Int. J. Project Organisation and Management, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2008
Constructing new working practices through project narratives Marcel Veenswijk and Myrte Berendse* Department of Culture, Organization and Management Faculty of Social Sciences VU University Amsterdam De Boelelaan 1081, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands Fax: +31 20 5986765 E-mail:
[email protected] E-mail:
[email protected] *Corresponding author Abstract: In this article we focus on the (internal and external) dynamics of New Public Management (NPM) in the daily life of project management. We concentrate on the ways NPM concepts work out in the realities of project actors. Based on recent research within the Dutch infrastructure sector, we analyse alternative responses to perceived problems in the infrastructure sector by focusing on ‘project narratives’. Next to compliance, these narratives feature deterrence (a strong resistance to the change concept), dilution (blurring of the initial ambitions) and dissociation (confusion over the societal value of the project). The article shows how project narratives provide organisational members with space to make sense of and contest the new managerial initiatives and value systems imposed upon them. Keywords: organisational change; narrative approach; project management; infrastructure sector; new public management; project narratives. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Veenswijk, M. and Berendse, M. (2008) ‘Constructing new working practices through project narratives’, Int. J. Project Organisation and Management, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp.65–85. Biographical notes: Marcel Veenswijk is a Professor in Management of Cultural Change at the Department of Culture, Organization and Management of the VU University Amsterdam. He publishes in organisational culture, change processes and intervention strategies, especially in the context of public sector organisations, and has wide experience as a researcher and consultant. He is Editor-in-Chief of Intervention Research. International Journal on Culture, Organization and Management. In 2005, he published Organizing Innovation, New Approaches to Cultural Change and Intervention in Public Sector Organisations (Amsterdam, Berlin, Oxford: IOS Press). Myrte Berendse is a PhD candidate at the Department of Culture, Organization, and Management of the VU University Amsterdam, where she also received her Master of Art, cum laude, in Social Sciences. Her PhD study focuses on cultural change in public infrastructure organisations, using a discursive/ narrative approach. She has published in Intervention Research, International Journal on Culture, Organization and Management and presented papers at
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M. Veenswijk and M. Berendse the 4th Workshop on Making Projects Critical, the Organizational Discourse Conferences, EGOS and the Annual Conferences of the Netherlands Institute of Governance.
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Reform movements in the infrastructure sector: crisis and calls for change
Over the last decade, in many countries initiatives have been undertaken to radically change the construction sector. Assessments of the construction industry all over the world direct attention to ongoing feelings of dissatisfaction amongst clients regarding the construction sector’s performance, and cultural change is becoming a central concern of governments and the industry (Bologna and Del Nord, 2000; Bresnen et al., 2005; Cole, 2003; Dalgleish, 1995; Fernie et al., 2006; Green and May, 2005). The discourse mobilised by the reform movements is often driven by emotive statements, describing the sector as ‘ill’ or a ‘plague’, as ‘backwards’ or ‘blind to its failings’ and therefore in need of reform in order to reduce the “chasm between client aspirations regarding performance and how the construction sector has actually performed in the past and present” (Fernie et al., 2006, p.94). Project performances within the construction sector often fall short in terms of time, costs or quality (Bresnen and Marshall, 2000; Van Marrewijk, 2007; Van Marrewijk and Veenswijk, 2006). Other studies go beyond those inefficiencies and portray widespread corruption and collusion practices in the construction industry in many specific countries; on the institutional and the individual level; within private construction companies (large corporations as well as small contractors or material suppliers) and amongst public officials; and at all phases of construction projects, that is, during periods of planning, tendering or constructing, but also afterwards during the stage of operation and maintenance (Bologna and Del Nord, 2000; Priemus, 2004; Transparency International, 2005; Van den Heuvel, 2005). The irregularities described range from the use of illegal or undeclared work; false invoicing and fiscal statements; artificially high costs of public works set in the tendering process with firms taking turns in winning contracts and through unauthorised prior consultations; preferential treatment by the authorities by accepting overpriced construction bids and favours to individual public servants and administrators; to threatening and intimidating conduct (and consequent actions). Various authors have shown the remarkable similarities between systems exposed in construction industries worldwide and across time (Dorée, 2004), such as the system exposed in the Netherlands and that of the ‘dango’ price-fixing system in the Japanese construction industry described in the early 1990s by McMillan (1991). Other well-known examples include Germany, Italy, Australia and New York (Dorée, 2004; Priemus, 2004; Transparency International, 2005; Van den Heuvel, 2005; Vulperhorst, 2005; Zarkada-Fraser, 2000). More and more the perceived problems within the construction industry are being ascribed to certain characteristics of the sector. Within the Global Corruption Report on corruption in the construction industry, the vulnerability of construction projects to irregularities or other performance deficiencies is attributed to:
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“the fierce competition for ‘make or break’ contracts; the numerous levels of official approvals and permits; the uniqueness of many projects, which makes it difficult to compare pricing; the opportunities for delays and overruns (...) Projects are executed by dozens, sometimes hundreds, of small-scale subcontractors creating a maze of transactions that are difficult to monitor.” (Transparency International, 2005, p.1)
