Tuomas Ahola

Practical difficulties encountered in attempting to implement a partnering approach

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present practical difficulties in attempting to implement a partnering approach.Design/methodology/approach – The paper comprises empirical evidence from case studies in Norway and Canada and an extensive literature review on partnering.Findings – The authors identified a lack of shared understanding of key partnering concepts, missing initial effort to establish shared ground rules, communication difficulties in inter‐organizational relationships and unclear (perceived) roles and responsibilities. In existing partnering literature, a large number of construction studies have identified conceptual partnering models. However, studies that describe partnering models to take these practical difficulties into account have not been found and the paper develops a practical model that outlines the phases of a typical partnering effort.Research limitations/implications – Partnering has both a legal/contractual side and a management/collaboration side. This paper looks at ...

How governmental stakeholders influence large projects: the case of nuclear power plant projects

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to increase understanding on stakeholder influence in large projects, using nuclear power plant projects and a governmental stakeholder that influences them as the empirical example. The authors focus on examining the means used by the stakeholder to influence the projects.Design/methodology/approach – This paper adopts the descriptive single case study approach, using data from 18 semi‐structured interviews. The authors interviewed experts at a governmental stakeholder organization, but in order to gain insight from outside the governmental stakeholder, they also interviewed two other organizations: an energy company, and the highest administrative ministry in the nuclear industry.Findings – The governmental stakeholder bases its influence on regulations and laws. This paper points out the distinct means that are used by the governmental stakeholder to influence nuclear projects: means that restrain, and also means that enable and advance projects. Both types of mea...

Governmental Stakeholder and Project Owner’s Views on the Regulative Framework in Nuclear Projects

This article aims at increasing the understanding of a specific type of stakeholder, namely governmental stakeholders who have significant influence over projects and base their influence on a regulative framework. Various parties in nuclear projects create their own interpretations of the framework. To understand why there are differences in these interpretations, we used three institutional elements: (1) laws and rules, (2) practices, and (3) values for analysis. This article uses interview data from a nuclear industry governmental stakeholder and a project owner. The results show that interpretations are not always coherent, and the incoherencies are clearest in the practice element.

Insights for the governance of large projects

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to scrutinize the influence of the highly cited Organization Theory and Project Management on consequent project research and to highlight the key contributions of the book, how it has affected consequent project research and to identify areas that could be further explored in future research.Design/methodology/approach – The paper takes the form of a book review and literature analysis.Findings – It is found that the book offers insights to elaborating the salient characteristics of large, complex and uncertain projects. It identifies the underlying theories and concepts to improve our understanding of the three main issues: the sources of uncertainty in large engineering intensive projects; management and governance approaches utilized to tackle uncertainty; and project routines and innovation. Some of these insights have later been acknowledged by project scholars focusing topics such as project governance and the management of uncertainty in projects.Practical im...

Governmental Governance of Megaprojects: The Case of EXPO 2010 Shanghai

While the governance of Western megaprojects is indirectly influenced by governments through legislation and regulations, the Chinese state actively oversees and controls projects of societal importance. To provide clarity on the role of the state in Chinese megaprojects, we carried out a case study focusing on EXPO 2010 Shanghai. Our analysis revealed that through a project-specific organization Construction Headquarter (CHQ), the Chinese state executes administrative strength, forces authorities to temporarily integrate their processes for the benefit of the project, influences contractor and resource selection decisions, induces leadership accountability, and promotes shared project values.

Managing business networks for value creation in facilities and their external environments: A study on co-location

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to increase understanding of the logic of business network formation among the co-located and external actors of a facility. Design/methodology/approach The research adopts a theory-building approach through developing propositions inductively from the empirical case study on four purposefully sampled modern service station facilities. The focus is on analyzing how a facility and its inherent co-located actors represent an entity that forms a business network with external actors in the facility’s environment. Findings The findings propose that when co-located with a large number of actors, the facility and its actors represent an entity that is connected to a wide business network of multiple external actors. On the other hand, when co-located with a small number of actors, the facility becomes a part of the overall supply in the surrounding business environment with a differentiated offering for competitive advantage. Practical implications The research suggests that an appropriate co-locating strategy, for example, when planning the tenant mix of the facility, can contribute to creating a vivid business network in the external environment, which raises the facility to a role of a central entity in such a network. Originality/value The findings explaining how co-location affects the businesses within the facility and within a wider networked environment are novel to the scholarly knowledge on co-location. The research bridges the theories of co-location and business networks that have been treated as separate discourses in previous research.

Partnering in offshore drilling projects

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to evaluate to which extent partnering practices observed in earlier research focussing on the construction industry are applied in offshore development drilling projects. Design/methodology/approach The paper reviews earlier research on project partnering and the relationship-based procurement (RBP) taxonomy. The taxonomy is then empirically applied to describe partnering practices in an incentive-based drilling project in Norway. Findings Many elements of project partnering observed earlier in construction projects were found to characterize offshore development drilling projects. However, as assessed using the RBP framework, the authors found that partnering elements in observed context rated consistently lower than elements previously reported in the construction industry, indicating a lower maturity of partnering practices in the studied context. Practical implications The present study provides a multi-dimensional and systematic description of partnering practices in offshore drilling projects. Project owners can utilize this information to identify partnering elements requiring particular emphasis when initiating and managing drilling projects. Based on the findings, such elements include transparency and open-book auditing, integrated risk mitigation and insurance practices and establishment of authentic leadership. The findings further imply that partnering models cannot be directly applied across industry boundaries but must be tailored to fit the salient characteristics of each context. Originality/value The paper systematically describes to which extent specific partnering elements of the RBP taxonomy are applied in offshore drilling projects.