Mhamed Biygautane, Evelyn Micelotta, Claudia Gabbioneta and Giulia Cappellaro
Research on institutional logics has missed the opportunity to understand how and why societies may fundamentally differ in their material and symbolic systems. In this chapter…
Abstract
Research on institutional logics has missed the opportunity to understand how and why societies may fundamentally differ in their material and symbolic systems. In this chapter, the authors offer a qualitative examination of the implementation of infrastructure public–private partnership (PPP) projects in the Arab state of Qatar. The authors illustrate how the macrofoundations of Qatari society are rooted in the notion of tribe, an inter-institutional system under which the intertwined institutional orders of the state, the market, and the family have historically developed and operated. Their study sheds light on how these macrofoundations shape the processes and mechanisms that underpin the resistance to the introduction of innovative organizational forms. The chapter makes two contributions. First, it identifies how “foreign” organizational forms rooted in Western institutional orders trigger adverse reactions from societies characterized by different institutional orders. Second, it demonstrates the challenge of implementing PPPs in an institutional context that is unfavorable to them and where actors seek to preserve the supremacy of the extant inter-institutional system.
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Joana Geraldi, Iben Stjerne and Josef Oehmen
Temporary and permanent organisations have contrasting yet co-dependent perspectives regarding time; temporary organisations are made to ‘die’, yet most of them exist to enable…
Abstract
Temporary and permanent organisations have contrasting yet co-dependent perspectives regarding time; temporary organisations are made to ‘die’, yet most of them exist to enable permanent organisations to ‘survive’. The authors studied the temporal tensions of strategic initiatives – that is, temporary organisations that aim to implement strategic change in permanent organisations. Our empirical data identified three temporal tensions emerging when senior managers timed their strategic initiatives: ambition versus realism when enacting the time horizon, patience versus urgency when enacting the pace, and clock time versus event time when enacting the temporal perspective. By evoking the literature on paradox and temporal work, the authors extend the view of temporality at the temporary and permanent interface and indicate how temporal work played an important role in creating, reinforcing, or transforming temporal tensions. The authors conclude by providing implications for theory and practice.
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Sofia Pemsel and Jonas Söderlund
This chapter addresses the challenges associated with temporary organising under conditions of institutional complexity. The authors draw on findings from an in-depth case study…
Abstract
This chapter addresses the challenges associated with temporary organising under conditions of institutional complexity. The authors draw on findings from an in-depth case study of a megaproject initiated to reshape healthcare in Sweden. At the centre of this transformation was the construction of a new, ‘world-class’ hospital to replace the former (historical and renowned) university hospital. The authors posit that organising such projects is largely a matter of creating, responding to, and re-creating temporal institutional complexity. Thus, their study identifies four distinct response strategies – innovating, partial decoupling, avoiding, and surfing – on which project actors relied when dealing with the multiplicity of temporal institutional requirements. The authors propose a model for explaining how these strategies affected the temporal institutional complexity faced by the project. Their chapter adds to the literature on temporary organisations by highlighting the nature and dynamics of temporal institutional complexity and by revealing how inter-institutional temporary organisations cope with such complexity.
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Anne Klitgaard and Stefan Christoffer Gottlieb
The study aims to investigate the concept of strategy-as-practice in construction management literature has been investigated. The focus is on the link between strategizing…
Abstract
Purpose
The study aims to investigate the concept of strategy-as-practice in construction management literature has been investigated. The focus is on the link between strategizing practices and project management.
Design/Methodology/Approach
An exploratory literature review is carried out based on fifteen journal articles on strategizing practices in the construction industry.
Findings
The analysis shows how strategy-as-practice questions and contradicts project management practices as depicted in the dominant deterministic perspective. Strategy-as-practice has a focus on reacting and adapting to a chaotic and changing environment, while project management is concerned with creating and maintaining a stable working environment. The findings point to the necessity of considering the organizational and institutional context of project management practices, and hence the values the strategy-as-practice lens, when considering new avenues for improving the industry.
