New ‘rural lifestyle estates’ in The Netherlands

Recent studies tend to indicate that no longer all presently agricultural land in The Netherlands is required for sustainable agricultural production. Apart from various urban uses and some projects turning agricultural land into nature reserves or giving it a secondary function, like national landscape parks or drinking water supply area, it is not easy to find alternative users for the land presently managed by farmers. At the same time, many urban companies or families are vainly looking for building lots away from our ‘compact urban areas’. This paper explores a way to bring this supply and demand together in a landscape-wise more than acceptable manner: the planning concept and experiment of ‘new rural lifestyle estates’.     

Directions for future research in project management: The main findings of a UK government-funded research network

In 2003 the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) agreed to fund a research network – Rethinking Project Management – to define a research agenda aimed at enriching and extending the subject of project management beyond its current conceptual foundations. The main argument for the proposed Network highlighted the growing critiques of project management theory and the need for new research in relation to the developing practice. Being the first paper of this Special Issue, this paper presents the Network’s main findings: a framework of five directions aimed at developing the field intellectually in the following areas: project complexity, social process, value creation, project conceptualisation, and practitioner development. These areas are based on a comprehensive analysis of all the research material produced over a 2-year period and represent the dominant pattern of ideas to emerge from the Network as a whole. They are not meant to be the agenda for future research, but an agenda to inform and stimulate current and future research activity in developing the field of project management. Methodologically, the five research directions represent a synthesis of ideas for how the current conceptual base needs to develop in relation to the developing world of practice. As well as presenting the main findings, the paper also presents a practical research framework aimed at researchers working in the field. The intended audience for the paper is the project management research community, and also researchers in other management areas for whom the Network’s findings might be of interest.     

The application of ‘least-cost’ modelling as a functional landscape model

The growing awareness of the adverse effects of habitat fragmentation on natural systems has resulted in a rapidly increasing number of actions to reduce current fragmentation of natural systems as well as a growing demand for tools to predict and evaluate the effect of changes in the landscape on connectivity in the natural world. Recent studies used ‘least-cost’ modelling (available as a toolbox in GIS-systems) to calculate ‘effective distance’, a measure for distance modified with the cost to move between habitat patches based on detailed geographical information on the landscape as well as behavioural aspects of the organisms studied. We applied the method to a virtual landscape and a small scaled agricultural system subject to different scenarios in a land re-allotment project. We discuss the importance of technical aspects and ecological assumption underlying this modelling method. The model is shown to be a flexible tool to model functional connectivity in the study of the relation between landscape and mobility of organisms as well as in scenario building and evaluation in wild life protection projects and applied land management projects. Since ‘effective distance’ has the same units as Euclidean distance (m), this effective distance may be a straightforward way to include landscape and behavioural aspects in other models which include distance as a measure for isolation. We show the importance of the ‘ecological’ quality of the input maps and the choice of relevant landscape features and resistance values.     

Public policy for a multiproduct firm : Tearing down the ‘Berlin Wall’ in telecommunications

United States telecommunications policy contains ‘Berlin Walls’ that due to technology advances are being breached. Policies that encourage competitors are unnecessarily constraining traditional providers, the local exchange carriers. These constraints are causing market distortions, harmful to consumers. We propose four specific policy changes that should be adopted in order to bring down the walls while providing protections against any residual market power held by the exchange carriers. Specifically: use of incremental cost test to deter/detect cross-subsidies, price imputation for intrafirm transfers, generalized open network architecture, and removal of prohibitions on exchange carrier provision of video programming.     

A comment on Scott and Storper's ‘The nature of cities: The scope and limits of urban theory’

Facing the main historical realizations of the city and the main theorizations about it, Scott and Storper look for identifying its invariant character. By distinguish between issues that, while occurring in the city, originate elsewhere in the social realm and issues that are intrinsic to it, they point to the ‘urban land nexus’ as the city unifying explicative principle, which stems from the trade‐off between agglomeration economies and land shortage. I argue that this outcome lies on the confusion between the city and urban agglomeration at large and, ultimately, on the unresolved quarrel between structuralism and empiricism.     

Learning mobility grants and skill (mis)matching in the labour market: The case of the ‘Master and Back’ Programme

This paper looks at the geographical mobility of graduate students and their skill matching in the labour market. The paper assesses the impact of a learning mobility grant scheme funded by the European Social Fund in Sardinia (ex‐Objective 1 region in the Italian Mezzogiorno). The scheme aims to foster regional human capital and increase the employability of local graduates by covering the cost of post‐graduate studies in other regions or countries. The econometric analysis is based on a unique dataset that combines administrative data on beneficiaries with information from a dedicated survey. The results suggest that learning mobility grants can reinforce skill matching only if the problem of self‐selection of the beneficiaries is properly addressed.     

Exploring the role of formal bodies of knowledge in defining a profession – The case of project management

Since the mid 1970s, project management associations around the world have made serious attempts to conduct themselves as professional associations. Traditional professions distinguished themselves by emphasising standards such as service to the public and competence in their field, and by ensuring that their membership meets these standards. An important element of a profession is ownership of a body of knowledge that is distinctive to the professional group. Project management associations have spent considerable time and effort in developing Bodies of Knowledge (BOKs) and their associated certification programs, and indeed the popularity of these has been notable. Yet there are problems, some relating to the broader issue of whether the project management associations really are equipped to act as professional bodies, others related to the specific challenge of agreeing the ‘distinctive body of knowledge’ and to the value of certification.This paper draws on insights from the rethinking project management EPSRC project as well as several separate research programs to explore the development of project management as a profession and the role of the formal BOKs in this professionalization, and to suggest a research agenda for critiquing, contributing to, and maintaining both the formal BOKs and the more general body of knowledge relevant to the needs of the discipline.     

Relational competence in complex temporary organizations: The case of a French hospital construction project network

Large and complex project networks are characterized by the collaboration of heterogeneous organizations and individuals. In addition to project management techniques and complementary skills, relational competence, i.e. the ability to actively create and develop collaborative relationships is an essential asset for managing project networks. Networks represent structured role systems which may be a substitute for stable organizational structures and routines. This study investigates relational competence in the network of a large construction project of a French hospital. Based on network data and qualitative interviews, we compare the formal roles and positions of actors in the network to their actual roles and positions and analyze how relational competence promotes the coordination of project work. We find several actors whose network position and relational competence correspond to the formal organization and several actors with a mismatch between the formal organization and the actual role and position. In the latter cases, other network members step in and contribute to an effective coordination. The concept of relational competence in combination with network analysis contributes to a better understanding of the functioning of project networks. In particular, it reveals dysfunctions in the project network and allows for identifying the reasons for failure.     

The conservation of historic areas in the UK: A case study of “Grainger Town”, Newcastle upon Tyne

Conservation in the UK is generally regarded as having undergone a sea-change in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as policy- and decision-makers retreated from comprehensive development and embraced conservation. Using part of the city centre of Newcastle upon Tyne as a case study, this article examines this thesis. Beneath simple measures, such as the amount of the city centre which is classified as historic, a more complex picture emerges. A framework for interventions in the historic environment is theorised and there is found to be a continuing tension between conservation approaches which seek to visually manage the city and those which place stress on historic fabric and morphology.     

浅议综合公益建筑代建项目实践中的要素管理——兼谈湖南省青少年活动中心代建实践

通过代建项目的实践,提炼了相关影响代建进程和投资控制的要素,对代建项目营造良好的外部建设环境、运用概算审定程序、合理引导及规范程序管理等进行了分析。