In the UK, government-supported reviews of the UK construction sector such as Latham’s report (1994) ‘Constructing the team’ as well as Egan’s report (1998) ‘Rethinking construction’ attribute deficiencies to fragmentation within the industry, resulting in adversarial relationships, confrontational attitudes, poor tendering practices, a blame-culture and a lack of trust and cooperation, based upon fundamental differences in interest between clients, contractors and others (Adamson and Pollington, 2006; Bresnen and Marshall, 2000; Macmillan, 2006). Studies of construction industries outside of Europe, such as the report ‘Re-inventing construction’ (Construction Industry Steering Committee, 1999) with regard to the Singaporean construction sector, Hong Kong’s ‘Construct for Excellence’ report (Construction Industry Review Committee, 2001) or the investigations by the Australian Royal Commission into the Building and Construction Industry, all ascribe deficiencies in construction projects to fragmentation within the construction industry also, as well as the segregation of design and construction activities and a lack of cooperation (Dulaimi et al., 2002). The emergent problems, as faced in the construction sector, have become the object of many large-scale reform programmes. Although specific reform programmes differ in their scope and practices, many change plans have become inspired by the New Public Management (NPM) doctrine, as was introduced in the late 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s in many (Western) countries. The introduction of standardised solutions and ideas of one best way – and of one best practice – has been tremendously seductive for large groups of public sector managers (Pollitt, 2004). The attractiveness of NPM is rooted in its simplicity and clearness on the one hand, and its wide set of adopters in the neoliberal political arena on the other hand. According to Osborne and Gaebler (1992), authors of the bestseller Reinventing Government, the rise of the entrepreneurial state is “an inevitable shift rather than a temporary fad” and “a similar process of transformation is underway throughout the developed world” (1992, p.328). They argue that in many Western countries, a (neoliberal) trend towards NPM leads to a ‘steer, not row’ division between (strategic) public policy areas and decentralised or separated implementation units with a strong use of market mechanisms wherever possible, either in the form of quasi markets to introduce competition between public providers, or by contracting out or privatising services which were previously undertaken directly by the state (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2000). More precisely, NPM relates to a concept in which market-related principles and related management techniques are widely introduced to ‘solve’ problems surrounding bureaucratism and a lack of performance orientations. These principles boil down to issues such as entrepreneurialism, innovation and customer responsiveness in the delivery of public services (Paulsen, 2005). NPM ‘tools’ are identified in terms of (more) internal competition, marketisation of public services, introduction of performance-control cycles, autonomisation of public sector units, disaggregation of services and deregulation of state activities (Veenswijk and Hakvoort, 2002). The success of the NPM doctrine is not only related to its provided ‘one size fits all’ type of solution.
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NPM has become a source of inspiration to those who challenged new forms of societal complexity through specific types of partnership arrangements between Public and Private Parties (PPP) and the contractual arrangements that come with it. In many countries, PPP constructions have been introduced, especially regarding large-scale (infrastructure) projects. Often these projects are contractually based on so-called ‘design and construct’ principles, a mode of collaboration in which private partners are responsible for integral sets of products as well as the underlying design. In spite of their growing popularity, recent studies on project management raise a critical voice against the natural choice for (mega) projects as an instrument of public sector reform and innovation. Flyvbjerg et al. (2003) conclude that the majority of mega projects overrun on costs, fall behind schedule and fail to deliver on the terms used to justify the need for the project, and they suggest that a main cause of such overruns is a lack of realism in initial cost estimates. The length and cost of delays are underestimated, contingencies are set too low, changes in project specifications and designs are not sufficiently taken into account, changes in exchange rates between currencies and price changes are undervalued, as are expropriation costs and safety and environmental demands. Many major projects also contain a large element of technological innovation with high risk. Such risk tends to translate into cost increases, which are often not adequately accounted for in initial cost estimates (Akintoye et al., 2003; Clegg et al., 2002; Flyvbjerg et al., 2003). Although these studies have a strong focus on the ‘rational’ outcomes of complex projects, the actual process of managing and organising these projects remains underdeveloped. In this paper, therefore, we focus on the (internal and external) dynamics of NPM in the daily life of project management.
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A narrative approach to organisational change: the use of project narratives
This study takes as its starting point a discursive approach to organisational change and is concerned with the role of projects within processes of organisational change. The narrative approach allows us to view processes of organisational change as an argumentation game (discourse) in which a narrative is adopted regarding a new line of working. The reason for focusing on projects is twofold. Besides being the principal way of working within the construction sector, projects are increasingly looked upon as areas where change becomes enacted during processes of organisational change (Nocker, 2006), that is, as places where changes become visible and new working practices are being shaped. Therefore, we should no longer consider projects solely as product-creating systems (e.g., resulting in public infrastructure works), and should focus on projects also as value-creating systems in which project outcomes may be social or organisational change (e.g., revitalisation of the construction sector or public sector reforms) (Winter et al., 2006). Second, notwithstanding this ‘projectification’ in the organisation of (public) work and its alleged importance in processes of cultural change, to date we have little knowledge on project members’ lived experience, or the ‘actuality’ of projects (Cicmil et al., 2006; Green, 2006; Nocker, 2006; Van Marrewijk and Veenswijk, 2006). In this study, we address this gap by focusing on project members’ accounts of projects, or so-called ‘project narratives’.
