2022 Best Paper Award

The Editorial Board of the ASCE Journal of Construction Engineering and Management is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2022 Best Paper Award: Marzena Baker, Muhammad Ali, and Erica French are coauthors of the article entitled “Leadership Diversity and Its Influence on Equality Initiatives and Performance: Insights for Construction Management,” which appeared in the October 2021 issue, https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)CO.1943-7862.0002147.

Diversity in leadership is a long-standing topic of interest in construction engineering and management research and practice. This paper examines a remarkably large sample of 367 organizations in Australia to identify various possible relationships: (1) gender diversity in boards of directors and top management teams, and the prevalence of human relations (HR) policies that encourage diversity and work–life (WL) balance initiatives that are expected to enhance recruitment and retention of diverse employees; (2) HR and WL initiatives and organizational financial performance; and (3) the moderating effects of a diverse environment on HR and WL with financial performance. Input was extracted from credible publicly available databases for boards of directors and top management gender diversity, HR and WL initiatives, and organizational financial performance.

Notable conclusions include the following:

The outcomes of this research support the view that gender diversity in boards of directors, work–life balance initiatives, and a robust diversity environment enhance organizational financial performance.

This paper was selected from a field of 196 technical papers, 14 case studies, two technical notes, and eight state-of-the-art reviews that were published from July 2021 through June 2022 in the Journal of Construction Engineering and Management. For this awards cycle, the Awards Committee included the following editorial board members: Dr. Young Bai, Dr. Mehmet E. Ozbek, Dr. Carolyn M. Clevenger, Dr. Baabak Ashuri, Dr. Caldas Carlos, Dr. SangHyun Lee, Dr. Reza Akhavian, and Dr. Youngjib Ham, with Dr. Charles T. Jahren serving as the Chair. Special thanks are due to Dr. Daniel Tran, Dr. Mounir El Asmar, Dr. Min Liu, and Dr. Fei Dai for providing additional reviews for this and other ASCE awards. Taryn Dollings provided administrative support as an ASCE journals staff member. Thanks to the other editorial board members, authors, reviewers, and readers who help make this journal a success and this award meaningful.