Urbanisation induces both challenges and opportunities for sustainable development. Cities are developed through urban development projects (UDPs), which enable sustainable development and provide valuable services to citizens. Although previous research has shown that citizens have knowledge that can facilitate the planning and implementation of UDPs, it not known how—and to what extent—citizens are engaged by municipal and private actors initiating such projects. Consequently, we carried out a systematic cross-disciplinary literature review focusing on the involvement of the public in UDPs. Based on the final sample of 75 articles, our analysis reveals 16 distinct mechanisms of public participation, which differ with respect to the initiating actor(s), project-life-cycle phase, role of citizens and depth of participation. We find that most mechanisms involve members of the public in peripheral roles, limiting the potential for further value creation. In addition, most of the mechanisms are applied during the planning phase of the project life cycle. Although several mechanisms are used during the front-end phase, we find that very few mechanisms are used in the later phases of the life cycle. The paper contributes to a more nuanced understanding urban development projects by problematising citizen participation and mapping the related mechanisms.

A rapid pace of globalization and a magnitude of change in all aspects of our contemporary reality have brought about numerous paradoxes in academic research and practice. Many of these paradoxes are either not acknowledged or they are approached with traditional binary models that imply eliminating or suppressing one pole of a paradox in favor of another. Furthermore, studies adopting a paradox perspective are scarce and lack empirical evidence and conceptual coherence. We look at several longstanding paradoxes in research and practice as well as traditional methods used to tackle them and suggest benefits of a paradox perspective to gain a better understanding of the challenges we face in research and practice. 

Commercial deployment of maritime autonomous surface ships (MASSs) is close to becoming a reality. Although MASSs are fully autonomous, the industry will still allow remote operations centre (ROC) operators to intervene if a MASS is facing an emergency the MASS cannot handle by itself. A human-centred design for the associated emergency response systems will require attention to the ROC operator workplace, but also, arguably, to the behaviour-shaping constraints on the engineers building these systems. There is thus a need for an engineer-centred design of engineering organisations, influenced by the current discourse on human factors. To contribute to the discourse, think-aloud protocol interviewing was conducted with well-informed maritime operators to elicit fundamental demands on cognition and collaboration by maritime autonomy emergency response systems. Based on the results, inferences were made regarding both design factors and methodological choices for future, early phase engineering of emergency response systems. Firstly, engineering firms have to improve their informal gathering and sharing of information through gatekeepers and/or organisational liaisons. To avoid a too cautious approach to accountability, this will have to include a closer integration of development and operations. Secondly, associated studies taking the typical approach of exposing relevant operators to new design concepts in scripted scenarios should include significant flexibility and less focus on realism.

To perform as intended, firms are divided into work functions that contribute to the behaviour-shaping constraints under which individuals build their skills, knowledge and networks. These in turn provide a specialized perspective on organisational structure and culture. In a mixed methods study involving interviews and statistical analyses, we investigate whether a work function can thereby affect individuals’ innovation foci and efficacy. Safety engineers, central to firms developing Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), are shown to play a significant role in identifying and supporting viable innovation related to organisational aspects. Results indicate that safety engineers could use the firm’s collaborative innovation process to facilitate organisational learning, helping different work functions come together to construct working practices aligned with the organisational values of the firm. This is explained by their understanding of safety culture—a specialized understanding of organisational culture and complexity provided by their work function. We conclude that work functions that provide their members with a perspective well aligned with their firm’s organisational values can instil the ability to identify and support organisational innovation. This suggests that safety engineers in CPS domains could be effective in a mediatory role, facilitating innovative changes to organisational structures and processes when introducing and operating safety management systems. Stronger aspects of organisational liaising and systems thinking could reinforce this ability—the former by a wider scope and motivation leading to an increased skill in communicating with dissimilar individuals, and the latter by providing the skills and tools needed to analyse the politics of complex organisations.

The Council is the voice of the member states' governments in the EU policymaking process and the institutional setting where member states can enforce their national interest. The literature on Council decision-making has previously mostly used expert interviews or voting patterns. Through a detailed examination of one specific legislative file in the recent 'Fit for 55' climate package in which subsidiarity and varying national conditions is central, this study focus on how disagreements between member states are resolved and how strategic word framing can aid in resolving political controversies in EU energy policy. This article analyses Council working group meeting notes and revisions of the recent recast of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive, providing a unique look behind the curtains of negotiations between member states in the Council within a deliberative intergovernmental framework. A mix of quantitative and qualitative text analysis is applied to deliberations and legislative revisions. The findings show that a fragile consensus is reached despite disagreement through enabling of national flexibility in policy decisions, indicating that the Council determines the speed of European integration in the policy domain.

At global scale, the building sector accounts for 40% of total energy end use and almost 35% of greenhouse gas emissions. This makes it one of the most important sectors to focus on for reaching the 1.5-2 degrees C target of the Paris Agreement, to enhance energy security of supply and to alleviate energy poverty. The European Union (EU) is often seen as a leader in climate governance, which is also true for energy efficiency. The improvement of energy performance of buildings has been part of EU public policy for more than 50 years, making the EU a pioneer in the policy domain. Based on a semi-structured review of the scientific literature (N = 90), this paper is aimed at drawing the lessons from research on governance of energy-efficient and zero-carbon buildings in the EU. As for the findings, there is a multitude of policy instruments developed on different levels of governance, more or less integrated and managed by different actors and no single instrument is sufficient to stimulate energy-efficient and zero-carbon buildings. Five key challenges are identified in the governance literature examining the transition towards energy efficiency and zero-carbon buildings. An ambiguous leadership, heterogeneity of implementation, lack of incentives, limitations of non-regulatory policies and market-based instruments, and limited diffusion between governance levels. We also conclude that most policy instruments focus on new buildings which is problematic since the greatest challenge in the transition is the renovation of the large existing building stock.