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A narrative approach towards organisational change enables us to understand organisational change as a process of negotiated meaning, and allows us to be perceptive of and sensitive to different perspectives (‘voices’). Within the literature of organisational discourse, narratives are seen as important vehicles through which meanings are negotiated, shared and contested. Those predominantly interpretative approaches to organisational change explore how discursive structures and patterns influence and shape actors’ interpretations and actions, and consequently social practices (Heracleous, 2006). Narratives, in other words, are seen as both sensemaking and sensegiving devices (Søderberg, 2003). Organisational actors interpret and attach meaning to experiences through narratives, but also try to influence others’ perception of actions and events; for instance, the narrative of organisational change as promoted by the organisation’s top management concerning corporate transformations, such as a new operating ideology (Granlund, 2002) or a merger or acquisition (Søderberg, 2003). Various organisational actors engage in this “game of managing meaning” (Granlund, 2002) in which those narratives of change are interpreted, shared and challenged. Only by recognising the existence of different narratives is one able to move beyond the dominant discourse and to do justice to the everyday processes of negotiating meaning among organisational actors, within construction projects, for instance (Boje, 1991; 1995; Brown, 1998; 2000; 2003; Czarniawska, 1997; 1998; Gabriel, 2004; Weick, 1995). In doing so, we challenge (traditional) views on project management, wherein projects are being encountered as fixed entities or objective realities “out there” (Nocker, 2006). If we accept the view that organisations are networks of competing discourses (Boje, 1995; Brown, 1998; Currie and Brown, 2003; Humphreys and Brown, 2002), projects as work organisations can be seen as arenas of enactment where institutional logics or the “new rules of the game” (Jeannot, 2006) are created, contested, appropriated and diffused. Therefore, critical scholars have been suggesting to focus on projects as “complex social settings characterized by tensions between unpredictability, control and collaborative interaction among diverse participants” (Cicmil et al., 2006, p.676), rather than treating them as definite and obvious (Maylor, 2006). Those scholars challenge the implicit assumptions underlying the dominant view on project management (and a dominant discourse of change): i.e., the assumption that all organisational actors have the same interests or that all organisational actors have the same interpretation of the proposed initiatives for change (Bresnen et al., 2005; Cicmil and Hodgson, 2006; Fernie et al., 2006; Green and May, 2005; Van Marrewijk and Veenswijk, 2006). In this paper, project narratives are deconstructed in terms of the dominance, internal dynamics and ways in which they are translated in so-called “micro stories” (Boje, 2001). Dominance relates to the extent to which organisational actors tend to adopt these narratives as a significant ‘anchor’ for their organisational practice. A narrative in its broadest sense is anything told or recounted by an individual, groups of individuals, or an organisation. Narratives can be oral, written or filmed, fictional or nonfictional (Verduijn, 2007). Internal dynamics refer to the process in which the narratives are framed (sequentially, cyclic, etc.) and related to content themes. Micro stories, in the terms of Boje (2001), are tales through which the dominant narratives are translated into specific local contexts. Micro stories differ from narratives in the sense that these stories often result from (dominant) narratives, but lack a tight internal coherence and are often
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related to a specific set of events or incidents. Project narratives, in turn, are narratives about specific projects, consisting of several micro stories through which particular project developments are being discussed, contested or recounted. To summarise, this paper is concerned with the ways in which processes of organisational change within the construction sector are being enacted in construction projects regarding public infrastructure works. We view those projects as emergent constellations of new working practices in which the actors involved (project managers, project members and other stakeholders) have to cope with the ‘narrative of change’ as imposed by the top management, while getting their project going. By focusing on the construction of different project narratives, we will elaborate upon the discursive struggle through which the dominant narrative of change becomes legitimated or delegitimated.
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Methodology
In this paper three such project narratives are presented. In the narratives we see how a major reform initiative within the Dutch public infrastructure sector is enacted in different public infrastructure projects. The empirical material presented in this paper comes from a longitudinal study on organisational change within the Royal Construction Company (RCC), a Dutch public infrastructure organisation. Between September 2005 and March 2007 over 30 interviews were undertaken with directors and project managers, from which the project narratives evolved. The interviews concentrated on the organisational change process within the RCC in general and on the success of new performance routines within several infrastructural projects in particular: the interviewees were asked to give an account of their experiences with the RCC’s new performance routine, particularly in light of their day-to-day experiences within construction projects. The interviews were all fully transcribed and analysed in two steps. First we searched for specific issues, such as general impressions of the ‘new’ RCC, the competences considered necessary for optimal collaboration within projects, best practices or ‘examples’ with regard to the RCC’s new performance routine, and accounts of projects. Second, we focused on “mini-narratives” (Vaara, 2002) that illustrated different ways of describing specific projects or accounts for project developments. Several additional interviews have been conducted with the respective project managers to focus in greater detail on those accounts. Ever since the process of organisational change started, the management of the RCC has proclaimed that the new performance routine was to be enacted in projects currently in progress. Consequently, organisational members were continuously looking for project narratives to make sense of the organisational changes. However, the aim of the research team has never been to present one single project narrative, but to collect and (re)construct alternative or competitive stories regarding the projects, in order to let the organisation engage in a dialogue (see also Czarniawska, 1998). The project narratives we present in this paper can be classified into three different responses to the RCC’s new performance routine, but it should be noted that we did not aim for an integral truth claim about the whole range of responses. Rather than attempting to construct the ‘real’ project narrative, we focused on the social construction of different stories; on plurivocality and change over time; and on how different actors emphasised different aspects of the
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projects over others. The project narratives presented in this article should be read as such: as distinct, continuously developing accounts (or contra-narratives) of the narrative of change and project developments, which are used to cope with the challenges that the dominant narrative of change creates for the actors involved. The project narratives within the organisation show not only how projects function as arenas where the narrative of change is being created, contested, appropriated and diffused, but also how the quest for project narratives amongst organisational members serves both to reduce as well as to enlarge ambiguity. On the one hand, project narratives seem to reduce ambiguity, by providing examples of how things can be done ‘according to the narrative of change’. On the other hand, they show how the project-based nature of the organisation increases ambiguity, since all narratives feature different aspects of the narrative of change, or else, they feature how ambiguity within the narrative allows for a multiplicity of meanings and different criteria for success or failure along different projects.
