Abstract
Major projects are high-value (£100 million+) investments across sectors such as transport, energy, health, defence, or IT systems. Globally, a significant proportion of government policy ...initiatives are delivered through major projects. There is, however, a paradox at the heart of the major project phenomenon. Although major projects are indispensable tools for turning policy ideals into reality, their track record is strikingly poor. Cost and time overruns, financial engineering, under-supply, poor service, environmental detriment, and social dissatisfaction blight major projects. Poor outcomes have been a feature of the wide array of delivery mechanisms deployed over the past 150 years, including direct public provision, regulated private provision, public–private partnerships, and concessions, agreements, and franchises. The papers in this issue of the Oxford Review of Economic Policy explore the nature of this paradox and offer strategies designed to get major projects right, including repeatable platform strategies; mission-orientated investments; and deliberative and collaborative incentive schemes.
Daniel Immerwahr tells how the United States sought to rescue the world from poverty through small-scale, community-based approaches. He also sounds a warning: such strategies, now again in vogue, ...have been tried before, alongside grander moderization schemes—with often disastrous consequences as self-help gave way to crushing local oppression.
Recent studies of temporary organizing and project-based work explain how organizational actors establish and maintain clear role structures and harmonious relations in the face of precariousness by ...engaging in stabilizing work practices. This focus upon ‘order’ undervalues conflict-ridden negotiations and power struggles in temporary organizing. This paper demonstrates that in temporary organizing conflict and order may exist in tandem. Drawing close to the collaborative dynamics in a large-scale global project, we analyse the political struggles over role patterns and hierarchic positioning of client and agent in the temporary organization of the Panama Canal Expansion Program (PCEP). In such projects, the agent typically takes the position of project leader. In this case however, the client was formally in charge, while the agent was assigned the role of coach and mentor. The diffuse hierarchy triggered project partners to engage in both harmony-seeking social and discursive practices and to enter into conflict-ridden negotiations over authority relations in the everyday execution of the PCEP project. Our study contributes to existing literatures on temporal organizing by presenting a case of simultaneous practices of harmonization and contestation over mutual roles and hierarchic positions. We also show that studying collaboration between project partners involves, not merely analysing project governance structures, but also offering a context-sensitive account of everyday social and discursive practices. Finally, we reflect on a view of ‘permanence’ and ‘temporariness’ as themselves contested categories and symbolic sites for struggle.
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to assess how we implement new ways of managing relational risk at the operational level of outsourced projects and to provide guidance to project management (PM) ...policy makers and practitioners seeking to ensure project operations consistently deliver project relational risk management (PRRM) strategies.Design/methodology/approachThrough exploratory study data were obtained from a panel of six experts in PM and from a pilot survey of PM practitioners. The data reveal future directions and vectors for scholarship and research activity in terms of the impact of PRMM-related mechanisms and deliverables on project success and the implementation process to enhance PRRM as a key PM capability.FindingsDeliverables for PRRM need to part of a multidimensional framework that includes mechanisms besides the contract. Such a framework enables the codification of PM knowledge so that PRRM contributes to project success. With knowledge codified, PRRM strategies can be consistently delivered at the operational level. The framework is novel in that it integrates hereto disparate elements that are encompassed under the broad umbrella of relational governance mechanisms.Practical implicationsPM policy makers and practitioners recognise the importance of effective relationships to deliver projects successfully, yet they lack practical solutions to address the negative effects of dysfunctional relationships. The authors provide a list of PM deliverables for effective PRRM, including deliverables besides those related to the contract, which can be used in practice to bring the gap between PRRM strategy development and implementation. This will enable client organisations that outsource their projects to an external contractor to enhance their PRRM capability and increase the likelihood of project success.Originality/valueThe authors provide insights into how PRRM is practised at the project operations’ level where PM is outsourced. These insights lead to three pathways of impactful Operations Management (OM)/PM scholarship and research, namely, the following: 1) How PM deliverables act as a key success factor for effective PRRM? 2) How the duality of roles carried out by PM actors influences PRMM practices? 3) How companies innovate to enhance their PRMM capability? These pathways will enable PM research and scholarship to address disconnects between PRMM strategy and operations and hence go beyond answering “what” PRMM is to encompass “how” it is implemented.
Research on the management of major projects is one of the main themes of Peter Morris' work. We address this theme in the context of transportation infrastructure projects and focus in particular on ...the contribution of the “strong owner” to project performance. After defining the strong owner concept, we will suggest that the theoretical literature on dynamic capabilities can be the source of deeper insight into the strong owner and will thereby develop the concept of owner project capabilities. The paper will then present a framework generated from a review of the existing literature complemented by pilot empirical research which provides the basis for a research agenda on the role of the owner of the infrastructure assets in achieving high performance on transportation infrastructure projects. In discussion, the paper suggests that the framework developed is applicable to a wider variety of major projects and programmes.
The study critically reclaims participatory art beyond its co-option as a fuzzword of neoliberal governance. It examines a range of artistic practices from community theatre, immersive performance ...and the visual arts in different sites around the world. It offers a refreshing theorisation of participatory art as gesture.
The Business of Projects broke ground when it was first published in 2005, by showing how leading businesses create and implement projects to drive strategy and innovation. Projects are used to ...coordinate activities with customers and suppliers and ensure that organisations become more dynamic and adaptable. The book extends the resource-based view of the firm to focus on the business lessons learned from the design and production of high-value complex products and systems (CoPS), which have always been project-based. As well as frameworks and management tools, it provides case studies of high-technology industries - such as telecommunications, flight simulation and medical devices - to show how projects are used to achieve strategic objectives, perform systems integration, organise productive activities, manage software, achieve organisational learning and deliver solutions for customers. This book is essential reading for project professionals, academics, students, engineers, managers and policy makers seeking a strategic, innovative perspective on projects.
For decades, policy-makers in government, development banks and foundations, NGOs, researchers and students have struggled with the problem of how to protect people who are displaced from their homes ...and livelihoods by development projects. This book addresses these concerns and explores how debates often become deadlocked between 'managerial' and 'movementist' perspectives. Using development ethics to determine the rights and responsibilities of various stakeholders, the authors find that displaced people must be empowered so as to share equitably in benefits rather than being victimized. They propose a governance model for development projects that would transform conflict over displacement into a more manageable collective bargaining process and would empower displaced people to achieve equitable results. Their book will be valuable for readers in a wide range of fields including ethics, development studies, politics and international relations as well as policy making, project management and community development.
Many warn that the next stage of globalization--the offshoring of research and development to China and India--threatens the foundations of Western prosperity. But in The Venturesome Economy, ...acclaimed business and economics scholar Amar Bhidé shows how wrong the doomsayers are. Using extensive field studies on venture-capital-backed businesses to examine how technology really advances in modern economies, Bhidé explains why know-how developed abroad enhances--not diminishes--prosperity at home, and why trying to maintain the U.S. lead by subsidizing more research or training more scientists will do more harm than good.
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