The success of construction projects heavily depends on the compliance of parties with ethical codes of conduct. Unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB) may serve as a barrier to close collaboration between parties. Although empowering leadership is generally considered to be beneficial to project management, this study argues that empowering leadership may unintentionally increase the tendency of employees to adopt UPB. The aim of this study is to uncover the influencing mechanism underlying empowering leadership and UPB by introducing the mediating role of role stress. It is hypothesized that empowering leadership can enhance employees’ role stress, thereby increasing the engagement of UPB. Moreover, organizational goal clarity can ease the negative effect of empowering leadership. With data collected from experienced construction professionals, the results of the covariance-based structural equation modeling (CB-SEM) supported the hypothesis. The findings help in understanding why employees may adopt unethical behaviors when they feel high levels of role stress that are caused by empowerment. Theoretically, the study enriches the literature on empowering leadership and UPB in the construction context. In practice, managers are reminded about the adverse effect of empowering leadership on employees’ unethical behaviors. Organizational management tools are suggested to assist in assigning work appropriate to employees’ roles. Regular checks and feedback about organizational goals are also necessary to confirm compliant behaviors and progress.

Globally, monitoring productivity, occupational health, and safety of construction workers has long been a significant concern. To address this issue, there is an urgent need for efficient methods to continuously monitor construction sites and recognize workers’ actions in a timely manner. Recently, advances in electronic technology and pose estimation algorithms have made it easier to obtain skeleton and joint trajectories of human bodies. Deep learning algorithms have emerged as robust and automated tools for extracting and processing 3D skeleton information on construction sites, proving effective for workforce action assessment. However, most previous studies on action recognition have primarily focused on single-stream data, which limited the network’s ability to capture more comprehensive worker action features. Therefore, this research proposes a Spatial-Temporal Multi-Feature Network (STMF-Net) designed to utilize six 3D skeleton-based features to monitor and capture the movements of construction workers, thereby recognizing their actions. The experimental results demonstrate an accuracy of 79.36%. The significance of this work lies in its potential to enhance management models within the construction industry, ultimately improving workers’ health and work efficiency.

Construction 4.0 presents a multitude of opportunities; however, it also increases the chance of disputes. Efficient dispute management contributes to the sustainable production of construction works. Enhancing negotiation management and negotiators’ settlement ability is valuable, given that negotiation is recognized as the most effective dispute resolution method. This study explores negotiation settlement by identifying negotiators’ settlement facilitating elements in construction dispute negotiation (CDN). A purposive literature review identified six key elements, naming preparation, integration, goodwill, continuity, commitment, and self-efficacy. With data collected from experienced construction dispute negotiators, the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) results confirmed the significance of these elements. Accordingly, recommendations for negotiators include (i) technique (i.e., good preparation and applying integrative tactics); (ii) interaction (i.e., showing goodwill and relationship maintenance); and (iii) attitude (i.e., commitment to negotiate and being confident) if the negotiation settlement is desired. Management can implement these recommendations in their training manual to cultivate negotiators’ problem solving and settlement-oriented mindset. Negotiators can also review their behaviors throughout the negotiations and make timely adjustments as deemed necessary. Reaching an amicable negotiated settlement would not only save resources, preserving business relationships is of equal importance for a sustainable construction industry.