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Implementing the New Performance Routine in the Royal Construction Company
During Dutch Parliamentary Investigations in 2003 and 2004, the public ‘face’ of the Dutch infrastructure sector, the RCC, was heavily criticised for its role in recent failures of large-scale infrastructural projects. Not only was the management of RCC held responsible for major cost overruns in projects such as the High Speed Alliance, a high-speed train connection from Amsterdam to the Belgian border. The RCC was also accused of systematically maintaining too close relations with a specific ‘old boys’ group of private sector partners like constructors, architects and technical consultants. As guardian of essential public values, especially with regard to transparency of tendering and honest chances for all ‘parties in the field’, the RCC had lost much of its credibility. Several investigations depicted the RCC as a politically naive, technically driven, ‘arrogant’ and culturally closed organisation, which needed to be fundamentally reformed (Berendse et al., 2006). In 2005, the management of RCC was partly replaced and the organisation was forced by the government to adopt a set of new organisational arrangements. These arrangements were mainly based on the principles of NPM. Reform issues were the introduction of a performance monitoring system, a project-based system of quality control, account management and an overall introduction of a ‘transparent, target oriented culture’. All this should be reflected in ‘the New Performance Routine’ (NPR), which was presented in sharp contrast to the so-called ‘Old Performance Routine’. For the new RCC top management, the NPR concept had a powerful sentimental meaning. The NPR stood for control, transparency and a clear perfect future. Through the NPR, the organisation would be able to dissociate itself from the past and reestablish its position as a prominent Dutch public organisation in the infrastructure sector. The ‘old’ and ‘new’ proclaimed behaviour and attitudes of RCC professionals were described along four principal issues (see Table 1).
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Table 1
‘Old’ and ‘new’performance routine
Principle issues
Old performance routine
New performance routine
Accountability
Collective, through political representatives
Individual, through clearly identified project units
Performance style
Task oriented, based on professional skills
Result oriented, based on actual project performance
Policy behaviour
Driven by technical rationale
Driven by flexible environmental/client rationale
External (private sector) project partners
Separation of design and construction: government designs while private partners execute projects. Joint responsibility based on ‘old boys’ networks
Government develops preconditions and monitors results. Private sector partners design and execute projects. Separate roles and responsibilities
As a ‘tool’, the NPR would allow the top management to benchmark the projects and to establish a uniform performance-driven culture. ‘Local’ project members should become part of a ‘corporate’ cultural environment in which work routines are standardised, behaviour is focused and environmental complexity is reduced to a clear set of contingencies. The NPR focuses on four basic issues: 1
a uniform project plan (aims/scope, time frame, competences, products)
2
standardised project performance indicators
3
detailed contracting specifications (Design and Construct (D&C)/Design, Build, Finance, Maintain (DBFM))
4
overall project impact (sector/societal).
These issues were to be used as benchmark criteria between the projects. The dominant narrative of change by the management of RCC was constructed around the NPR concept and stated that RCC could only become successful, if it was restructured in terms of an accountable, ‘slender’, flexible and professional core unit, with transparent performance routines. The time frame for this transformation was three years. During this period NPR principles should be visible in a set of key projects, which were operated within the RCC at the time.
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Reconstructing New Performance Routine realities: three project narratives
Orientations towards NPR amongst project managers ranged from seeing NPR as a substantive and meaningful innovation to viewing NPR as a potentially threatening strategy breaking the autonomy of project managers and project members. Some sceptics defined NPR as ‘another’ new management fashion designed by top management, lacking a clear connection to professional daily practice. Although the project managers did not express one single view on NPR, the innovation concept more or less served as the dominant orientation. NPR as an innovative concept was transformed into a story of
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eagerness or, more specifically, ‘diligence’ to implement ‘what’s right’ in their own professional daily life. Micro stories in NPR projects, however, show that in the daily practice of the project, this ‘diligence’ orientation – which is mainly indicated by the RCC top management – has some specific outcomes. The cases show that in the dynamics of the project, the RCC top management is deterred, diluted and even becomes the ‘victim’ of dissociation. NPM more or less ‘fades away’ as a central project rationale and is replaced by ‘local’ but very meaningful logics.