Programs are frequently highlighted for their ability to enable the implementation of strategic transformation amidst rapidly changing and unpredictable business environments. This study explores the creation of routines within a strategic program in the Danish construction industry and the subsequent transfer of these routines to the parent organizations. It identifies three sequential patterns of action: entrenching, dis-embedding, and re-embedding routines. Through an interpretive case study, the study reveals how these routines emerge and adapt in alignment with diverse organizational capabilities and relations. The findings highlight the importance of routine transfer and integration in parent organizations, emphasizing their adaptability to distinct needs and their significance for achieving strategic objectives. The discussion presents a process model and elaborates on the three sequential patterns of action. The paper contributes to the program literature by exploring the dynamics of how routines emerge through their own enactment and in relation to other actions at the program level.

 This paper explores reskilling, appearing both as a practice and a signifier in social media. By investigating reskilling narratives, this paper describes origins, actors and relation to skill. It contributes by first suggesting that reskilling is a process rather than a specific training form or about specific skill content. Second, individuals and organisations are simultaneously and paradoxically sold reskilling, but their interests do not always align. On social media, reskilling stands as a corporate (and societal) signifier of action as well as an opportunity for advertising employer brands. Third, through a technology-deterministic frame, reskilling can be understood as a signifier of optimism, that is, turning pessimism in the shape of possible displacement into optimism where society, organisations and people may ‘keep up’ with technological change. Thus, reskilling can be understood to materialise optimism, and that optimism is an attempt at the restoration of human agency on an inevitabilist path.

Project-based organizations focus on executing a large amount of projects, often simultaneously, where different resources and stakeholders interact in the process. This kind of organizational structure is often complex and problematic to manage, as program managers have to deal with several projects simultaneously, which by definition are activities with their own logic and limitations in scope and time. The study aims to assist ProRail on enhancing its Program Management Capability, by identifying the main sources of conflicts present in its Program Management structures, and creating a set of constructive suggestions in order to cope with the problems identified. - How does ProRail currently govern and manage its programs? - What are the main advantages and disadvantages of Program Management? What are the main sources of tensions and conflicts presents when managing programs in project-based organizations? - How can ProRail enhance program management capability in this specific context, so to respond innovatively to unexpected risks and events? Case studies were chosen as the most valuable approach to answer the research questions. The main findings were presented in the 22nd International Congress on Project Management and Engineering, held by the Spanish Project Management and Engineering Association (AEIPRO).

This paper provides an exploratory understanding of the process of knowledge-work in the inter-organisational setting of a large-scale infrastructure project. Taking a process perspective, it explores why an autonomous project-owner organisation in the rail industry sector, finds difficulties to transform and exploit the project network-related knowledge in a coopetitive context. The paper builds on qualitative secondary data analysis of a High-speed Rail Line (HSL) project conducted in Spain. Based on the longitudinal analysis, the authors put forth a contingency framework that proposes four contexts linking the transformation and exploitation of the knowledge from the inter-organizational network to the project-owner organization; whether: i) the interplay between industrial setting and the project arrangement empowers product or process knowledge, and ii) the senior, and program management awareness to feed-forward learning relies on individual or institutionalised based learning. These four contexts and their underlying conditions pose different knowledge-work related problems and suggest implications for practice in inter-organizational collaboration and beyond. 

Over the last two decades, large-scale project endeavors or major programs that typically deliver a substantial physical infrastructure or a complex product with a lifetime that can extend for decades and across industries have become the norm for many utility sectors, such as transport, energy, water, or food. The allure of ever-larger projects shows no sign of fading away in the face of sustainable development and grand societal challenges – quite the contrary. A significant policy perspective and the trend points to the new generation of large-scale projects, which in contrast to the early industrial era in the US and Europe, compels efforts that require management to minimize affecting the surrounding societal environment. Besides, today's modern infrastructure projects tend to involve a more complex network of organizations – “global” organizations – yielding a dynamic component in project organizing.

Large-scale projects are complex endeavors embedded in highly institutionalized social structures and technologies, including public and private actors with various rationalities, modes of collaboration, and project management competencies. These projects evolve, arising as inherently societal concerns, and then shift to technical problems and vice-versa, introducing inertia, organizational path-dependency, and lock-ins. Thus, large-scale projects pose enormous temporary organizing challenges under conditions of institutional complexity, creating “wicked problems” for their management. Hence, the questions of how these large-scale projects as inter- organizational collaboration unfold, and how they can be organized despite these challenges have become crucial in academia and practice alike.

Scholars from different disciplines have picked up these questions of organizational, and technological issues in large-scale infrastructure project organizing and have put forth valuable insights into such endeavors. Through the exploratory and elaborated case-based research, this thesis contributes to the debate on large-scale project organizing by advancing an institutional perspective. In line with the overall research aim and conceptual framing, the research design has a qualitative nature and relies on a process approach. The thesis draws from in-depth case studies of project-based processes in the division of Adif - the Spanish Administrator of Rail Infrastructure and ProRail (Adif’s counterpart, the manager responsible for rail infrastructure in the Netherlands), among other principal contractors and suppliers involved in the project(s). The thesis provides a rich empirical examination; it shows that to understand large-scale project organizing, there is a need to change the ontological priorities that underpin the mainstream literature on behavioral studies in project management. The thesis develops nascent theorizing on how the in-between temporary and permanent (inter-) organizational nature of large-scale projects in the presence of institutions narrates the emergence of processes, e.g., path-dependence, and lock-in. A conceptualization of path- shaping and project actors’ agency that bridges the gap between the intra- organizational and institutional level efforts is promoted.