Research Limitations/Implications
As the study is based on an exploratory literature review of only 15 articles, generalizations should be made with caution. The identified literature is restricted by search words and choice of database.
Practical Implications
The differences between strategizing and project management practices are very clear, and a focus on both may offer insights into how the construction industry could improve its productivity by developing more robust management practices.
Originality/Value
The paper illustrates the benefit of applying a strategizing perspective, which hitherto has been under-investigated in construction management research.
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Giovanni Esposito and Andrea Terlizzi
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…
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.
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Lauri Vuorinen, Jere Lehtinen and Matias Ståhle
Citizen engagement can promote value creation in urban development projects. This potential stems from the granting of decision-making authority to citizens, labeled citizen…
Abstract
Purpose
Citizen engagement can promote value creation in urban development projects. This potential stems from the granting of decision-making authority to citizens, labeled citizen enfranchisement in this study. Citizens are focal stakeholders of urban development projects and enfranchisement grants them an explicit say on such projects. Despite this potential for enhanced value creation, there remains limited understanding about how project organizations enfranchise stakeholders in the front end of urban development projects.
Design/methodology/approach
In this research, we designed a multiple-case study to analyze two novel citizen engagement processes in Northern-European cities. In these processes, citizens were enfranchised in ideating, designing, and making selections on urban development projects. We followed a multimethod approach to data collection. The collected datasets include document data, interview data and observation data.
Findings
Our findings demonstrated a distribution and redistribution of decision-making authority throughout the phases of the citizen engagement processes. Citizens’ voices were amplified throughout the project front end, although episodes of decision-making authority held by the cities took place periodically as well. By granting explicit decision-making authority to citizens, citizen enfranchisement facilitated a more democratic urban development process, promoting value creation.
Originality/value
In contrast to the earlier research, the findings of our study illustrate citizen engagement taking place at so-called higher levels of stakeholder engagement. In particular, our study reveals a granting of de facto decision-making authority to citizens, also known as citizen enfranchisement. These findings contribute to the earlier research on stakeholder engagement in projects, where the influence of stakeholder engagement has often been considered symbolic or limited.
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Rafaela Aparecida Mendonça Marques, Aline Cristina Maciel, Antonio Fernando Branco Costa and Kleber Roberto da Silva Santos
This study investigates the repetitive mixed sampling (MRS) plan based on the Cpk index that was proposed by Aslam et al. (2013a). They were the first to study the MRS plan, but…
Abstract
Purpose
This study investigates the repetitive mixed sampling (MRS) plan based on the Cpk index that was proposed by Aslam et al. (2013a). They were the first to study the MRS plan, but they did not pay attention to the fact that submitting to the variable inspection a sample that was first submitted to the attribute inspection, truncates the X observations. In addition, they did not work with an accurate expression to calculate the probabilities of the Cpk statistic.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors presented the results based on their original sampling plan through Monte Carlo simulation and defined the theoretical results of their plan when the sample submitted to the variable inspection is no longer the same one submitted to the attribute inspection.
Findings
The β risks of the optimum sampling plans presented by Aslam et al. (2013a) are pretty high, exceeding 46%, on average – this same problem was also observed in Saminathan and Mahalingam (2018), Balamurali (2020) and Balamurali et al. (2020), where the β risks of their proposed sampling plans are yet higher.
Originality/value
In terms of originality, the authors can declare the following. It is not a big deal to propose new sampling plans, if one does not know how to obtain their properties. The miscalculations of the sampling plans risks are dangerous; imagine the situation where the acceptance of bad lots exceeds 50% just because the sampling plan was incorrectly designed. Yes, it is a big deal to warn that this type of problem is arising in a growing number of papers. The authors of this study are the pioneers to discover that many studies focusing on the sampling plans need to be urgently revised.