5.1 Project 1 – Delta Bridge: NPR diligence becomes deterrence When the first cracks appeared – The Delta Bridge project was one of the first projects in which the NPR principles were to be fully implemented. The Delta Bridge (120 m) connects a vital part of two Dutch provinces. Car traffic in this area has increased dramatically during the last decade, which made it necessary to reconstruct and refurbish essential parts of the bridge. Small cracks in the surface, discovered in 2005, made short-term action inevitable. The first ramification of the project covered an amount of 37 million euros. The assignment of the Delta project team was to organise the project according to clear NPR principles: •
construction of a separated public and private project structure, according to a ‘Design and Construct’ formula
•
a trained RCC project leader according to NPR principles
•
selection of RCC project members based on performance orientation, flexibility, creativity and overall management and control capacity
•
monitoring of project performance on a monthly basis
•
a system of financial reward and punishment towards the contracted construction firms and (other) private contractors.
During the first meetings of the project team, the NPR items were discussed and included in a concept project plan. The first problem arose with the initial definition of the Delta Bridge’s ‘zero status’. Members of the RCC project team had developed different views on the structural condition of the various bridge sections that should (or should not) be replaced. This had large implications in terms of the instruction to the (potentially selected) construction firms, particularly with regard to the external risks that should be calculated. As one of the team members said: “How can we ever ask the construction firm to make a solid refurbishment plan if we don’t even know ourselves if section B and D are going to collapse? We’re not even sure about our own indicators. Are we including all the sections in the plan for the constructors? Is this efficient? Are we going to wait until the first trucks hit the water?”
The project leader felt heavily pressured to make a decision on the zero status within a predefined period of four weeks, as NPR measures subscribed narrow time frames for the contracting plan to be ready. As he said: “If we don’t start making detailed contract specifications right here right now, we might not only lose available constructors, but I’m sure that we will lose RCC credibility in no time. On the other hand, if we’re working with false
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M. Veenswijk and M. Berendse figures and we’re actually below critical 1,1 values [a measurement to define the condition of the bridge in terms of reliability or safety], it will not only be my head that’s on the line.”
In the meantime, local authorities of municipality X, on whose territory the bridge was partly located, organised their own Local Diagnostic Group (LDG). The mayor claimed that the safety of the city was at stake and that the RCC project team could not operate in ‘splendid isolation’. The conclusion of LDG was alarming. According to those experts, the bad condition of the bridge did not only have to do with specific sections, but consisted of an integral weakness of the complete backbone structure. Additional research had to be done in order to get a clear picture of the condition of the bridge. Until the outcomes were clear the bridge had to be closed to ‘heavy’ traffic, a decision that would result in huge societal costs and a loss of political credits. The minister wants some answers – The second problem arose when several news media reported on a statement of the chairman of the EVO, the organisation that represents truck companies. The chairman claimed that a 2003 report on the status of the bridge was concealed by the RCC. This report showed that the condition of the bridge was not as bad as suggested and that the RCC wanted to ‘use the bridge project as a pilot ‘show case’ to legitimise its own importance, terrifying people while using the taxpayer’. The next day, the Minister of Transport was invited into Parliament to give an ‘update’ on the ‘real’ status of the bridge. The minister ordered the RCC top to formulate some ‘clear answers’ towards the question as to whether the bridge really needed to be closed or not. Based on a short additional diagnosis, the RCC project leader advised that the bridge could be used by all traffic. By that time the local municipality had decided to start a legal procedure, but without success. After a six-week period, a consortium of three constructors was selected to work out plans for reconstruction. According to NPR principles, the plans should be approved by the government within a time frame of three months. The constructors designed their plans and a cost profile on a set of indicators provided by the RCC project leader. The plans were approved and the consortium was given the green light to start the execution of the project plans. The hell with NPR! – In July 2006, a technical city engineer discovered a new set of unexpected cracks in the bridge’s surface. The RCC project team was alerted by the mayor and new claims were made by the municipality to close the bridge immediately to all traffic. The new discovery pushed the RCC project team into additional negotiations with the contracting consortium. Or, as the project manager said: “It leads us to an impossible situation. No one really knows how serious this damage is. The constructors demand new negotiations to the agreed contract. They claim they need much more time and money for research and that they can’t do the job on the basis of our information. RCC forces me to stay focused on the NPR indicators. The hell with NPR!”
Despite the NPR principle of separate responsibilities between government and the ‘market’, the project team decided to dissociate itself from NPR principles and the project manager chose a strategy of including the consortium into the ‘backstage’ process of joint problem definition: “It just cannot be done! We need to include the constructors; we’re in this together. NPR is a fine idea, but in real life things are more complicated. My team is supporting me in this.”
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In January 2007, a joint public-private revised action plan for the bridge was presented to the Minister of Transport. Although the reconstruction budget has been raised by 15% and the plan means a closure of six months to heavy traffic, the project team remains fully mandated. In a press release the RCC top management states that RCC is fully aware of the consequences, but that it cannot afford any unacceptable risks. In this case, the NPR narrative is constantly debated by the project team and related to ‘unexpected developments’, which are reflected in micro stories regarding the condition of the bridge, the agenda of local politics and the credibility of RCC top management. The project manager ‘escapes’ from NPR by using the narrative of ‘the bridge at risk of collapsing’ as a strategy to include contracting parties in the process and share responsibilities. In the process, NPR diligence more and more seems to change into NPR deterrence.