The managerial implications of this thesis are two-fold. First, the appended papers put forth among other frameworks and process models that are indeed useful to be utilized. They outline ideas relevant because they lay the groundwork for project managers to extend their efforts beyond the micro- managing of tasks. In particular, Paper A develops the lock-in process model that can be useful for project managers. Secondly, the thesis gives countless advice and managerial implications. The most important being the consideration of heterogeneity in large-scale project contexts in the multi- organizational setting and their interdependencies in broad project networks. They represent the sources of variation in the desired outcomes. Accordingly, Paper B suggests attention needs to be directed to the understanding of the industry – as the field-level institution and its (inter-) organizational components in the context as an essential feature of project management practice. In other words, this thesis suggests that embeddedness in large-scale infrastructure projects is of crucial importance. To this end, Paper C and D propose means for a responsive and active project owner organization, that are essential for effectively interacting with other actors, and for selecting and managing both contractual and trust-based mechanisms effectively.Conclusively, the thesis suggests that project managers’ institutional knowledge in large-scale project settings is equally important, if not more, than the economic or engineering expertise.

Despite wide-ranging research on large-scale infrastructure project performance, little is known about the role that project public institutional context and project owner’s response capability plays in the governing process. Building on a theoretically driven approach and a case study, we first established a set of propositions and then substantiated this set through empirical illustrations. This study investigated the multiactor Madrid–Barcelona high-speed rail line (HSL) project (1990–2017) with the use of social network analysis supplemented by qualitative evidence. The findings show that actors’ behavior is affected by the project public institutional context, coupled with contractual commitments. A closer examination of the data found two factors that drive the escalation dynamics: (1) the timing mismatches—a ubiquitous feature of public sector project owner’s organization—leading to the incapacity to influence governance during the project front-end and (2) owner’s passive behavior during implementation. From the management perspective, an active owner with high project response capability is necessary for effectively interacting with contractors, and for selecting and managing both contractual and trust-based governance mechanisms effectively. Based on the findings, the authors offer theoretical and managerial implications for promoting the effectiveness of owner-contractor collaboration in large-scale infrastructure projects.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the emergence of lock-in in large-scale projects. Although large-scale projects have been studied for decades, most studies have applied economic or psychological perspectives to emphasize decision-making processes at the project front-end. Of those studies, some have focused on poor decision-making due to lock-in and the escalating commitments of decision-makers to ineffective courses of action. However, little is known about the way that project decisions are affected by organizational and inter-organizational contexts and the actors involved. Understanding decisions from a process viewpoint with a long-term (inter-) organizational perspective will lead to a better understanding of lock-in and the overall performance of large-scale projects. This qualitative research is based on a case study. The research setting is the multi-actor Madrid-Barcelona High-Speed rail Line (HSL) project in Spain. Through observations, interviews, several project documents, and report analysis, we explore the processual nature of the choices made during the course of the project. We consider the contextual conditions that give rise or support the emergence of lock-in in relation to pre- and post-project effects, institutional influences, and management practices that create action spaces at the project level. Our findings suggest that lock-in emergence requires the recognition of the long-term (inter-) organizational perspective regarding mechanisms and effects rather than confining decisions to the individual or single actor control in the front-end of projects. Based on organizational theory, the main contribution of this paper is to enrich our understanding of the emergence of lock-in using process theories.

Research in large scale infrastructure projects have argued that the overall project performance is subject to lock-in, yet this is little understood empirically and more research is needed. Recently studies reported that lock-in can occur both at the decision-making level and at the project execution level respectively. The underlying patterns influencing project scope transformation, due to evolving expectations and/or stakeholder's perspective and the occurrence of lock-in influence in project performance. This paper explores the relationship between project scope and lock-in within large infrastructure projects in the context of cost over-run. Based on empirical data from 20 High Speed Rail (HSR) projects in Spain with multinational sets of actors, and anchored in the Management of Project (MoP) paradigm, the paper shows that a holistic perspective is essential for successful outcome. Methodologically, the paper uses data mining and a case study approach to explore mechanisms that underlie lock-in in relation with scope demarcation - tracked through contract change. It suggests that an investigation of lock-in in relationship to scope demarcation and through the lens of path dependence contributes to the understanding of cost over-run emergence. Preliminary findings highlight contract type and its content to have a great influence in cost over-run.

This paper provides an exploratory understanding of the process of knowledge-work in the inter-organisational setting of a large-scale infrastructure project. Taking a process perspective, it explores why an autonomous project-owner organisation in the rail industry sector finds difficulties to transform and exploit the project network-related knowledge in a coopetitive context. The paper builds on a case study of a High-speed Rail Line (HSL) project in Spain. Based on the longitudinal qualitative secondary analysis, the authors put forth a contingency framework that proposes four contexts linking the transformation and exploitation of the knowledge from the inter-organisational network to the project-owner organisation; whether (i) the interplay between industrial setting and the project arrangement empowers product or process knowledge and (ii) the senior, and programme management awareness to feed-forward learning relies on individual- or institutionalised-based learning. These four contexts and their underlying conditions pose different knowledge-work related problems and suggest implications for practice in inter-organisational collaboration and beyond.

The transport sector accounts for a large share of global Co2 emissions. To mitigate the impact of climate change, several sustainability-oriented large-scale infrastructure projects such as electric road systems and expanding rail systems have recently been on the policy agenda. A parallel development that is expected to accelerate the transition of the transport sector is digitalization, which, although ongoing for many decades, has recently been augmented by concepts such as artificial intelligence (AI) and smart city technologies. The integration of these digitalization tools at the organizational level poses not only opportunities but also some challenges for the actors involved in infrastructure projects. An approach that is currently promoted in the infrastructure sector is the Building Information Model (BIM), which is a decision-making instrument that leverages various digitalization tools and applications. However, although the economic implications of BIM are widely discussed in the literature, the (inter-) organizational dynamics involving multiple actors in infrastructure projects are not fully grasped. Large infrastructure projects are sociotechnical endeavors embedded in complex institutional frames; hence the institutional norms, practices and logics in them are significant. Responding to this, this paper adopted an institutional analysis and put the BIM approach in the (inter-) organizational context in infrastructure delivery. Drawing on empirical data from three organizations in infrastructure delivery in Spain, this paper analyzed the tensions among actors during BIM adoption and implementation.

