Sunila Lobo

Coordination and control in project‐based work: digital objects and infrastructures for delivery

A major infrastructure project is used to investigate the role of digital objects in the coordination of engineering design work. From a practice‐based perspective, research emphasizes objects as important in enabling cooperative knowledge work and knowledge sharing. The term ‘boundary object’ has become used in the analysis of mutual and reciprocal knowledge sharing around physical and digital objects. The aim is to extend this work by analysing the introduction of an extranet into the public–private partnership project used to construct a new motorway. Multiple categories of digital objects are mobilized in coordination across heterogeneous, cross‐organizational groups. The main findings are that digital objects provide mechanisms for accountability and control, as well as for mutual and reciprocal knowledge sharing; and that different types of objects are nested, forming a digital infrastructure for project delivery. Reconceptualizing boundary objects as a digital infrastructure for delivery has practical implications for management practices on large projects and for the use of digital tools, such as building information models, in construction. It provides a starting point for future research into the changing nature of digitally enabled coordination in project‐based work.

Achieving reliability in transnational work on complex projects: new directions for research

The delivery of complex engineering projects today often involves globally distributed teams. In these teams, engineers must check for inadvertent errors by following the assumptions, logic and computations of others and define processes to reduce these errors. Engineering firms are thus increasingly using digital technologies to enable teams to do transnational work. While project management research on global virtual teams articulates how team performance relates to composition and characteristics, it has paid less attention to reliability and how this is achieved in such transnational work. This paper considers how constructs related to reliability—trust, culture and communication—become inter-related in work on complex projects. Recent research on work practice, which examines dynamics over time, is brought into dialogue with the literature on global virtual teams, re-conceptualizing trust as enacted in practice; culture as a resource for action and communication as a mediated dialogue. Vignettes from...

The BlackBerry veil: mobile use and privacy practices by young female Saudis

Purpose – Qualitative and quantitative research on mobile phone use by youth worldwide has been a recurrent theme for social scientists since the early 1990s in the USA, Europe and some parts of Asia. However, very little work is known about this subject contextualized in the often more conservative Arab societies of the Middle East. The purpose of this paper is to provide a foundation for discourse in this area through the study of mobile phone use patterns of a highly educated group of young Saudi women vis-a-vis privacy. Design/methodology/approach – A mixed interpretative approach was used with a quantitative survey initially conducted to gain a broad idea about the social practices around mobile use, followed by the use of a qualitative method (focus groups), aimed to focus the discussion on the concept of privacy and how the participants negotiate their use of mobile services in light of this. Findings – Variable user behaviour was found with regards to privacy, as their own individual view or socie...

Business Models for Renewable Energy in the Built Environment

The aim of this book is to increase the penetration of renewable energy technologies (RET) and energy efficiency (EE) measures in the built environment through cost-effective and innovative business models. The authors view the financing of these renewable energy schemes as a major barrier to uptake, focusing the discussion on 10 identified business models for renewable energy in the built environment. Through these business models, financial and other barriers could potentially be overcome. Barriers include market, social and regulatory barriers and information failures (due to lack of awareness and competence). The insight from the analysis of these 10 potential business models offers critics plenty of food for thought. Received wisdom is that there is no business case at present for the uptake of these expensive renewable energy technologies. Further, these authors, in setting out their perspective on business models (pp. 4–7) do not draw on the growing business model literature since Osterwalder et al.’s (2005) review. This includes, for example, the 2010 Long Range Planning Special Issue on Business Models (Demil and Lecocq, 2010; Teece, 2010) and the latest state-of-the-art paper (Zott et al., 2011) which categorizes the extant business model literature and points to a direction for cumulative future research. In fact, the business model definition which has gained currency recently is Teece’s (2010, p. 172): ‘The essence of a business model is in defining the manner by which the enterprise delivers value to customers, entices customers to pay for value, and converts those payments to profit’. The definition used in this book, however, conflates the term ‘business model’ with ‘strategy’ (p. 6):