5.2 Project 2 – Echo Channel: NPR diligence becomes dilution Making sense of mud – Echo Channel is one of the most polluted Dutch channels. It is a ‘unique’ result of Dutch water management and connects the southern provinces to Rotterdam Haven, one of the largest harbours in the world. After decades of pollution, the channel mud contains heavy metals, which needs to be removed in order to rebalance the water quality and restore the natural environment. In 2005, an RCC project team was installed to initiate a revitalisation plan for more than 20 miles in the northern part of the channel. As in the Delta Bridge case, the project team was instructed to conform to NPR criteria. The assignment was to completely remove ‘third order’ mud from the channel, a substance which contained more than 70% of the overall heavy metal species, and to transport the mud to a specially designed reservoir. The time frame for this operation (contracting, realisation and completion) was three years. During this period, the channel had to remain open for shipping traffic and tourism purposes (e.g., small pleasure ships). The first meetings of the RCC project team consisted of a set of ‘open space’ discussions, through which the potential approaches and contracting parties were discussed. An external consultant was asked to guide meetings and relate project objectives to NPR criteria. He was also asked to translate potential approaches into a set of technical, ecological, organisational, financial and human resources ‘learning dilemmas’. The project manager strongly believed that the only way to deal with these dilemmas was to organise as much external expertise as possible. Or, as he said: “Basically I’m just an inexperienced person who needs any help he can get. I think that by being open and transparent, not bullying my project members and listening to what experts have to say, we may just learn our way through the project.”
Unique problems need unique solutions – This so called ‘dynamic learning strategy’ was not only interactive and demanded a specific set of organisational arrangements, it also appeared to be quite time consuming and a potential threat to the narrow NPR criteria. In order to retain the support of the RCC top management, the CEO was invited to participate in the open space sessions, to discuss the indicated dilemmas and to commit to the learning strategy. After a three-month exploration period, the project team decided that the project should be organised in terms of a ‘multiple sub-contract construction’.
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This ‘unique’ plan resulted from the complexity of the wide range of (partly contrasting) expertise that was brought in. The plan included a set of four basic subcontracts with different private sector construction firms, subsequently related to: 1
the organisation of local permits and licences
2
the allocation and mapping of (ecologically safe) removal areas
3
the execution of removal activities
4
the transportation of the material to storage locations.
The project manager convinced the RCC top management that this unique approach was crucial for the future development of RCC projects and that this could act as a role model for new assignments. Or, as a project member said: “The fact that they accepted Echo Channel as a Pilot Project, was a real breakthrough. They simply could not deny the expert reports, which advised us to organise it as a multiple setting (referring to the multiple sub-contract construction). But it was also just a matter of collective ignorance. We didn’t have a clue how to do this job without external help.”
From the start, the ‘pilot project status’ was the object of multiple interpretations. During the project, central RCC accountants claimed that NPR principles were still priority. One of the accountants explained: “Of course we recognise the value of these new approaches. This does, however, not mean that this project team is off the NPR hook. How are we ever going to benchmark RCC projects if every project leader designs his own plan of action? In practise, we might have to reconsider some workable timeslots. Is ‘learning’ a separate project stage? Should gaining permits be seen as a ‘product of construction firms? How should we judge external expertise in terms of necessary capacity? Are they part of the team? I don’t know. If RCC top thinks it fits the criteria, it’s ok with me.”
Unique is also practical – During the research period (first project year), ‘practical reasons’ became more and more in use by the project manager as a rationale to avoid the NPR criteria. The learning strategy provided him with a powerful micro story of uniqueness and future-orientation, which was (easily) accepted by the RCC top. In the meantime, several local organisations such as harbour services, transport representatives, ecological experts and local communities participated in the project design through a set of open space platforms. They were also invited to co-evaluate the performances of the subcontractors in a ‘multiple user constellation’. This construction allowed the project team to use the external opinions as a measure for operational success. It even legitimised a three-month delay, because a claim of local ecologists to protect the breeding grounds of local bird species was ‘naturally’ to be honoured. In this case, the NPR narrative is blurred by the ‘experimental approach’ of the project team. The complexity of the project is reflected in micro stories regarding the need for external expertise, multiple contract arrangements and the open space participation of local stakeholders. The ‘uniqueness’ of Echo Channel as a result of Dutch water management ‘fits’ the narrative of ‘uniqueness’ of the project approach. As a consequence, NPR diligence more and more seems to change into NPR dilution, with NPR accountants as passive spectators.
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5.3 Project 3 - Foxtrot Fly-over: NPR diligence becomes dissociation We’re saving the animals – Foxtrot Fly-over was a prestigious, high-profile Dutch ‘infra-nature’ project, which started in 2004. This 18-million-euro project resulted from an intense political debate regarding the role of modern infrastructure in contemporary Dutch society. The purpose of Foxtrot was to protect animals like red deer, badgers and silver foxes from being killed by highway traffic (during the last decade more than 2500 animals were found dead). As a ‘nature bridge’, Foxtrot would enable the animals to move between two important parts of the Green Forest, without having to pass the highway. One of the main challenges of this project was to develop a construction that would actually ‘work for the animals’ and fit the infrastructural conditions. An RCC project team was formed in 2004 and selected according to NPR criteria. An experienced project manager was installed and asked to develop an initial plan within three months. During the first month, the project manager made several media (television) appearances to explain the ‘ins and outs’ of the project. In one of his interviews he described that he was confident that the RCC organisation would provide him with all the necessary assets for the project: “This means we have an acceptable, but fixed budget, a clear timeframe, a professional staff and all the technical support we can get. So, let’s make this project a big success and save the animals.”