While projects in the Information Technology (IT) domain have been studied extensively, not much is known about the practices of knowledge work that is needed for IT projects to be brought together and enacted as temporary organisational structures. Building on the knowledge-as-practice perspective, we set out to explore collaborative work, which occurs through dialogic practices across knowledge domains in IT projects. Drawing upon multiple case study research in the IT industry, we run a qualitative analysis based on semi-structured interviews with the management level staff of six IT organisations. Based on the insights on IT projects in the six case organisations that varied in size and the degree of knowledge structure we develop a practice-based understanding of the collaborative practices of knowledge work. We identify three main practices of knowl-edge work in IT projects: a) expressing differences, b) co-creation, and c) mutual alignment, directing domain expert knowledge work at the collective level and towards shared project objectives. The practices emerged in the form of collaboration and as a function of cross-domain multi-disciplinary teams' alignment in IT projects. We offer novel insights into the essential role of the dialogue in collaborative knowledge work practices in IT projects, and their respective parent organisations.

Heeding recent calls for more studies on the relationship between projects and institutions, this paper reports on a collaborative case study to shed light on the recursive relations of large-scale projects and their institutional fields. Given the industry as the field-level institution, this study explores how two project organizations experienced the industry changes, its influence on the arrangement of large-scale projects, and the management response used to legitimize these arrangements. The qualitative secondary data analysis of two High-Speed rail projects in Spain and The Netherlands is based on semi-structured interviews, observations, and document analysis. This paper provides the institutional fields’ contextual detail and deepens our understanding of temporal institutional complexity that bound large-scale project arrangements. The findings suggest that in both cases the management responses altered across time and evolved depending on the salience of the institutional pressure, through the interplay with 1) regulative, 2) normative, and 3) dynamic cultural-cognitive forces, resulting in cycles of project legitimacy.

This paper examines deviations in complex product development. Based on an extensive case study, using participant observations, interviews, and data from deviation reports, it illustrates the causes, procedures, management challenges of deviations, and organizational roles devoted to deviation management. Based on the rich data material, it furthermore proposes a typology of deviations developed for a better understanding of this significant empirical phenomenon.

Conferences and workshops are important activities in organizations for communication and collaboration, and in academia specifically to criticize and develop new research ideas. In order to enable social interactions during the pandemic situation, organizations use online solutions like video conference systems. A huge number of virtual conferences has been offered, and attracted more participants as the cost and participation effort were lower. However, socializing and informal exchange between conference participants during coffee breaks and conference dinners is nearly impossible in a virtual conference setting. Conferences are important to meet other researchers, to build a network and collaborate in the future, which is critical to society - to create frontier knowledge. Virtual reality could be an alternative to usual video conferences as they could allow social interaction between different participants and thus support to get in direct contact with future collaborators. Our paper explains how we created and executed a social event in virtual reality at an online conference in academia that included 22 participants in three Nordic countries. Based on 17 interviews with Swedish and Danish participants, we analyze perceived advantages and challenges that the event participants faced. Our results provide interesting insights and recommendations for organizers of virtual conferences to enable socializing in virtual reality.

In the context of complex and digitalized engineering projects, effectively orchestrating meta-knowledge that encompasses awareness of diverse expertise presents a significant challenge, as it requires crossing various boundaries. Situated expertise plays a critical role in this process, connecting individual or group-level meta-knowledge to wider expertise systems in projects. We report a case study exploring how group expertise boundaries influence situated expertise development in the oil and gas front-end project context. Through qualitative analysis, we underscore the role of permeable group expertise boundaries in fostering open situated expertise systems, allowing for meta-knowledge about individuals, groups, and digital technologies. This permeability is especially critical in innovative and non-contractual contexts. We identify four elements—strategy, structural design, interaction molding routines and roles, and digital boundary objects—that contribute to open situated expertise development. Our findings show that while digital boundary objects can mediate expertise boundaries by enabling communication and navigation of expertise in projects, the reach of situated expertise largely depends on interaction molding elements, particularly boundary-spanning roles. This study concludes by recommending that practitioners expand their meta-knowledge, rethink their strategic approaches to situating and utilizing expertise in projects, and carefully establish routines for using digital technologies to record and retrieve expertise.

Purpose The purpose of this study is to clarify business-to-business (B2B) firms' strategies of social media marketing communication. The study aims to explore the factors contributing to the formation and adoption of integration strategies and identify who the B2B firms target. Design/methodology/approach A multiple case study approach is used to compare four multinational corporations and their practices. Face-to-face interviews with key managers, and extensive readings and observations of the firms' websites and social media platforms have been conducted. Findings The study results in a model, illustrating different processes of selection, adoption and integration involved in the development of social media communication strategy for B2B firms. Major factors involved in determining the platform type, and strategies used within different phases and processes are identified. Research limitations/implications As the chosen methodology may limit generalizability, further research is encouraged to test the model within a B2B context especially within small and medium enterprises as only large multinational corporations were investigated in this study. Practical implications The paper provides insight into how B2B marketers can align social media with their firms' goals through the strategic selection of platforms to reach the targeted audience and communicate their message. Originality/value The study uncovers the benefits gained by B2B firms' through interaction with individuals on social media. This is a significant contribution as the value of such interaction was previously undefined and acted as a barrier for adopting social media in some B2B firms.

