Private Public Partnerships and the Public Finance Initiative engage private organisations in providing public services through long-term concessions. The paper examines management of these projects ...concerning the relationships between the primary parties: Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) and constituent members, and the relationship of the SPV with the client. The objectives are to establish how relationships are managed between private sector organisations within the concession, and between the private organisations and public sector client. The management of relationships is explored through concepts of relational contracting and relationship management. How relationship management links to project management is also explored. Trust and confidence are used as measures of relationship conditions, which are mapped against thirty relationship management dimensions. An evaluation is provided concerning relationship management for PFI/PPP projects, the primary conclusion being that greater strategic and tactical consideration is given to the proactive management of relationships. Adoption will foster collaborative working that goes beyond reactive behavioural adjustment to new procurement conditions, conceptually a shift from
relational contracting to proactive
relationship management principles.
A unified theory of the management of projects does not exist. Projects are context-specific and located in open-systems. While this is now widely acknowledged, research methodologies often continue ...to overlook this. This paper addresses methodological issues that have yet to be fully resolved in research in projects and their management and evaluates how these issues have a direct and indirect impact upon research and practice. We argue that the pursuit of explanations that rely upon identifying
general patterns based upon cause and effect marginalises the
particular, while a focus upon the
particular frustrates the emergence of common patterns, shared meanings and normative recommendations. The paper reviews research practice in the light of project management paradigms and their more general epistemological underpinnings.
This process article reports on the use of Gioia data structures as a visual boundary object in project management research. Gioia data structures work as effective boundary objects that span a ...research team’s geographical distance in a virtual setting as an artifact for promoting visual collaboration in project management research. We demonstrate the use of boundary objects as generative tools for cross-disciplinary teams to share a common design method. While boundary objects have been used in project management studies, we extend their use to support collaborative research in project management.
The purpose of a project is to create the preconditions for other activities. Yet the main focus of project research and much of practice is on the project itself, namely project characteristics and ...the means to execute projects. This conceptual paper addresses the purpose, and specifically creating the preconditions for other activities in use; an overlooked issue in research and practice. The delivery of valuable projects that fulfil their purpose is central to a thriving economy and society, and therefore creating the preconditions requires a great deal more attention.
Project provision cannot be compared with other standardized production and routinized service activities. Indeed, the standardization and routinization of other activities is made possible by the delivery and value realization of projects once put to use for sponsors, owners and end-users.
Preconditions come in several forms. An initial and indicative taxonomy of six categories of preconditions are proposed. The taxonomy provides a basis for understanding the preconditions as a first step for more detailed assessment of delivering projects with valuable outcomes. Such an approach links to other theoretical lenses, such as learning, service design and the service-dominant logic, to provide the conceptual means to evaluate creating the preconditions for other activities.
•The purpose of a project is to create the preconditions for other activities.•Preconditions establish the context ability for these other activities to be standardized and routinized.•A taxonomy of six categories of preconditions are proposed.•Assessing the value realized in context and use is an important way to establish whether the project purpose is fulfilled•Realized value depends on providers understanding the project purpose, and is more than meeting the specified requirements.•Value outcomes can be viewed with a number of theoretical lenses, including service design and the service-dominant logic.
Critical scholars have increasingly problematised the mainstream wellbeing management approach for being overly instrumental and normative. To address wellbeing issues requires reconstructing value ...in project business, which may involve challenging the dominant ethical theories and the transactional business model to include wellbeing as a legitimate objective of value creation in projects. In this essay, we advocate the ethics of care as an alternative ethical theory in project studies. The aim is to introduce its key tenets and discuss the implications for managing wellbeing in project businesses. From a care perspective, a relational belief system can be fostered through a dialogic process supported by relationship management, leadership and a transformational business model. In doing so, caring as an attitude and process is introduced and from a scholarly and practitioner standpoint, we begin to develop capabilities to support the individual wellbeing in project business.
Client organisations, as financiers, owners, and users, face the challenge of generating and delivering value outcomes for a wide range of stakeholders. However, research has demonstrated that ...projects constantly fall short of providing valuable outcomes in the medium- and long-term. The value outcomes start to appear in the latter stages of a project, yet, they have a link back to the project definition phase, where value outcomes can be purposely designed for the long-term. Value outcomes per se have been historically researched from a supplier and financial perspective. However, the research around the client perspective has been scarce, particularly the exploration of the co-creation of value outcomes for the long-term. To this end, the Service-Dominant Logic is an established framework to analyse the co-creation of value outcomes in the long-term from a client perspective. Thus, this framework is being used in this research to analyse six project case studies from two public sector client organisations in the United Kingdom. The results show eight managerial value interactions, which may enhance a set of five value outcomes from a client perspective in the medium- and long-term. Additionally, tensions around the co-creation process have been identified, which require management attention to secure and to defend the value outcomes. Overall, this study may prompt project practitioners to undertake a set of co-creation practices in order to formulate projects as service provision, as well as to avoid negative financial impacts to business models.