Being a deer! – The major challenge in the design was to define the accurate dimensions. Would a 30-m-wide fly-over be enough to encourage the animals to ‘use’ the bridge or did it take more? Was one bridge enough to solve the problem or should it be a sequence of fly-over constructions? The project manager decided to invite six private parties to develop “convincing plans, based on real life simulations” or, as one of the project members put it, “Let them show us that it really works.” After a six-week period, the team received six completely different plans. None of the plans convinced the team that any of them would actually ‘work’ and criteria for a clear judgement were hard to define. NPR instructed that a party should be selected within four weeks and the team was pressured to make a decision on the proposals. After heavy debates with the RCC top management, the project leader decided that a 40-m-wide conventional fly-over construction would fit best. As he said: “Actually we didn’t know if any of these plans would work. The plan we choose fitted our time/financial slots best and seemed a plausible solution at the time.”
The start of the project was planned for autumn 2005. June 2005, an ecological group of biologists and deer experts created two experiments to see if the animals actually would choose artificial paths to cross the highway. The conclusion was dramatic: only two animals could be ‘seduced’ to use the bridge in a four-week period. A spokesman of the group stated: “It is clear that this construction will never work. The challenge is not about making new bridges, but about putting a hold to this idiot rat race of more cars and more highways. Show some respect for nature! Close down the highway and problems will be over in no time.”
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What’s on their mind? – The first reaction of the project team was to deny this story of ‘biased environmental fanatics’. The team decided that the construction firm should start, as planned. Three months after building activities started, a famous Dutch ecology expert supported the claims of the ecology group. He concluded that the project was a ‘mission impossible’ which would never work. One of the team members was a former student of this university professor, whom he very much respected. The expert opinion caused long and emotional discussions within the project team. Three team members decided that they could no longer hold responsibility for the plan and resigned. According to NPR measures, the construction firm was completely responsible for the design and the project team could only stick to monitoring the progress indicators. The resignation of the project members caused much panic in the team. Was the project based on the right decision? Should they ‘take a break’ to reevaluate the construction? The RCC top instructed that NPR instruction should be followed, no matter what. For the project manager this caused all kinds of new dilemmas. As he said: “They want me to stick to NPR. But NPR tells us to monitor progress, quality and user satisfaction. What is quality if the design is not right? How do we measure user satisfaction, if the users can’t speak for themselves? Should we ask the deer?”
The project team decided that a time-out was absolutely necessary to organise dialogues with external experts. This decision was overruled by the RCC chairman, who claimed that RCC could not afford delays in order to retain its credibility: “Unfortunately, we cannot change course every time some experts doubt our decisions. For this reason we’ve decided to choose a solid new project manager.”
The project was scheduled to be finished by the summer of 2007. For ‘political and emotional reasons’, RCC top management decided to set aside NPR criteria. The new project manager was given a broad mandate to finish the project in close interaction with RCC top management. In this case, the NPR narrative loses its meaning after the RCC project manager realises that the fly-over is potentially a ‘mission impossible’. Micro stories supporting the inadequacy of the fly-over construction resulted in collective panic and uncertainty over the plans of the project team. The RCC top, however, sticks to the NPR narrative by keeping focused on NPR labels: the project should be doable and has to result in a user-friendly construction. Once it is ‘clear’ that the project manager is no longer in ‘control’, he is replaced: NPR diligence becomes NPR dissociation.
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Analysis: making sense of NPR through project narratives
In all project narratives the project members were struggling with the interpretation of the four basic NPR benchmark criteria. Throughout the whole project the initial plans were constantly defined and redefined. As a result the performance criteria could never be specified as clear markers for evaluation. Obviously, this severely influenced the relationships with contractors. Shifting definitions of project goals recreated a negotiating process with contractors over and over again. Because the project leaders were sensitive to the societal impact of the project, this resulted in the continuous enlargement of the project environment and the inclusion of ever more stakeholders. The internal project
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dynamics prevent a standardised ‘Tayloristic’ form of benchmarking amongst those projects. And while under the Old Performance Routine the above-mentioned dilemmas could remain unnoticed, the NPR’s focus on standardisation and evaluation according to a set of apparently clear criteria made them more and more visible. While the dominant narrative of change appears straightforward, it does not fit the complexity that is inherently involved in managing large construction projects. The project narratives illustrate how ambiguity in the NPR narratives allows considerable room for the generation of alternative storylines (Green and May, 2005). Ambiguity basically refers to the existence of multiple and conflicting interpretations (Atkinson et al., 2006) and the project narratives show how this leads to resistance, alienation or confusion (see Table 2). Table 2
Schematic overview of the New Performance Routine in the three project narratives
Reconstructing the New Performance Routine through project narratives Project 1 – NPR deterrence
Project 2 – NPR dilution
Project 3 – NPR dissociation
Relation to NPR
Counter-narrating: resistance
Sub-narrating: alienation
Anti-narrating: confusion
Dominant project micro story
How to avoid ‘unacceptable’ traffic risks?
How to use a ‘unique’ learning experience?
How to ‘seduce’ the animals?