The digital transformation of society is ubiquitous, and even well-established educational institutions are affected. Universities need to adapt to the ongoing digital transformation, both to stay relevant but also to prosper. Yet, many public sector universities face obstacles when aiming to transform their business into a digital one, and this calls for research into the strategic organizational elements and related factors that hinder or aid the process. Drawing from an in-depth case study, it analyses data collected via a survey and multiple interviews to explore the organizational challenges a university faces when starting to adapt to digital transformation. The study shows that an organization's collective understanding of its business logics is a prerequisite to advancing digital transformation. The study of a university also shows that the digital transformation focus is skewed towards increasing efficiency rather than the innovation of new practices.

Knowledge transfer is described as problematic, both in literature and in practice. Ideas, information and knowledge are shared through a multitude of formal and informal channels within the organization. Industrial companies have over time applied different methods for capturing and sharing knowledge within the organization.

For instance it is very common to use different kinds of IT systems. When doing this, traditional computerized systems often functions as databases or suggestion boxes. As social networking has entered society a new way of sharing ideas and knowledge has emerged. Due to the newness of the social networks the applicability in organizations is still unclear.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the expectations and goals of implementing a knowledge management web-tool in a company. The research is based on a case study at a mid-sized IT-company. During a time span of six months semi- structured interviews have been conducted with 11 employees. Additionally, participant observations in daily activities have been performed, such as observing internal meetings. Total time spent with the company is more than 25 hours. The study was initiated at the strategic level, in the Quality & Practice Development department, which works in close collaboration with the CEO.

The findings in the case study so far indicate that their need is two folded; one being communication and the other knowledge diffusion. Therefore one expected result of implementing an IT-system is that reuse of best-practices, ideas, experiences, insights and solutions is enhanced. “The system is really an opportunity for us to both communicate with our customers [...] and document our progress in projects, as well as exchanging experience through a type of in-house wiki.” - CEO

The paper will end in conclusions concerning how the system increases knowledge management, which in turn enables management of technology.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how designers perceive that managerial structures affect creativity and efficiency in the design work. The findings indicate that the designers think their creativity is enhanced rather than hindered when each step of the design process has a standardized purpose of what should be achieved.

This research explores the challenges of adopting agile methods in multifunctional productdevelopment, studying the R&D division in a large international company. Using a qualitative method,we seek to understand how stakeholders experience and undertake this ongoing change. Over a 14-month period, in-depth interviews and meetings with managers from various units were conducted.

Our findings highlight the multifaceted challenges encountered in the transition towards agilemethodologies. Key barriers include organizational antagonism, lack of role models, establishingcross-organizational coordination, receiver capacity, and classic change management problems. Ourstudy underscores the need for nuanced managerial strategies to navigate these obstacles effectively.From formalizing new routines to acknowledging external constraints, managers must anticipate andaddress various challenges to ensure successful agile transformations.

The study adds to the current understanding of agile methodologies as new form of organizing R&D ina multifunctional product development setting. We offer insights into the stepwise adoption of agilepractices in multifunctional product development, making three key contributions: (1) identifyingobstacles in adopting agile methods, (2) suggesting areas for future research, and (3) providingpractical advice for managers overseeing multifunctional R&D projects.

The agile paradigm is winning ground, and many large-scale industrial companies are now followingthe trend to transition into agile ways of organizing their (development) work. In doing so, theorganization not only needs to manage the change itself, but also the new way of working and theorganizational consequences from the change. Research in the field has kept pace, there are bothstudied success stories and identified challenges with undergoing agile transformations. However,the long-term organizational consequences of agile transformations and what makes thetransformation sustainable and lasting over time are shrouded in mystery: is it a good or bad dream?

The nature of designing and developing new products and services inherently means having todeal with the unknown. This has garnered research attention from many perspectives over the years.Today we know both how to categorize ambiguity and reasons for sustaining or mitigating it. Yet,what practitioners actually do when facing ambiguity is not well understood. For this reason, weintroduce the concept of negotiating ambiguity, meaning to engage in conversation, to makeinterpretations or create meaning, when facing ambiguity. The purpose is to explore how design andnew product development work is made to progress when facing ambiguity. We study this in twocases: one of service design work and one of product design and development work. Usingobservations and semi-structured interviews, three contributions are derived from the material. First,we show that negotiating ambiguity does not stand apart from the ongoing design and developmentwork. Secondly, we portray 14 activities for negotiating ambiguity. Thirdly, the activities arecategorized into four strategies for negotiating ambiguity, namely: constructing points of reference,mediating between perspectives, anchoring in expertise, and visualizing the future. By leveraginginsights from the paper, managers can strengthen how ambiguity is negotiated in theirorganizations, for instance by recognizing the skill of negotiating ambiguity when recruiting andtraining employees.

Three key challenges to a whole-system approach to process improvement in health systems are the complexity of socio-technical activity, the capacity to change purposefully, and the consequent capacity to proactively manage and govern the system. The literature on healthcare improvement demonstrates the persistence of these problems. In this project, the Access-Risk-Knowledge (ARK) Platform, which supports the implementation of improvement projects, was deployed across three healthcare organisations to address risk management for the prevention and control of healthcare-associated infections (HCAIs). In each organisation, quality and safety experts initiated an ARK project and participated in a follow-up survey and focus group. The platform was then evaluated against a set of fifteen needs related to complex system transformation. While the results highlighted concerns about the platform’s usability, feedback was generally positive regarding its effectiveness and potential value in supporting HCAI risk management. The ARK Platform addresses the majority of identified needs for system transformation; other needs were validated in the trial or are undergoing development. This trial provided a starting point for a knowledge-based solution to enhance organisational governance and develop shared knowledge through a Community of Practice that will contribute to sustaining and generalising that change.

Aviation, health care and financial services are increasingly stretched due to aspects that pose deep enduring systemic threats to our societies, challenging our ability to respond with commensurate socio-technical solutions. It has been argued that complex systems like these are intractable, defying generalisable analysis that could support prediction and control, and hence are not amenable to compliance models of regulation. Instead it is argued here that this ability can be developed with applying governance to a knowledge system.