Purpose - The paper seeks to consider relational integration across a network of organisational members. To this end, "relationally integrated value networks" (RIVANS) are conceptualised to engage ...and empower network members towards well-focused collaboration that adds value. The aim is to identify the routes towards achieving the desirable integration together with the desired "overall value" that includes the hitherto often neglected "whole life" and end-user priorities.Design methodology approach - Two case studies of enlightened team working are used to examine the power of RIVANS to add value. Deliberations at two subsequent workshops identified the potential for furthering the RIVANS approach and operationalising the value propositions.Findings - Relational integration in networks adds considerable value to projects. Cross-fertilisation benefits accrue when RIVANS members also participate in other value networks that also include other facilities managers.Research limitations implications - Relational agendas have grown steadily over the last 15 years. There is scope for further development for benefits of clients and the supply network. This is despite an apparent retreat from a focus on differentiation to a re-emerging cost focus.Practical implications - Each network can benefit from healthy inputs from, and benchmarking against, other networks. The strengths of each network will be enhanced by the steady development of each of its members, mutual feedback and collaborative learning opportunities.Originality value - The need for, and potential impact of RIVANS are heightened in the present major economic downturn. Relationally integrated networks can be more resilient, while adding value and building market share through collaborative efficiencies throughout the life cycles of built assets.
The research analyses decisions as evaluative outcomes regarding project value. The UK-French Hinkley Point C Nuclear Power Station provides the case study. Value is traditionally assessed as inputs ...and outputs. Here, value is conceptualized as a co-created value proposition at the front-end with implications for realization post-completion. Service-dominant logic (SDL) provides the theoretical lens and contributes to a methodological approach for examining projects. Decision-making outcomes provide the evidence from a range of data sources, including reports and commentaries. The methods are interpretative. The findings show that decision-making extends beyond the time-cost-quality/scope dimensions. The long-term issues regarding value realized are often overlooked. Stakeholders and individual actors have mainly focused upon managing political and financial risks, especially time and cost. The research poses challenges to project management analysis, SDL and research design in assessing evidence. Addressing these issues facilitates a knowledge contribution to SDL theorization and the field of project management.
•The paper reports on the first application of service-dominant logic (SDL) for the analysis of a megaproject.•In this way, the paper contributes to an innovative methodological approach for examining projectization.•It conceptualizes value in terms of co-creating the value proposition at the front-end and qualitative realization in use.•The whole lifecycle is part of the service value, providing a contribution to SDL theorization regarding the asset specific context of projects.•The research poses challenges to project management analysis, SDL theorization and in research design for in assessing the evidence.•The positive perspective of the co-creation of value has been complemented by building upon the dark side, the co-destruction of value.
•Construction organisations need systematic learning from failures and near misses.•OHS is inseparable from organisational learning and collective sense-making.•OHS lessons are in project-specific ...silos with no cross-project transfer mechanisms.•The role of clients is crucial for encouraging OHS KT across supply chains.•Line managers are often the fastest and most efficient channels for OHS KT.
Within the last decades the incidence of workspace injuries and fatalities in the UK construction industry has declined markedly following the developments in occupational health and safety (OHS) management systems. However, safety statistics have reached a plateau and actions for further improvement of OHS management systems are called for. OHS is a form of organizational expertise that has both tacit and explicit dimensions and is situated in the ongoing practices. There is a need for institutionalization and for the transfer of knowledge across and along construction supply chains to reduce OHS risks and facilitate cultural change. The focus of this article is the factors that facilitate OHS knowledge transfer in and between organizations involved in construction projects. An interpretative methodology is used in this research to embrace tacit aspects of knowledge transfer and application. Thematic analysis is supported by a cognitive mapping technique that allows understanding of interrelationships among the concepts expressed by the respondents. This paper demonstrates inconsistency in OHS practices in construction organizations and highlights the importance of cultivating a positive safety culture to encourage transfer of lessons learnt from good practices, incidents, near misses and failures between projects, from projects to programmes and across supply chains. Governmental health and safety regulations, norms and guidelines do not include all possible safety issues specific to different working environments and tied to work contexts. The OHS system should encourage employees to report near misses, incidents and failures in a ‘no-blame’ context and to take appropriate actions. This research provides foundation for construction project practitioners to adopt more socially oriented approaches towards promoting learning-rich organizational contexts to overcome variation in the OHS and move beyond the current plateau reached in safety statistics.
There has been a range of initiatives across many countries over the last 10 to 15 years to introduce reform to the construction process in order to improve performance. The so-called UK 'Continuous ...Improvement' programme is evaluated as a case study through an analysis of demonstration projects. These projects symbolically represent best practice for others to follow directly in the UK and through influence indirectly in other countries. This raises methodological challenges, yet the scant empirical attention given to this field justifies such attention. The main conclusion is that there have been improvements, yet these seem not to have been continuous. Contractors are distant from direct value creation, increasingly relying upon others in the supply chain. Improvement measures have not penetrated most supply chains. This suggests that contractors need to develop learning and competency capacity; especially stakeholder management and/or clients need to identify new solution providers. There has been little direct evidence of this and the current environment is placing emphasis upon price rather than value. Capacity and capabilities for continuous improvement appear largely transient and insufficiently embedded to persist where present.
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