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The central objective of this thesis is to investigate, understand and explain the conditions under which the administrative problem known as potentially avoidable failure induced demand (PAFID) arises in UK public services and might be prevented. PAFID is defined as “customer contacts that appear to be precipitated by earlier failures, such as failures to do things right first time, which cause additional and potentially avoidable demands to impinge upon public services”. A secondary objective of the thesis is to establish how, and under what better conditions, the public sector could successfully exploit the management paradigm called Lean thinking, as an alternative to the current New Public Management method, in order to address the PAFID problem. An analysis of the results from three case-studies conducted in UK local authority settings confirms that nearly half of all customer contacts in high-volume services such as housing benefits are potentially avoidable. The extrapolation of this finding to the contact volumes and handling costs in one UK council alone suggests possible savings of more than £1 million a year. The potential benefits that are available to the case-study councils and nearly 500 other local councils, together with numerous other providers of UK public services, are also very substantial. A variety of conceptual lenses are applied to the PAFID problem in order to generate alternative explanations and policy options. This thesis makes a number of contributions to public sector management theory and practice, including the finding that councils might reduce principal-agent problems that add to PAFID by espousing more supportive and enabling environments, and by adopting systems-oriented approaches that acknowledge the complex and subjective nature of real-world problems. The findings also suggest that, while the deployment of Lean ‘tools' can result in short-term savings and performance improvements, the adoption of Lean thinking as a comprehensive management approach is more likely to bring about fundamental changes.

This research explores the existence and evolution of organizational routines in small firm Project-Based Organisations (PBOs). To reach this aim, it investigates the interplay between the two aspects making up a routine: ostensive – i.e. the abstract representation – and performative – i.e. actual implementation. PBOs represent an interesting context, because project differences and discontinuities challenge the emergence, development and evolution of routines, yet the requirements of efficiency and co-ordination through repeated, similar actions would suggest the need for routines even in small firm PBOs. I have adopted an inductive case study research. The empirical setting is a Public Relation and Communication agency, where small firm PBOs are a typical form of organisation. The process nature of the subject of inquiry required a combination of bottom up and top down approaches that enabled me to identify and analyse routines in depth. As per the topdown approach, relying on extant theory, I developed a list of concepts discussed in the literature on organisational routines that in turn provided the basis for a framework within which analyse the empirical evidence. The bottom up approach draws on descriptive narratives, visual mapping, and grounded theory. The research provides both theoretical and empirical contributions towards a better understanding of the characteristics and evolution of organisational routines in small firm PBOs. Routines exist and are important for coordination and efficiency even in small firm PBOs. They are project procedures not necessarily embedded in any artefact, but perceived as regular processes by project participants. Across projects routines evolve by adapting to the context where they take place. Contexts are in turn shaped by contingencies pertaining to the actors, the project, organisational departments, and the specificities of the customer and the markets they serve. These contingencies define problems and issues that actors involved in the routine face. Facing problems and issues causes the routine to adapt, making the sequence and the content of the actions forming it different across projects. Predictability and recurrence of contingencies and related issues determine how routines adaptation occurs. When contingencies and issues are expected and recur across several projects, adaptation is planned in advance and is supposed to concern both ostensive and performative aspects of the routine. When contingencies and issues are less predictable or occur in just a single project, adaptation concerns only the performative aspect, keeping unchanged the ostensive one. In line with the low level of codification that informs small firm PBO activities, routines' adaptation is not necessarily embedded in any artefact. However, when adaptation is imposed by the owner or senior management, it can be communicated clearly to the interested actors. For small firm PBOs, the research suggests that adaptation of the routines they implement is fundamental to carrying out project activities effectively. It also implies that when aiming to change the way the organisation operates, entrepreneurs and managers should pay attention to both to the design of the routines themselves and the way actors perceive and implement changes to the routines. In addition, the study suggests that further investigation on how firm size and sector shapes the characteristics and dynamics of routines would be invaluable to the field. Regarding theory, the thesis contributes an articulation of the relationship between the two aspects of routines, performative and ostensive. Further research on the nature and functioning of routines in other types of organisation and sector would address the limitations of extant literature and achieve a more comprehensive understanding of routines.

