Investigating perspective taking when infrastructure megaproject teams engage local communities: Navigating tensions and balancing perspectives

Research on infrastructure megaprojects and community engagement is increasingly concerned with the cognitive factors that underpin engagement processes and actions. The ability of project teams to take the perspective of local communities is an important influence on how community engagement occurs. However this involves project teams confronting contradictions and tensions between local community perspectives and their own. Understanding how project teams respond to tensions between and seek to balance both perspectives is thus important, but this is relatively unexplored in literature to date. In response, this study utilizes the concept of ‘perspective-taking’, adopting a paradox lens to examine how tensions between the perspectives of local communities and project teams manifest and how project teams navigate these during community engagement. Through an exploratory case, the study reveals the specific cognitive attributes that enable infrastructure megaproject teams to be more effective in perspective-taking through balancing both local community and their own perspectives.     

Very important,yet very neglected: Where do local communities stand when examining social sustainability in major construction projects?

Major construction projects are characterized by a heterogeneous audience of stakeholders who can create severe reputational risk to project organizations when not properly addressed. The inclusion and support that project organizations devote to local communities form a crucial part of a project's delivery and social sustainability considerations, yet this has only recently attracted attention in project studies. To address social sustainability, project managers should reinforce accountability and the inclusion of ‘new voices’ in the project decision-making process. Through mixed-methods research, this paper contributes to the project stakeholder engagement discourse and normative stance of stakeholder theory concerning the role of local communities and examines the ways in which inclusion can provide a response to the sustainability challenges of major projects. Findings suggest means-ends decoupling situations where current project management practices towards communities' engagement are weakly linked to their goals and induced by convergent pressures and reactive mechanisms, thus preventing an inclusive decision-making process.     

Is the evolution of building sustainability assessment methods promoting the desired sharing of knowledge amongst project stakeholders?

Building sustainability assessment methods (BSAM’s) seek to help project stakeholders understand the predicted and actual sustainability performance of their buildings but are often applied reactively and isolated from project decisions. The last decade has seen BREEAM at the forefront of evolving assessment practice towards a framework approach to help shape project decisions and promote stakeholder learning. The research explores the nature and extent this transition is being realized in practice within four case studies applying BREEAM spanning a 15-year period. Process and knowledge mapping techniques are applied to explore the flow of knowledge required to enable sustainable decisions, stimulate the sharing of understanding, mediation of views and to promote learning amongst stakeholders. Evidence suggested that when applied in progressive projects that the flow of knowledge is strongest when supported by sustainability leadership, a framework approach aligned with project management, an improvement and engagement culture and a strategy for promoting knowledge flow. As practice matures care is needed to ensure engagement remains high and stakeholders are not isolated from the flow of knowledge as projects increasingly rely on sustainability advisors thus losing the opportunity to learn and shape decisions.     

国土空间规划背景下自然保护地乡村社区规划问题探讨

自然保护地乡村社区是影响自然保护成效的重要因素,其性质是特殊保护目标下的人文生态综合体.自然保护地乡村社区规划包含了比一般"村庄规划"更广义的构架,涉及社区的自然保护地规划、空间规划和部门专项规划3类.三者以不同的方式作用于乡村社区,但之间缺乏紧密的衔接和联系,而国土空间规划体系和自然保护地体系的重构为各类自然保护地乡...     

英国可持续发展战略编制体系及实施策略

近年来,英国在推进实施可持续发展方面取得了较大进展。在国家、区域、地方及社区各个层面编制了可持续发展战略及行动计划,并通过各种实施性、示范性项目推动可持续发展战略在全社会及各个行业的实施。如何编制可持续发展战略,建立完整的编制体系和采取有效的实施策略是我国实施可持续发展战略亟待解决的问题。通过若干实例介绍了英国可持续发展战略的编制体系及其实施策略,并提出了我国实施可持续发展战略需要注意的问题。     

