Global ETD Search

11	Strategic intent and the management of infrastructure systems Blom, Carron Margaret January 2017 (has links) Infrastructure is presenting significant national and global challenges. Whilst often seen as performing well, infrastructure tends to do so against only limited terms of reference and short-term objectives. Given that the world is facing a new infrastructure bill of ~£40T, improving the benefits delivered by existing infrastructure is vital (Dobbs et al., 2013). This thesis investigates strategic intent and the management of infrastructure systems; how factors such as organisational structure and business practice affect outcomes and the ways in which those systems — not projects — are managed. To date, performance has largely been approached from the perspective of project investment and/or delivery, or the assessment of latent failures arising from specific shocks or disruptive events (e.g. natural disaster, infrastructure failures, climate change). By contrast, the delivery of system-level services and outcomes across the infrastructure system has been rarely examined. This is where infrastructure forms an enduring system of services, assets, projects, and networks each at different stages of their lifecycle, and affecting one another as they develop, then age. Yet system performance, which also includes societal, organisational, administrative and technical factors, is arguably the level relevant to, and the reality of, day-to-day public infrastructure management. This research firstly investigated industry perceptions in order to test and confirm the problem: the nub of which was the inability to fully deliver appropriate and relevant infrastructure outcomes over the long term. Three detailed studies then explored the reasons for this problem through different lenses; thereby providing an evidence-base for a range of issues that are shared by the wider infrastructure industry. In confirming its hypothesis that “the strategic intent and the day-to-day management of infrastructure systems are often misaligned, with negative consequences for achieving the desired long-term infrastructure system outcomes”, this research has increased our understanding of the ways in which that misalignment occurs, and the consequences that result. It found those consequences were material, and frequently not visible within the sub-system accountable for the delivery of those outcomes. That public infrastructure exists, not in its own right, but to be of benefit to society, is a central theme drawn from the definition of infrastructure itself. This research shows that it is not enough to be focused on technical outcomes. Infrastructure needs to move beyond how society interacts with an asset, to the outcomes that reflect the needs, beliefs, and choices of society as well as its ability to respond to change (aptitude). Although the research has confirmed its hypothesis and three supporting propositions, the research does not purport to offer ‘the solution’. Single solutions do not exist to address the challenges facing a complex adaptive system such as infrastructure. But the research does offer several system-oriented sense-making models at both the detailed and system-level. This includes the probing methodology by way of a diagnostic roadmap. These models aim to assist practitioners in managing the transition of projects, assets, and services into a wider infrastructure system, their potential, and in (re)orienting the organisation to the dynamic nature of the system and its societal imperative.
12	The "Equalizer" Administration: Managerial Strategies in the Public Sector Cavalcanti, Bianor Scelza 08 April 2005 (has links) The purpose of this dissertation is to understand the managerial "action" of public administrators in the management of their organizations within the Brazilian context. The research seeks to understand the relationships between managers and formal management mechanisms by exploring the complementary nature of the effective managerial action in the face of structural deficiencies and flaws, considering the possibility of overcoming the structuralism-subjectivism dichotomy present in the construction of the Theory of Organizations. Initially, the study provides a review of the literature on organizational design. It highlights the "goodness of fit" proposition on strategic choice issues concerning the main organizational variables design and organizational goal attainment. It also calls special attention to the emerging interest of designing theorists on interpretivist approaches to the matter, such that of Karl Weick. A review of the the administrative reforms in Brazil is made from the perspective of the main stream organizational design conceptual framework. It highlights the complex dynamics of a constant search for differentiation and flexibilization subject to patterns of advances and reversals, due to the centrality, strength and pervasiveness of the bureaucratic model. It is concluded that in no single given moment, a public manager and his team, may count on a formal organizational design which attends the"congruency" criteria, devised by organizational design conceptual frameworks, to explain organizational results in different environmental sets. Although this conclusion may explain failure at the public sector, it can not provide understanding on the many instances of significative success attained by government operations in spite of inadequate formal administrative structures. This point calls for a better understanding from the interpretivist approach, on how public administrators, strongly associated with good organizational results, engage into transformative action, in order to superate administrative structures flaws and dysfunctional cultural patterns of conduct, structurally present and constantly reproduced, in vigorous developing countries, such as Brazil. The dissertation transcribes the testimony of four outstanding public administrators, doing a deep incursion in the managerial real world of public administration, as subjectively defined by them and transformed by their engagement into action.Through the thematic version of the Oral History methodology, full segments of the complete interviews are categorized into the thirty two managerial strategies captured which are presented on a recategorized manner under eight main strategies: (1) Interchanging Frames of Reference; (2) Exploring the Formal Limits; (3) Playing the Bureaucracy Game; (4) Inducing the Inclusion of Others (5)Promoting Internal Cohesion; (6) Creating Shields against Transgressions; (7) Overcoming Internal Restrictions; (8) Letting the Structures Blossom. Each one of these eight blocks of strategies presented, deserves further reflexive interpretation by the author, on the light of the interpretivist approach to organizational design. A final effort is made, now on theory building, for improving understanding on the matter. In order to find a significant meaning underlining all the strategies extracted from the "practical consciousness" of the interviewers as revealed in their report, the author resort to a metaphor. This metaphor helps to: (1) better describe and understand a not adequately treated phenomenon, namely, good results under inadequate structural social and organizational conditions; (2) reveal the logic and the meaning underlining all the strategies adopted to generate results under these unfaithful conditions; (3) name, accordingly to the nature of the managerial transformative social action involved, an open ended class of managerial interventions of a pragmatic sort driven by an ethics of results much common to good managers, that is, the concept of "managerial equalization"; and (4) give back to public administrators, represented by the interviewees, to be incorporated in their "discursive consciousness", something the most effective and experienced public managers already have as tacit knowledge built in their "practical consciousness", and so, help the education and development of new talents. / Ph. D. equalizer manager equalizing management unfaithfull structural conditions metaphor discursive cousciousness discourse practical cosciousness tacit knowledge agency intentionality ethics empirical bases improvising equalizing theory building meaning agent desining patrimonialism reflexive interpretation organizing inclusion cohesion transgression corruption clientelism nepotism cognitive maps deponents frames of reference transformative action explanation understanding oral history flexbilization decentralization uniformity conceptual frameworks organizational change goodness of fit organizational results organizational performance differentiation uncertainty Brazil develloping countries administrative reform bureaucratic model centralization organizational design organizational theory interpretivist approach subjectivism funcionalism paradigms cultural patterns reproduction structural flaws public manager public administrator formal management mechanisms Action managerial action public administration and management public sector public policy public programs

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Strategic intent and the management of infrastructure systems

The "Equalizer" Administration: Managerial Strategies in the Public Sector