The knowledge system needs to identify relevant system properties with leverage on operational risk. Big data analysis plus model-based reasoning, can identify generic socio-technical system characteristics. To make sense of the relations between system and outcome a complementary capability to model the functionality of producing the data is needed.

Our socio-technical analysis model is based on the following principles: purposive human systems have outcomes and produce value; this involves at least a minimal sequence of activity with related dependencies; it is the reciprocal nature of social relations that makes that sequence possible, and the flow of knowledge and information enables these productive roles of people. A governance system is required to assure that this works.

A governance system should generate a motivation, an “obligation to act” to use the knowledge directly within operations, to implement and validate solutions, and to manage risk across the system. This behaviour needs to be sustained in three cycles of governance: Operational, Improvement and Strategic. The operational feedback loop maintains its role to ensure close monitoring of the operational impact of the system change, maintaining a close link between strategic implementation and operational experience.

Safety is not something distinct and separate from other aspects of system functionality, but it needs to be integrated into a new evidence-based governance of operational risk which is outlined in this paper.

This paper addresses the interplay between organization designs and value processes in the context of programs. Building upon the findings from a longitudinal case study of a complex multi-partner program within Sweden's transportation sector, we argue that different value processes over the program lifecycle require different program management arrangements. Specifically, the paper explores how three distinct value processes, namely value definition, value creation and value capture, were related to specific program organization design dimensions, including overall organizational form, program boundaries, organizational control modes, program protagonist and sources of funding. The paper explicates the dynamics of alignment between organization design and value processes and shows how the external context shaped the process of alignment. Thus, the study contributes to the literature by reporting a rich, longitudinal empirical case, identifying organizational preconditions for different value processes in programs and highlighting the dynamics of these processes.

The paper analyzes how incumbents can enable their innovation strategy through projects under various conditions. Previous research has identified an array of project-related means, such as explorative projects, project lineages, and ambidextrous programs, by which firms aim to achieve their long-term innovation goals. These approaches, although powerful, are primarily firm-centered, address product-, platform- and business model-level, and emphasize intra-organizational resources and coordination mechanisms. However, systemic transitions are characterized by complex and unforeseen redefinitions of organizational and industrial boundaries, which require mobilization of resources from multiple actors, prompting firms to engage in time-limited experimental networks. The paper takes stock of the approaches by scrutinizing their rationale, locus, mechanisms, and consequences. Consequently, it draws attention to the importance of inter-organizational aspects when facing a systemic transition and contributes to the emerging debate on the linkages between project studies, innovation management and socio-technical transitions.

The characteristics of an aircraft as a noise source changes as the pilots slow the aircraft down and extend flaps and landing gear in preparation for landing. In the OPNOP project, the possibility to use this variation in noise generation to minimize noise at a specified location is examined. Such analysis requires an increased understanding about aircraft noise generation as the aircraft changes configuration and speed during the approach, where theoretical models available can be overly simplistic and of little use for this purpose. Using flight data from 113 Airbus A321 flights, and corresponding noise measurements on the ground, this study reports on the findings forming the foundation on which further analysis will be conducted. Findings relate to: a comparison between models and actual measurements, the distance variability to the runway for various flap selections and extension of the landing gear as well as a comparison between flight data and on-ground noise measurements. Captured data suggest that it should be possible to use speed and configuration recommendations to reduce noise over selected approach areas. Future research will include scenario generation and incorporate flight data from an earlier study to increase validity.

The aim of this article was to use an interpretivist approach to analyse the state-citizen nexus in general and the conflict between civil and social rights imposing restrictions on people's freedom of movement during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Nordic countries: Sweden (restrictions were voluntary and relied on nudging and individual implementation), Norway (restrictions of movement were for everyone and was enforced by authorities), and Finland (restrictions of movement were for the capital region and was enforced by authorities). Sweden focused more on upholding the civil rights vis-à-vis social rights whereas in Norway and Finland social rights have trumped civil rights in the face of the pandemic. Thus, the analysis suggests that the Nordic countries cannot be understood as monoliths in all respects. The article thereby contributes to a greater understanding of how the Nordic governments prioritise civil and social rights differently when they are forced to choose.

Companies are adopting several new technologies that form the pillars of Industry 4.0 production framework, of which Digital Manufacturing (DM) stands out by combining conventional manufacturing technologies with digital techniques. These are used to assist in the design and analysis of the product and manufacturing processes. The adoption of digital manufacturing is partly about technological change, but it also entails significant organizational issues, which often are overlooked by managers. The purpose of this study is to identify the key factors that enable or prevent DM implementation, considering the production paradigm of Industry 4.0. Based on a literature review that identified a preliminary list of key factors, the appropriateness of these factors is empirically tested and refined in a two-fold approach: an in-depth pilot case in a multinational automotive company that is adopting DM technologies, and a survey of 113 users, managers, implementers and researchers working on digital manufacturing and Industry 4.0. The study identified 24 key factors to be considered when firms implement DM. These are categorized into technical, organizational, project based and external factors. The findings also indicate how each factor should be considered, and that they cannot be generalized due to cultural differences inherent to each individual company. As such, this research contributes to the current research debate by identifying the critical factors to be considered when conceiving and applying models for planning and executing DM implementation.

The increased use of automation has affected the work on the flight deck. The Single European Sky ATM Research (SESAR), deployed with the purpose to increase the European ATM system performance, identifies automation as a key enabler to increase future system performance. The aviation system is a complex large socio-technical system. The system is affected by internal and external stressors at all system levels. At a work process level of this system, the flight deck represents a Joint Cognitive System. When accidents or incidents do occur, the importance to look beyond the label of flight crew error to understand what happened is widely recognized. As flight safety improves, there are fewer incidents and accidents to learn from, which increases the importance to look at normal operations data for improvement.