赋权视角下的乡村社区生态规划 ——主体特征、实施路径和关键策略

社区赋权视角的乡村社区生态规 划模式,可为乡村产业复兴和生态保护提供有 效可行的路径。以远郊乡村作为研究对象, 从人地关系、组织管理和社会人文三方面分 析乡村社区主体特征,探讨乡村社区生态规 划的实施路径,进而提出乡村社区生态规划 的关键策略：通过社区赋权可以达成环境共 识,通过社会协作可以形成乡村生态空间的 地方性规制;根植于生态系统服务的乡村产 业,可以形成维持良好生态环境的物质基础; 构建遵循自然过程的适应性结构,有助于形 成健康安全的聚落空间载体;乡村社区精神 空间及仪式性活动有利于增强社区归属感, 提升社区凝聚力。     

Local landscape character assessment: An evaluation of community-led schemes in cheshire

Planning, especially with the increasing prominence given to community involvement, is a key vehicle for delivering sustainable development. Between 2003 and 2005 two community groups in Cheshire wrote parish landscape character assessments. The completed assessments were combined with an appropriate village design statement and subsequently approved as Supplementary Planning Guidance by Chester City and Vale Royal District Councils respectively. The experiences of these groups are critically appraised against the project aims, tangible and not-tangible costs and criteria relating to the enhancement of community engagement in sustainable development practice. The evaluation highlights the importance of the process as well as the product, the financial costs involved, the volunteer time commitment required, the skills required in the community, the issues associated with data acquisition and the importance of building a strong, open partnership between local authorities and the local community. These findings have relevance to others involved in community-led initiatives.     

Negotiating reciprocal relationships: Practices of engaged scholarship in project studies

Engaged scholarship is frequently being advocated to bridge the knowledge gap between academic scholars and project practitioners. Through the methodology of engaged scholarship academics establish a reciprocal relationship with the project community while adhering to the standards of quality scholarship. Notwithstanding its growing popularity, in project studies we do not learn much about the practices involved in engaged scholarship, neither is the concept theoretically well developed. We argue that, to further the project studies debate, methodological reflection on the reciprocal relationship between academics and practitioners is needed. For this purpose, we provide an analytical framework containing four elements; goals, negotiation practices, reciprocity typology and outcomes of project studies. We then use this framework to analyze three engaged project studies. The paper contributes to project studies with an enhanced concept of engaged scholarship containing three types of reciprocity; generalized, balanced and negative reciprocity. Furthermore, we found that a reciprocal relationship is negotiated and changes over time. We identified four mechanisms that negatively impact the academic and practical outcomes of engaged scholarship studies.     

Pushing the envelope: market mechanisms for sustainable community development

This paper introduces market mechanisms for sustainable community development, an interdependent planning and implementation framework encompassing strategic directions, strategies, actors and instruments for municipal policy making. It examines how the economy influences the unsustainable development of local jurisdictions and how a coherent typology of strategies, actors and policy levers can move communities toward complementary environmental, social and economic outcomes. The paper illustrates a dichotomy between municipal decision making and embraces economic, social and environmental criteria for development of the built environment. It defines sustainable community development and analyzes research findings from senior decision makers in government, academic institutions, industry and non-profits. After critiquing ‘the market mechanism’ and identifying preferred approaches, the authors propose a typology that systematically aligns market signals with implementing sustainable community development policies.     

对建筑工程项目管理信息化的研究分析

对工程项目管理信息化的发展、市场、价值和技术进行了分析,提出了只有充分认识到工程项目管理信息化存在问题的根源,掌握了工程项目管理信息化的发展趋势,才能提高工程项目管理信息化水平,让信息技术真正地为工程项目管理发挥积极作用.     

