Search results

This paper has been timed to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the publication of In Search of Excellence. Observing this anniversary, the paper aims to offer a critical review of the works of Tom Peters – a man vaunted as the guru of management. Reviewers have observed that Tom Peters' narratives of business build and depend upon organizational stories to achieve their effects. Recognising that tales of the organization play an important role in sensemaking and sensegiving endeavours, this paper reviews Peters' organizational storytelling in the light of critical academic reflection in this arena.

The paper analyses the eight key works on management produced by Tom Peters between 1982 and 2003 from a storytelling perspective. Building upon Yiannis Gabriel's account of the essence of the poetic tale, the paper compiles a catalogue of Tom Peters' storywork.

On the strength of the cataloguing exercise, the paper charts a decline in this guru's storytelling; the predominance of certain story types; Peters' transmutation from narrator for, to hero of, the business world.

While acknowledging the need for further research and analysis, the paper suggests that the quantitative and qualitative changes evident in Peters' storywork catalogue suggest that this guru's connection to the world of business has become increasingly remote and unproductive. Accordingly, this review questions Peters' status as an organizational storyteller/organizational “sensegiver”, and so, questions his future prospects as a guru.

Worldwide, major projects often make the headlines as they suffer from a fourfold whammy of delays, cost blowouts, benefit shortfalls and stakeholder disappointments. It seems that error and bias can explain their underperformance. Which overarching explanation outweighs the other? It is the question this paper aims to address.

Insights are garnered from decades of research on thousands of major projects in developed and developing countries worldwide. In particular, two high-profile project cases, the Veteran Affairs Hospital in Aurora, Colorado (USA) and the Philharmonie de Paris (France), are explored.

The case projects show that error and bias combine to best explain project (under) performance. Applying best practices or debiasing project cost and benefit estimates is insufficient to prevent cost blowouts and benefit shortfalls. The confrontation of the two overarching explanations is not merely platonic. It is real and may lead to a media and legal battle.

This viewpoint calls practitioners to transcend the error versus bias debate and reconcile two key characters in the world of major projects: the “overoptimistic” who hold a bias for hope and firmly believe that, despite error down the road, many projects would, in the end, “stumble into success” as creativity may come to the rescue; and the “overpessimistic” who hold a bias for despair and think many projects should not have been started.

Presents a holistic approach to construction project SCM. Specifically, a seamless project supply chain management (SCM) model is proposed that integrates the design and production processes of construction projects. The proposed model was subjected to validation by a sample of industry practitioners and their comments are presented and reflected upon. Direction for future research is provided and such work aims to: explore the legalities of implementing the model; develop an appropriate benchmarking framework; explore the use of quality function development; and probity issues when selecting project team members.

Price reliability for complex and highly complicated infrastructure projects is problematic. Traditional project delivery approaches generally fail in achieving targeted end cost reliability. However, integrated project delivery (and particularly Alliancing), develop a far more reliable and robust project delivery plan and outturn time-cost targets. This paper aims to explore why this may be the case.

This case study investigated the project design, planning, cost/time estimation approach and how risk/uncertainty was dealt with. Five senior project delivery experts from an organisation that delivers multi-billion-dollar infrastructure projects in Australia were interviewed. These five experts collectively had 100+ cross-disciplinary experience years delivering complex infrastructure projects.

Alliancing adopts a radically different approach to project design, time/cost planning and risk assessment and management to traditional project delivery approaches. Key findings explain how the project alliance agreement designs-in processes that maximises team integration and collaboration. Analysis concludes that design thinking is used to craft and shape collaborative behaviours and project governance. Additionally, including project owner and facilities operator representatives in the project team adds valuable insights, expertise and knowledge contributing to planning reliability.

This study is exploratory and focussed on complex infrastructure projects so findings cannot be generalised.

We unpack Alliancing processes that develop the target outturn cost plan, comprising a holistic and realistic plan to design a project to meet expected project outcomes. This case study may serve as an exemplar for complex project delivery.

This paper illustrates how Alliancing more effectively delivers best value than traditional procurement approaches through its TOC-TAE processes.

The paper contributes to the scant existing academic literature analysing these processes. Its novel contribution is explaining how Alliancing treats unexpected events that in traditional delivery forms trigger expensive and time-energy-wasting disputation. This case study may serve as an exemplar for complex project delivery.

