Thesis (Eng.D.)--City University of Hong Kong, 2009. / "Submitted to Department of Building and Construction in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Engineering Doctorate." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 189-202)

The 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development advocates for innovation for inclusive development. It is a fundamental issue to make progress within South African and globally. When one considers how to improve on the lack of success we have had so far, there are many areas of possible focus. This study looks at the management of innovation for inclusive development projects. These projects are complex. They harness science, technology and innovation to achieve a more inclusive and sustainable society. Their execution remains challenging despite models and tools to manage project complexity. The study focusses on how complexity exerts an influence on the management of these projects. It concurs with the literature that time, cost, and scope are inadequate measures on their own to assess complex project management performance. It seeks relevant measures of performance that can expand the triple constraint model to deal with complexity. To build a theory on the issues of concern, I use the lens of a project as a complex and adaptive temporary organisation. My qualitative study focuses on five projects within the Department of Science and Innovation in South Africa. It collects data from project management personnel, users and sponsors involved in these projects. The informants assist me in understanding the practise and processes of project management organisation and subsequent performance management. The study collects secondary data from various archival records. It uses the Gioia approach to analyse and interpret the data systematically and rigorously. The study contributes to complex project management theory, an evolving field. It expands existing knowledge by demonstrating how complexity influences the organisation of project management. It highlights how the plurality of stakeholders influences the definition and prioritisation of project goals. The prioritisation informs the allocation of resources, a task that is laden with conflict. The stakeholders establish a temporary organisation. The organisation has a unique identity, defined by the collective values of the stakeholders. Its governance is flexible, inclusive and responsive and embraces Ubuntu. Flexibility enhances its response to fluid and unpredictable changes in its context. The study underscores that learning is critical to the continuous improvement of the management of these projects. The stakeholders must recognise different ways of knowing to learn from each other. The findings stress technology appropriateness and its influence on organising project management. Technology itself might be exclusionary and marginalise other stakeholders within the temporary organisation. It shows the link between project management organisation and performance measurement. It highlights how complexity influences the selection of measures of performance. It proposes a four-dimensional model to expand the triple constraint measures. The dimensions are process, scope, context and good governance. The findings recommend further research to 2 understand how complexity influences the management of innovation for inclusive development projects.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2002. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 97-102). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2002. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 97-102). Also available on the Internet.

This study deals with a topic which, probably more than any other, directly involves the continuing challenges of development and the improvement of the living environment in Developing Countries, but with particular reference to Saudi Arabia. It is through Project Management that Owners can direct and manage the myriad tasks and activities which are needed to accomplish the design and construction of diverse facilities. Virtually anyone with a modest knowledge of what is involved in the management of a large construction project knows that it is no simple task. The study does not attempt to develop an inflexible methodology, but, rather a concept which could be revised and perfected. The author's own experience in recent years has confirmed the validity and usefulness of a particular approach to project management. This study is an attest to provide a system which differs from all other known systems and which will serve the needs of the building owner to give him a greater degree of control in the construction process. It acknowledges that owners cannot possibly provide all the necessary technical expertise, so the system should be simple, covering important issues, and ignoring tasks which are the responsibility of specialist consultants. It is written primarily for personnel involved in policy making and decision taking. Thus the contents are aimed at construction executives, architects, engineers, financiers and others involved in the planning, design, construction, operation and financing of a large scale project. ii The study attempts to arrive at a system which encourages an atmosphere of creative thinking and an acceptance of change. It is, therefore, an organised, systematic approach recognising and containing the elements of planning, scheduling and estimating as well as consultant and contractor selection, tendering, reporting, control and analysis of the important variables of time, money and quality.

A construction project requires a multitude of people with different skills and interests and the coordination of a wide range of disparate, yet interrelated, activities. Such complexity is further compounded by the unique characteristics of a project and many other external uncertainties. As a result, construction is subject to more risk than other business activities. In a risky situation, individuals or organizations perceive the situation in their own ways and behave differently to meet their own interests. Many researchers have asserted that divergent risk attitudes are sources of mismatched risk perceptions and inconsistent behaviors among project participants in different organizations, which can disturb proactive and consistent organizational activities. The research on risk attitude has, therefore, been advocated to exploring ways to consistently arouse people‘s cognition, affection, and behavior among stakeholders. However, previous research has been a widely misunderstood concept and remains a fragmented focus in the construction field. Evidence on the construction of risk attitude and how it manifests itself is unavailable. To date, prior researchers have suffered from an issue-oriented focus that has resulted in simplified models by studying single level of antecedents of risk attitude and consequences of management performance, rather than multi-level. Moreover, previous studies only focused on the direct relationship between risk attitude and management performance instead of providing a profound conceptualization of the indirect relationship between risk attitude and management performance or empirically exploring risk attitude‘s antecedents and consequences. The current study seeks to bridge this research gap. Triangulation research is employed as an appropriate research methodology in which both qualitative and quantitative data collection are used to test the research propositions. The research plan draws upon ontology and methodological pluralism. By adopting the Critical Incident Technique (CIT), coupled with an intensive literature review, one can explore the manifestation of risk attitude and its antecedents by analyzing critical incidents derived from preliminary interviews. Cognitive Motivation Theory (CMT) and Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) provide rationales to combine a processed view of risk attitude and the antecedents and management performance of individuals and organizations into a multi-level model of risk attitude. Responses to a questionnaire survey of 239 individuals nested in 61organizations were analyzed with a blend of Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) to establish and examine the hypothesized relationships in the theoretical model. To capture the practical manifestation of risk attitude and its influence on management performance, case studies of two ongoing construction projects were performed. The findings summarized from both qualitative and quantitative studies indicated that risk attitude diverged due to the multi-level influences of its antecedents on project participants, resulting in inconsistent risk perception and risk inclinations. Risk attitude has two levels of manifestation – an individual and organization level. Individual risk attitude manifests itself as cognition, affection, and behavioral inclination, while organizational risk attitude mainly shows up as managerial trust, formalization, an ambiguity of goals and objectives, and a merit system. The findings confirmed that motivated individuals tend to present more consistent risk attitude and be more willing to and capable of exhibiting good management performance. The motivation behind this study is beyond the traditional motivational means. It extends from internal motivation with its locus of control and self-efficacy to external motivation with its interpersonal exchanges, external controls, and observational learning. The risk attitudes of motivated people to evoke better management performance, especially in the process of integrating risk management into a safety management system and the outcome performance of a stakeholder‘s satisfaction and potential to organizations. The research attempts to advance risk attitude theory by re-conceptualizing the antecedents of risk attitude and the consequences of management performance make the underlying theorizing mechanism explicit and testable. This study also provides practical indications of concrete interventions by managers to make risk attitudes converge and then strengthen safety risk management. The thesis contributes to multi-level analysis in the management research field and differentiates the different levels of participants in construction projects. Methodological pluralism and blended qualitative and quantitative research methods will be addressed to demonstrate the different and complementary perspectives of research. Due to limited samples, the generalizability of the findings in the different project types or across other levels needs to be further verified. / published_or_final_version / Real Estate and Construction / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

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