Organizing Wicked Policy Fields: A Strategic Framework for Capacity-Building in Cross-Border Transport Megaprojects

Abstract

In this chapter, we propose a strategic framework for capacity-building in cross-border transport megaprojects. First, we make the case for infrastructure megaprojects as wicked policy fields marked by a complex web of stakeholders' interests and characterized by uncertainty and entrenched value divergence and conflict. Second, inspired by Pettigrew's contextualism and by drawing evidence from the case of the Lyon-Turin high-speed railway megaproject, we suggest that strategic management involves the analysis of three different albeit interconnected dimensions: the content of change, the process of change, and the context of change. Our study shows that variations in performance (content) are determined by and determine variations in (1) the openness or closure of national institutional contexts to civil society stakeholders (inner context), (2) the intensity of supervision and control functions realized by actor seating in the supranational institutional context (outer context), and (3) national and supranational actors' capability of making agreements over contested megaprojects aspects (process). We suggest that, from a strategic point of view, there is not a linear relationship between the content, context, and process of change in megaproject development. This is rather a complex nonlinear relationship that varies over time with little predictability. Time is a key factor in understanding these interactions between the content, context, and process. We claim that the capacity for organizing wickedness in megaprojects should rest on a socioeconomic logic and, in particular, on three core governance features: (1) open decision-making systems, (2) bottom-up performance management, and (3) active dialogue between proponents and opponents.

Citation

Esposito, G. and Terlizzi, A. (2024), "Organizing Wicked Policy Fields: A Strategic Framework for Capacity-Building in Cross-Border Transport Megaprojects", Lippi, A. and Tsekos, T.N. (Ed.) Policy Capacity, Design and the Sustainable Development Goals, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 119-141. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80455-686-320241008