most damaging consequence of systemic corruption, followed by the suppression of company development, the entrenchment of construction monopolies, the diminishment of government revenue, and the worsening of income inequality. These findings will not surprise practitioners in emerging economies; what the study provides is an empirical foundation to develop targeted policy responses. Corruption in construction is not just an ethical failure; it is a market distortion with multiplying socio-economic consequences that fall disproportionately on smaller firms, new entrants, and the communities that rely on public infrastructure. The study’s factor-analytic framework offers policymakers a structured basis for prioritising anti-corruption efforts based on their measurable impact.This issue's articles connect with multiple UN Sustainable Development Goals. SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure) is reflected in discussions about adopting sensing technology, creating virtual teams, and digital transformation in decentralised workforces. SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth) is examined through the analysis of gig workers’ incivility, psychological health, and the factors influencing labour productivity. SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) relates to productivity and procurement strategies that influence how built environments are delivered and managed. SDG 16 (Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions) underpins the final argument, emphasising that governance integrity, anti-corruption measures, and fair contracts are essential for sustainable construction systems. Overall, the seven articles highlight that construction performance is fundamentally a human, organisational, and institutional challenge, requiring responses that address all three aspects simultaneously. These seven articles reject viewing construction management as separate technical problems solvable by isolated solutions. Instead, they depict a sector where performance is shaped at multiple levels: leadership quality, organisational culture coherence, effective technology use, disruption measurement, procurement collaboration, and institutional integrity. Progress requires addressing all levels; excelling in one, like leadership, while neglecting issues like gig worker incivility, fails. Similarly, adopting sensing tech without tackling procurement corruption is insufficient sustainability.As a CIB-partner journal, Management, Procurement, and Law continues to offer a platform for research that connects policy, practice, and scholarship. This issue encourages readers to consider a key question for the next stage of industry transformation.If construction performance relies on leadership culture, labour dignity, and integrity as much as technical ability, how should procurement and regulations be designed to reflect this?I thank the contributing authors for their scholarship, the reviewers for their intellectual rigor, and the readers (researchers, practitioners, and policymakers) whose ongoing engagement sustains this work meaningful.Happy Reading!
Fidelis Emuze (Mon,) studied this question.