Grasping project complexity in large engineering projects: The TOE (Technical, Organizational and Environmental) framework

This paper presents a framework for characterising project complexity in large engineering projects, which can be used to adapt the front-end development phase of engineering projects to the particular complexity. Recently, a large number of project complexity related papers were published, demonstrating the evident importance of “complexity” in current project management research. However, no generally accepted framework is available to support the characterising and understanding of project complexity that appreciates the richness of project complexity in large engineering projects. Therefore the TOE (Technical, Organizational, and Environmental) framework was developed, based on a literature survey building upon existing work and on new empirical work consisting of eighteen interviews about six projects in the process engineering industry. As a result of an inductive approach, this framework presents the elements that contribute to project complexity from a theoretical as well as a practical perspective. The framework can be used to assess the complexity of engineering projects, and subsequently adapt the front-end development phase of projects in order to better manage the complexity of the project.     

A critical argument in favor of theoretical pluralism: Project failure and the many and varied limitations of project management

In project management, failure is often assumed to be evidence of deficient management: a problem that can be overcome by better management. Drawing on qualitative research within UK construction projects we examine how four different theoretical approaches (positivism, structural Marxism, interpretivism and actor–network theory) all challenge this managerial assumption. Each theoretical perspective enables a specific analysis of empirical data that critiques the notion that project failures are easily, simply, or largely, associated with the failure of project management. In so doing, our pluralist analysis reveals the social and political contextualization of performance in project management. We thus conclude by proposing that practitioner and scholarly concerns with project failure (and success), can actively contribute to attempts to reflect upon various matters of political concern as developed within the Making Projects Critical community, and by extension Critical Management Studies. Thus, we propose greater interaction between critical and mainstream project research communities.     

The management of project management: A conceptual framework for project governance

For an organization to create optimal value from its investment in projects there must be a clear link between the outputs created by the projects and the requirements of the organization's business strategy. This means that organizations that have a structure in place for aligning the project deliverables with their organizational goals will be better placed to realize their investment in projects, and achieve the value defined by their business strategies. This paper examines existing research, ideas and concepts of project governance and enterprise project management, and offers a framework to build on current theory development and practice. Synthesizing existing literature of project/program management, governance and portfolio management, this paper proposes four key elements to improve the performance of projects and hence create value for organizations. These four elements are (1) portfolio management: focused on selecting the right projects and programs to support the organization's strategy, and terminating ones that no longer contribute to the business success of the organization; (2) project sponsorship: providing the direct link between the executive and the project or program manager, focused on the whole project lifecycle; (3) Project Management Office (PMO): providing oversight and strategic reporting capabilities; (4) projects and program support: the effective support and management of projects and programs are the measures of an effective governance system. The purpose of the framework described in this paper is to provide guidance to organizations in the development of effective project governance to optimize the management of projects.     

Contributions of Social Capital to Best Practice Urban Planning Outcomes

Sustainable communities prioritise health, safety and equity among residents. These interdependent dimensions of community well-being require an integrative developmental and evaluation framework to highlight the connections essential for their development. We examine the utility of the social capital construct as a connective framework with the potential to assist urban planners in enhancing these attributes and the sustainability of communities in new or existing developments. Concepts of social capital are already utilised in urban planning contexts, however, we chart a novel approach and demonstrate that a combination of the bonding, bridging and linking dimensions of social capital can provide a comprehensive and multidimensional framework that overcomes the limitations imposed by popular, yet narrower concepts, such as social cohesion and social exclusion. The strength of this combination is that it not only explores connections between individuals and various resources within communities but also includes relationships with broader networks and decision-makers. In this way, planning processes can contribute to more recent notions of sustainable development that include governance as a fourth and essential pillar in quadruple bottom line approaches to sustainable development.     

理论知识与政策的衔接:美国社区指标的前景

美国目前已认定的基于社区的指标项目已超过200个.文章回顾了社区指标项目成败的要素,讨论了社区努力达到的预期结果.文章特别探讨了组织和政策这两个对社区指标项目成功至关重要的因素.对于准备开展指标项目的社区,文章也给出了相应建议.     