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Melissa Hauber-Özer and Meagan Call-Cummings
The purpose of this paper is to present a typology of the treatment of ethical issues in recent studies using visual participatory methods with immigrants and refugees and provide…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to present a typology of the treatment of ethical issues in recent studies using visual participatory methods with immigrants and refugees and provide insights for researchers into how these issues can be more adequately addressed.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper presents the results of a scoping study as a typology of ethical considerations, from standard IRB approval to complete ethical guidelines/frameworks for research with refugee/migrant populations.
Findings
The review reveals that there is a broad spectrum of ethical considerations in the use of visual participatory methods with migrants, with the majority only giving cursory or minimal attention to the particular vulnerabilities of these populations.
Originality/value
This paper encourages university-based researchers conducting participatory inquiry with migrant populations to engage in deeper critical reflection on the ethical implications of these methods in keeping with PAR's ethico-onto-epistemological roots, to make intentional methodological choices that are congruent with those roots and to be explicit in their description of how they did this as they disseminate their work.
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Samera Nazir, Saqib Mehmood, Zarish Nazir and Li Zhaolei
This study aimed to examine how knowledge sharing, knowledge management, supply chain efficiency and integration collectively impacted firm performance. Additionally, it…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aimed to examine how knowledge sharing, knowledge management, supply chain efficiency and integration collectively impacted firm performance. Additionally, it investigated the moderating influence of reverse logistics on these relationships, seeking to enhance understanding of the complex dynamics within organizations.
Design/methodology/approach
A comprehensive method was used in the research design, combining a thorough evaluation of the body of literature with organized questionnaire data collection. Random sampling was used to collect data from Pakistani manufacturing companies, and PLS-SEM was used to analyze the collected data.
Findings
The findings demonstrated the strong positive relationships between knowledge management, integration, supply chain effectiveness, and information sharing and business performance. The study also showed that reverse logistics improved and moderated these correlations, highlighting the significance of managing reverse logistics well for the best possible company performance.
Practical implications
In terms of practical implications, the study offered organizations looking to improve performance useful information. Making informed strategic decisions was made possible by realizing the benefits of knowledge management, integration, supply chain efficiency, and sharing. The relevance of using successful tactics to maximize company outcomes was highlighted by highlighting the moderating effects of reverse logistics.
Originality/value
By thoroughly analyzing the connections between knowledge management, supply chain effectiveness, integration, and firm performance—while taking into account the moderating influence of reverse logistics—this study enhanced the body of existing literature. The discoveries significantly added value to this research topic by enhancing our understanding of how these elements collectively influence business performance, especially in the sometimes disregarded field of reverse logistics.
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Access to unbiased self-reported (primary) data for a normative concept like social sustainability has been a challenge for construction project management (CPM) scholars, and…
Abstract
Purpose
Access to unbiased self-reported (primary) data for a normative concept like social sustainability has been a challenge for construction project management (CPM) scholars, and this difficulty has been further amplified by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. This paper aims to address this issue by asserting the suitability of secondary data as a methodologically sound but underutilized alternative and providing directions for secondary data-based research on social sustainability in a project setting.
Design/methodology/approach
By drawing on a framework for social sustainability and using “project-as-practice” approach as its point of departure, this conceptual paper identifies possibilities for utilizing multiple secondary sources in CPM research.
Findings
The paper provides a roadmap for identification of secondary sources, access to data, potential research designs and methods, limitations of and cautions in using secondary sources, and points to many novel lines of empirical enquiries to stimulate secondary data-based research on social sustainability in CPM.
Social implications
Indicated secondary sources and empirical opportunities can support research efforts that aim to promote societal welfare through construction projects.
Originality/value
The presented guidance will assist researchers in identifying, accessing and utilizing naturalistic, secondary data for designing and conducting empirical research that cuts across social sustainability and CPM. This, in turn, will facilitate methodological pluralism and “practice turn” in such research endeavors.