The flight crew training environment is increasingly relying on collected data about an individual airline’s flight operational environment and performance. Through airlines’ performance measurement system, a large amount of performance data is collected. However, this data is not in a format immediately useful for studies of neither complex socio-technical, nor joint cognitive systems. In addition, regulatory, financial, and other constraints limit airlines’ use of collected data as well as how they perform training.

The purpose of this research is to increase knowledge about how training content and learning opportunities for flight crew relates to airline performance monitoring and measurement processes, given a highly automated dynamic environment. Against this background, barriers and potential for improvements to support the flight crew for the operation of the highly automated aircraft are identified.

This research has been conducted using a mixed method approach for collecting and analyzing data. The overall research approach is conducted in an applied research tradition. The empirical data in this thesis are primarily based on two research projects, HILAS and Brantare, both with explicit goals of knowledge generation and learning among participating organizations. The results are based on the following methods: 1) System analysis using Rasmussen’s model for a socio-technical system involved in risk management as the framework, to describe the aviation system, primarily with a perspective from the flight crew and their automated work environment, 2) Interviews of pilots, 3) Workshops with groups of pilots and safety office staff, 4) Implementation attempt of a proposed method how to use data and 5) Collection of flight operational data.

Based on Rasmussen’s model of a dynamic socio-technical system, the aviation system of interest ranges from “A single European Sky” to regulators, national legislation to flight operations, training, and the work on flight deck as well as political and financial pressures on the airline. The conclusions drawn from this comprehensive scope is reliant on the author’s domain knowledge acquired from some 30 years of experience in the aviation industry.

Several barriers against the use of performance data for knowledge and learning improvements are identified. The airline monitoring systems are not ideal for specifically measuring automation related problems and flight crew – automation interactions. Due to the already high flight safety levels, new performance measurement processes and activities are neither prioritized, invested in nor explored. When a proposed data-use method was attempted to be implemented it showed difficulties in finding causalities and relationships between available airline parameters. With unclear causality between various parameters recorded and actual outcomes, it is difficult for airlines to use data available as a source for confident training design. This is also the case for the selection of Safety Performance Indicators, that often are outcome based at a high level. More cross-system integration may render the current measurement systems insufficient to understand difficulties and possibilities in the greater aviation system.

Potential for improvement related to the use of data, knowledge and learning are also identified. Flight crew show a high acceptability towards a proposed learning concept based on normal flight data. A greater emphasis of using indicators showing airline adaptability and flexibility is proposed. Also, moving from a scheduled training activity mindset to a wider learning and knowledge management and sharing concept is suggested as a cost-efficient way forward. Increased utilization of normal operational flight data should be used for this purpose and have potential to contribute to both efficiency and safety in aviation.

This thesis contributes to airline performance measurement and flight crew training knowledge. Results from this research is valuable in other highly automated safety critical domains with a high acceptance of performance being measured and analyzed.

This chapter explores several ways in which automation and preparation for future supervisory control work in cockpits could be meaningfully integrated in the stages where the groundwork for pilot competence is laid. It discusses ab initio training, the phase in which new recruits is brought up to commercial pilot status in about 200 hours of flying. The limited flying time received during ab initio training is mostly gained on aircraft whose level of automation has little resemblance to that of the pilot’s ultimate working environment. Even without advanced automation in training aircraft the future performance of the student could benefit from learning that manual flying is only one among other modes of flying while practising the basic flying skills. Although automation has fundamentally changed the roles of people on the flight deck, it has not reduced the need to invest in human expertise. Treating automation as a separate subject may misrepresent its place in the curriculum of modem flight training. 

The performance measurement systems (PMS) have been studied over the last ten years, but this is still a very important research topic for companies and it keep being studied nowadays, because such systems help in decision-making, they allow monitoring and control indicators, and to assist business and operations strategy realization. The recent studies on PMS mostly are on reviewing their concepts and definitions, models, frameworks, design and implementation recommendations, etc. Based on a study oriented to PMS use described by roles to be played, this article aims to discuss the interrelationships between the roles of a performance measurement system, to cluster them and to formulate recommendations for their adoption and proper use. Thus, a survey collected and analyzed the perception of business representatives, who are able to express their agreement levels for PMS roles and use. Data are analyzed by using cluster analysis technique where the roles forms four groups, which can be confronted with the findings of related works from PMS literature. From the groups formed, it is possible to indicate four main domains of recommendations: to assure the alignment between strategic management of operations and its performance, promoting and improving the overall efficiency and effectiveness of the business operations results; to produce positive changes in organizational systems, processes and culture, developing the capacity to manage continuous improvement projects through integrated strategic management systems; to have a customer-oriented design approach; to be orientated and to manage stakeholders’ demands.

“Critical conversations” is an exploration of the process of constructing gender in a formal organizational process, namely the performance managementprocess. At the collaborative case company, the performance managementprocess is practiced in so called career conversations and the aim is to explore whether men and women are supported and encouraged differently inthese conversations, intended to develop employees’ careers? If so, how is thisdone? Could it contribute to an explanation of the systematic divergence ofcareer advancement for men and women over time and the late arrival of women, relative men, to executive suit.

Observations from 16 hours of career conversationsthat constitute the prime data. The career conversations sit in the intersection of employees’ individual career ambitions and the casecompany’s organizational goals. The conversations are thus both a site and avehicle to grow individual career development, as well as company performanceand it is my intention to explore how gender is constructed narratively andsocially in that space. Language used in career conversations is analyzed with Boje’s (2001) antenarrative approach, which encourages narrative speculations andbets of what language can hold, mean and construct. Speculattions of what constructs gender in career conversations are informed bypostmodernist feminist thinking, predominantly Acker (1990 and 1992) and her theory of gendered organization processes. The antenarrative analysis builds adeepened understand of how language can socially construct gender and myconclusion is that career conversation is not a gender neutral practice and this has consequences for the individual employees as well as for the organization asa whole.