The construction industry has faced a period of intense introspection. This has prompted researchers and practitioners to consider what type and structure of construction industry is most appropriate to meet the challenges posed by market driven economies. Client demands are responding more rapidly to changing organisational and market imperatives. Creative and innovative solutions are expected from client analysts, advisers and consultants, from within and outside the construction industry. Previous research conducted in several client organisations at the project initiation (pre‐design) stage indicate that typically a building is not necessarily the only, or best, solution. It is contended that these trends have implications for the nature and workload of the construction industry in developed and developing countries alike. It reviews the past, considers present trends and suggests the effect such directions may have on the procurement of construction facilities.

Conventional “wisdom” in construction has placed emphasis on error prevention and is often aligned with the concept of “Zero Vision”; improvements to safety and quality have been minimal. An alternative approach is needed to ensure significant improvements in safety and quality; thus, this paper aims to introduce the concept of error management.

The paper reviews the extant literature and draws upon the phenomenological research and observations experienced by the authors.

It is promulgated that if quality and safety performance within projects is to improve, then construction organisations and their management need to openly acknowledge their presence so that “learning from errors” can form an integral part of an organisation’s fabric. This will require the institutionalisation of error reporting and an organisational (shared) responsibility for their occurrence.

The concept of error management has not been addressed previously in the construction literature. The authors introduce the concept and provide implications for management. The observations and experiences presented in this paper provide an initial starting point for future research to explore “how” construction organisations and projects can avoid the negative error consequences and learn to prevent them in the future.

Organizations in the construction industry have eschewed implementing TQM practices because short‐term benefits are relatively minimal. As a result, re‐engineering has emerged as an alternative to change. Albeit re‐engineering seeks radical performance improvements, the path to its implementation is incremental. Therefore, organizational change should be viewed as a continuous process rather than a static or “one‐off” event. Before construction organizations consider implementing re‐engineering initiatives, they should re‐address their existing approaches to quality, so that an adaptive learning TQM culture can be cultivated. In striving for this ambition and based on a review and synthesis of the literature, a framework for facilitating organizational learning and change in construction organizations is presented.

A model for an e‐business infrastructure that can be used to support supply chain activities in construction is proposed. A virtual network structure that acts as a value‐added component of an e‐business infrastructure is used to improve communication and coordination, and encourage the mutual sharing of inter‐organisational resources and competencies. The e‐business infrastructure used to support the proposed network structure and the human, organisational and cultural barriers that may be encountered are presented and discussed. It is proffered that the proposed e‐business model not only will be of benefit to those organisations which operate in the construction supply chain, but also may be fit for other types of business‐to‐business e‐commerce when cooperation between business partners is necessary to improve organisational performance and gain a competitive advantage

The business environment of construction organisations has undergone significant change over the last 50 years. As a result, construction management has had to respond to issues such as increasing levels of client expectation, globalisation of the construction economy, cut‐throat competition, and tight margins, plus the “inherent” obstacles to operating in the sector, such as separation of design and construction, fragmented production methods, adversarial relationships, and a reluctance to innovate and take up information technology. Furthermore, the problems of poor and unstructured training, multi‐tiered management systems, and poor communication provide less than optimal conditions for achieving high quality products in good time and to budget. One approach to addressing these issues is through the concept of employee empowerment. This paper presents an overview of the empowerment concept in the context of construction management, highlighting the hurdles, an implementation process, and achievable benefits.

The purpose of this research is to determine the perceptions of a public sector agency’s representatives who are involved in the selection of procurement methods about the benefits and barriers of implementing early contractor involvement (ECI). There have been widespread calls for the public sector to use of non-traditional delivery methods so as to obtain better “value for money”. ECI is one form of delivery approach that has begun to attract the attention of many Australian State Governments, as it allows a contractor to proactively participate in design development, risk management and the construction programming processes. Design and construction processes can also be integrated which, therefore, overcome the impediments and barriers that have conventionally existed between designers and contractor. Within Western Australia, the use of ECI has been limited and therefore perceptions about its potential application are obtained.

Using questionnaire surveys and follow-up semi-structured interviews, the research sought to determine the perceptions of a public sector agency’s representatives who are involved in the selection of procurement methods about the benefits and barriers of implementing ECI.

It is revealed that a significant proportion of contractors did not have the capability and experience to be involved within an ECI approach. Their preference was the use of a traditional lump-sum method. Where there was limited scope for using competitive tendering, particularly on large complex projects, then ECI could be a preferred option for future projects.

To date, there has been limited empirical research that examined the public sectors views on the use of ECI despite the calls for the greater use of integrated procurement methods of this nature. The research indicates that there is a need to develop strategies to better educate public sector clients, designers and contractors about how ECI can contribute to the development of innovative solutions and better value for money.