This thesis examines the call for reform in the governance of risk and control within major construction programmes in the UK. Over the next 8 years, Construction 2025 describes aspirations for major improvements in productivity, cost efficiency and delivery lead times. However, the pathway to reform remains unclear. Major infrastructure projects have a history of dissonance where competing value systems can create friction. However, the productive friction from multiple evaluative perspectives can also be a fundamental part of resolving emergent and perplexing problems. Construction 2025 highlights the need to develop stronger delivery relationships with an emphasis on the early engagement of suppliers and “fixing” the front-end of projects through more rigorous procurement strategies. It also notes that “much” of the waste in construction is fundamentally linked to the treatment of risk. Intelligent Clients, such as Heathrow, have been identified as exemplars in developing superior models of risk governance that work “with” suppliers to articulate the nature of value and evaluative purpose (CE, 2009). This thesis is a study of the composition and evolution of control in the construction of Terminal 5 (T5) and the more recent Terminal 2 (T2) at Heathrow. Terminal 5 is considered a landmark case that challenged traditional self-seeking opportunism with a lean partnering philosophy delivered through integrated teams. A year later Terminal 2 moved away from the partnering with suppliers, engaging a 3rd party integrator managed through an intelligent control system. At the time this raised concerns that T2 represented a relinquishing of the project management capability developed on T5 and a weaker model of integration. However, T2 was a success. This thesis draws on extensive project-based technical data, interviews with industry experts and policy reports to build a comparative picture of the calculative infrastructures. Temporal bracketing is used to trace the patterns of development into “phases of control” as a sequence of evaluative orders. Both cases move the conception of control beyond directive forms of control “over” resources to consider the nature of social integration and the complexity of enrolling allied interests. The findings explore a variety of innovative calculative technologies that translated tensions into productive friction. In both cases Heathrow did not fix the front-end. Instead an adaptive calculative infrastructure mediated collective deliberation, critical inquiry and emergent learning. These findings suggest that the current reform discussion would benefit from more explicit consideration of the importance of architectures of control in making projects valuable, governing risk and shaping conduct towards enterprise and discovery.

This thesis explores the potential of novel mechanisms towards the reduction of issuers' ex ante uncertainty in the process of going public: i) the recruitment of directors with exceptional academic backgrounds and ii) obtaining credit ratings. Given the information scarcity in the private domain, IPO firms can use these strategies to provide investors with solid, readily identifiable benchmarks to assess their standing. Notwithstanding whether these informational cues are associated with positive or negative prospects, they cause a significant portion of uncertainty in valuation to subside. Ultimately, this should act to constrain the phenomenon of IPO underpricing causing firms to claim a larger portion of the surplus value created on the issue day. First, we examine whether CEO educational and professional attainments are associated with short-run IPOs performance. We find that returns are negatively associated with Ivy-League education, the existence of at least one University degree and the total number of qualifications. After controlling for endogeneity and self-selection bias, the results show that at the graduate level of education the Master of Arts, the MBA, the Juris and Medical Doctor titles exhibit negative relation with the money left on the table. The same is true for any professional qualification. It is also reported that only in the case of the PhD title the Nobel Elite group of Universities outperforms the rest of the sample. Second, we examine the effect of multiple credit ratings on IPO performance. The evidence comes from the U.S. and shows that the acquisition of credit ratings constitutes a valid investment decision for the issuing firm as it leaves less money on the table. Both individual as well as any combination of ratings from the three largest agencies associates with lower underpricing. This effect exacerbates with higher grade levels which are also found to decrease initial returns. Additionally, rated IPOs systematically experience negative filing price revisions. The results offer new insight to the facilitation of the going public process. Finally, we contribute to the large literature associating IPOs with earnings management. In this respect, we explore a special niche, i.e. politically connected firms. A priori, these issuers can be expected to refrain from discretionary accruals manipulation to avoid causing discontent to their contacts. Alternatively, the case may be that the powerful acquaintances fuel managers with overconfidence which permeates the financial statements. Assembling a hand-collected database on firms' political donations, we come up with strong support for the latter conjecture. In particular lobbying activity and candidate campaign financing are both shown to be among the important determinants of aggressiveness in reporting. Our findings tie in with a growing body of literature showing businesses actively involved in politics to be prone to abuses and professional misconduct.