Purpose Although China can be considered an early adopter of the circular economy, there are few studies of remanufacturing business models (BMs) in the context of the Chinese automobile industry. The purpose of this paper is to investigate viable BMs, summarizes current obstacles and anticipates future development opportunities and directions. Design/methodology/approach The cross-case analysis considers the roles of value networks and of customer value proposition and interface in circular business models (CBMs) by examining the strategies and tactical measures of two leading remanufacturers. The data are collected from semi-structured interviews, documents, etc. Findings The analysis identifies the following components of viable BMs of remanufacturers: reclaiming raw material, managing used components, producing new products and marketing. Several current obstacles are summarized from four perspectives: policy barriers and insufficient government support; consumer awareness; related product quality; and technology. The study also identifies future directions and opportunities for the automobile parts remanufacturing industry. Originality/value This study contributes to the CBM literature by mapping the barriers and opportunities in remanufacturing. The results have shed some light into the field of sustainability in manufacturing firms by empirically testing the theoretical model. The results will help managers to design viable CBMs in different contexts.

While airlines generate massive amounts of operational data every year, the ability to use the collected material to improve safety has begun to plateau.  With the increasing demand for air travel, the aviation industry is continually growing while simultaneously being required to ensure the level of safety within the system remains constant.  The purpose of this paper is to explore whether the traditional analysis methods that have historically made aviation ultra-safe have reached their theoretical limits or merely practical ones.  This analysis argues that the underlying logic governing the traditional (and current) approaches to assess safety and risk within aviation (and other safety critical systems) is abductive and therefore focused on creating explanations rather than predictions.  While the current “fly-fix-fly” approach has, and will continue to be, instrumental in improving what (clearly) fails, alternative methods are needed to determine if a specific operation is more or less risky than others.  As the system grows, so too does the number of ways it can fail, creating the possibility that more novel accidents may occur.  The paper concludes by proposing an alternative approach that explicitly adds temporality to the concepts of safety and risk.  With this addition, a deductive analysis approach can be adopted which, while low in explanatory power, can be used to create predictions that are not bound to analyzing only outcomes that have occurred in the past but instead focuses on determining the deviation magnitude between the operation under analysis and historically commensurate operations.

There is a strong and growing interest in using the large amount of high-quality operationaldata available within an airline. One reason for this is the push by regulators to use data todemonstrate safety performance by monitoring the outputs of Safety P erformance Indicatorsrelative to targeted goals. However, the current exceedance-based approaches alone do notprovide sufficient operational risk information to support managers and operators makingproximate real-time data-driven decisions. The purpose of this study was to develop and testa set of metrics which can complement the current exceedance-based methods. The approachwas to develop two construct variables that were designed with the aim to: (1) create anaggregate construct variable that can differentiate between normal and abnormal landings(row_mean); and (2) determine if temporal sequence patterns can be detected within thedata set that can differentiate between the two landing groups (row_sequence). To assessthe differentiation ability of the aggregate constructs, a set of both statistical and visual testswere run in order to detect quantitative and qualitative differences between the data seriesrepresenting two landing groups prior to touchdown. The result, verified with a time series k-means cluster analysis, show that the composite constructs seem to differentiate normal andabnormal landings by capturing time-varying importance of individual variables in the final300 seconds before touchdown. Together the approaches discussed in this article present aninteresting and complementary way forward that should be further pursued.

This thesis tackles the changing landscape of healthcare delivery, with an increasingly fragmented set of healthcare providers and where speciality hospitals increasingly replace or complement traditional general hospitals. There is a need for guidance to policymakers and healthcare providers, on how different set-ups of healthcare delivery facilities, in terms of the scale and the focus of each facility, impacts performance. In spite of this, facility design and other structural elements of operations, have received relatively little attention in the healthcare operations management literature, compared to infrastructural elements such as scheduling and quality management. There is a lack of agreement among researchers on how healthcare facility design - and scale and focus in particular - affects performance in healthcare. Hence, this thesis investigates the relationship between scale (in terms of size or volume of operations) and performance (in terms of quality and cost), and focus (in terms of narrowing the range of services or emphasizing certain services) and performance in healthcare operations.

This thesis builds on two research studies: an in-depth case study of a transformation of a regional hospital network, and a quantitative study using data from the Scandinavian Obesity Surgery Registry. Based on the first study a profile model of focus in healthcare organizations is proposed, where focus is operationalized in six dimensions: Knowledge areas, Procedures, Medical conditions, Patient groups, Planning horizons, and Levels of difficulty. The second study examines the relationships between focus and performance, and between scale and performance, in the context of elective surgery. When controlling for patient case mix in the different hospitals, the study shows benefits of both focus and scale (volume). More focused facilities have fewer complications after surgery and shorter procedure times. Facilities with higher volumes have fewer complications after surgery, shorter procedure times, and shorter length-of-stay in hospital for patients.

The results presented in this thesis contribute to the healthcare operations management literature in four different ways: First, they extend and translate previous operationalizations of focus, developed in a manufacturing context, into the context of healthcare service delivery. Second, they provide evidence for a positive association between focus and cost and quality performance, in the context of elective surgery. Third, they provide evidence for a positive association between scale (volume) and cost and quality outcomes, in the context of elective surgery. Fourth, they support the emerging contingency theory of benefits of focus in healthcare, a theory stating that patients with less complex needs benefit more from focused operations. The results also suggest a complementary contingency condition for benefits of scale in healthcare, finding that more complicated treatments benefit more from an increased scale of operations.

This thesis has implications for management and policy. It provides a framework for understanding profiles of hospital focus, either as a step in the strategy development for a single hospital or as a step in planning patient allocation within a hospital network. Moreover, it gives tentative guidance on the importance of volume and specialization in different types of healthcare services. Following from this, it also provides tentative guidance on which type of facility that is best suited for different healthcare services.