Tackling grand challenges with projects: Five insights and a research agenda for project management theory and practice

The project management field has two blind spots: a focus on “run-of-the-mill” projects at the expense of pioneering “push-the-envelope” projects and a rigor-relevance gap in the research. There are simply too few scholarly works devoted to project management and grand challenges, those wicked, complex, uncertain, messy, boundary-crossing problems that confront the world. Drawing on the grand challenges of sustainable development and COVID-19 and the projects they provoke, this essay highlights five insights for theory and practice and suggests that selectionism and instructionism are worthwhile approaches, while collaborative rationality may trump linear rationality. We argue that project management for grand challenges is a promising land of “push-the-envelope” portfolios that can help overcome these two blind spots, regain relevance, avoid anomia, and revitalize theory and practice. To this end, we show that there is a concomitant need for a theory of grand challenge project behavior and offer an agenda for future research.     

Competing management approaches in large engineering projects: The Dutch RandstadRail project

The management of large engineering projects is often a combination of the focus on planning and control, and the ambition to be flexible given the complexity and uncertainties that characterises these kinds of projects. However, control and flexibility impose contradictory requirements upon the management of these projects. The literature on project management reflects this contradiction. Some authors underline that projects require firm planning and control, thus downplaying the role of flexibility. Others emphasise that projects require flexibility and responsiveness, thus moving away from rigid planning and control. In this contribution, we suggest that in practice project managers acknowledge the weakness of both extremes and therefore strive to combine the two. Moreover, we argue that project success is at risk when project managers do not succeed in meeting the requirements of control and flexibility. To be able to investigate how these competing requirements are dealt with in practice, a framework is developed. The usefulness of the framework is explored by applying the framework to the large engineering project Randstadrail—a light rail project in The Netherlands.     

Selection of sustainable projects for floodplain restoration and urban wastewater management at the lower Chubut River valley (Argentina)

Urban growth causes environmental degradation of extended areas at the coastal floodplain of the Chubut River (Argentina). We developed procedures to identify environmentally sustainable engineering projects for floodplain restoration and urban wastewater management. We addressed specific questions about considering basic hydrological knowledge, stakeholders’ interests and social acceptance, and evaluated scoring methods that would be consistent, non-redundant and robust to various weighting criteria. Our procedures followed the following steps: (1) identification of sustainability paradigms adapted to local contexts; (2) development of hydrological modeling and collection of expert and stakeholders’ judgment in order to formulate a wide palette of feasible project alternatives; (3) development of a set of indicators of environmental sustainability to evaluate the project alternatives and test of their self-consistency; (4) evaluation of the proposed projects by means of a hierarchical multivariate analysis, estimation of the indicator weights through multivariate analyses of the un-weighted judgment scores, and reduction of the redundancy incurred during project evaluation. Finally, we identified a small set of highly ranked project alternatives to achieve floodplain restoration and sustainable urban wastewater management in the area and tested the obtained ranks for sensitivity and robustness to eventual bias in the estimation of environmental scores. We discuss the methodological developments presented in this study and their eventual application to similar landscape and urban planning scenarios.     

Sustaining Rural Landscapes: the role of integrated tourism

The aim of a European Union-funded research project entitled 'Supporting and Promoting Integrated Tourism in Europe's Lagging Rural Regions' (SPRITE) is to analyse and develop the potential for better-integrated tourism in the rural landscapes of Europe. Integrated tourism can be defined as that which is explicitly linked to the localities in which it takes place and, in practical terms, has clear connections with local resources, activities, products, production and service industries, and a participatory local community. Enhancing the sustainable economic potential of rural landscapes requires partnerships among rural people and the sustainable yet productive use of rural resources. A 'culture economy' approach to integrated tourism is proposed, which emphasizes the importance of local identity, the strategic commodification of resources and of place, and the importance of extra-local forces in enabling local activities. It is suggested that this approach may represent a shift beyond more traditional approaches to rural development.     

可持续发展条件下的工程项目管理

工程建设会带来诸多的环境问题,本文将工程项目作为自然--社会--经济的复合系统,站在项目所处的整个社会经济的层次上,提出了可持续发展条件下的工程项目管理的概念,在详细比较和分析其具体含义的基础上,探讨性地提出该条件下工程项目管理组织方式,并对工程项目的实施管理提出了可行的建议.