‘Editing’ actor(s)
Project leader local experts
Project leader constructors
Ecological experts RCC top management
Project consequences
Substantive project extension: NPR overruled
Fading project boundaries: NPR marginalised
Remaining project ambiguity: NPR meaningless
Key aspects
In the case of the Delta Bridge the actors involved engage in a game of managing meaning (Granlund, 2002) with regard to an acceptable definition of a ‘reliable’ bridge. The project narrative also shows how the project as a work organisation is by no means a ‘closed’ space, since the project members are continuously engaged in a struggle with other parties over an acceptable perception of the risks involved. The project manager feels trapped within the NPR’s focus on accountability, performance measurement and separate responsibilities. The NPR narrative does not resonate with his experience of a messy and unpredictable reality in which other parties involved constantly question the project team’s strategies. Eventually this results in resistance and ‘counter’-narrating concerning the avoidance of unacceptable risk. Within this context, the project manager and local experts serve as ‘editing’ actors: by actively reshaping the narrative concerning the status of the bridge, NPR increasingly loses its organising capacity. While the project team in the Delta Bridge project eventually bluntly resists the NPR narrative, the project manager of the Echo Channel project effectively uses the content of the NPR narrative in order to legitimise deviation. In the Echo Channel project, the concept of NPM is alienated in a dramatic way. The project manager generates a process of subnarrating by systematically editing the story of uniqueness. He uses the project team’s inexperience with so-called ‘innovative contracts’, the uniqueness of the project and its status as a pilot project, as a legitimative device to move away from the prescribed set of working practices within the NPR narrative. The management’s NPR narrative
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allows for interpretative flexibility (Bresnen et al., 2005; Green and May, 2005). The concept of innovation, one of the core themes of NPR, is interpreted in such a way that the other categories (e.g., performance measurements in terms of time and costs) are perceived as less relevant. Ironically, the strategy that finally gets chosen in the ‘unique’ Echo Channel project is presented as a possible ‘role model’ for ‘similar’ projects in the future. According to Bresnen et al. (2005), it is exactly this “considerable scope for the ideas themselves to be transformed or distorted as they are made sense of and translated into practice [that is] making nonsense of the notion of a generally applicable, single, best practice” (p.549). But maybe the quest should not be for definitive best practices, but for provisional practices. If we accept the view that projects are arenas of enactment, best practices will always be reinterpreted, recreated, appropriated and transformed, making ‘closure’ on accepted practices or specific characteristics unlikely (Green and May, 2005). Within the contested arenas of project organisations, narratives such as NPR provide a ‘script’ against which project members improvise. The acceptability of those scripts will depend upon their ‘persuasiveness’ as sensemaking devices (Green and May, 2005; Green, 2006). The narrative of the Foxtrot Fly-over exemplifies what happens if project members are not able to make sense of the dominant script. ‘Anti’-narrating, in this case the debated definition of ‘customer orientation’, leads to total confusion amongst the project members and consequent actions (e.g., project members leaving the team). In a final attempt to regain control, RCC top management dramatically intervenes as editing actor by firing the project leader.
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Conclusion
The projects accounted for in this study were developed in the aftermath of a critical stage in the construction industry. Public enquiries and investigations showed a particularly disconcerting picture of infrastructure projects, frequently overrunning on costs or falling behind schedule, not only due to the (technical) complexity of the projects, but also as a result of intensely disturbed relationships within the sector. In addition to a severely damaged reputation of the infrastructure sector as a whole, the reliability of the public sector was at stake, resulting in attempts of radical public reform such as in the public infrastructure organisation within this research. The project narratives presented here ought to be placed within this context, as it provides the space in which the different individuals or groups of organisational actors are negotiating meanings and are justifying or challenging new working practices. RCC’s top management narrative of the NPR should be understood within the dynamical context of public sector reform in general and the construction sector in particular (Green, 2006). In fact, by drawing on those macro-discourses of change available (e.g., New Public Management), the RCC management tried to establish legitimacy for its NPR narrative (Czarniawska, 1997; Doolin, 2003). In gaining acceptance for the new principles of operating within the NPR, they had to build a new legitimative order, drawing on new values and norms (Granlund, 2002). The new legitimating categories featured themes central to the discourse of New Public Management (NPM), such as performance measurement, customer orientation, innovation or accountability and the identification of best practices. At first sight, the NPM doctrine seems to match the construction sector, which basically focuses on outputs
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and contractual arrangements. However, the RCC faced serious difficulties. This may be explained by a poor fit between NPM and the complexity of large infrastructure projects. Alternatively, NPM may inherently be too rationalistic and prescriptive to solve any of today’s policy problems (Sabel, 2004). This paper has provided an analysis of project narratives to encourage understanding of the social and politicised nature of organisational change processes within the post-NPM era. The narrative approach allows us to view processes of organisational change as an argumentation game (discourse) in which a narrative is adopted regarding a new line of working. We argue that this narrative is by nature ambiguous and needs to be interpreted by individuals in their day-to-day actions within – in this case – construction projects. This results in the development of micro stories, which actors use to cope with the challenges that the dominant narrative creates. The presented project narratives (which consist of multiple micro stories related to specific events or incidents) show the argumentation game between top management, trying to impose its narrative on the organisation, and project managers, trying to react to this narrative while getting their project going. The three project narratives illustrate that the actuality of projects is far from the ‘myth’ of projects as predictable and unambiguous work organisations, organised upon a universally applicable set of working practices that are unequivocally understood in the same way by project members, who all have the same interests and the same perceptions of project objectives and the risks involved. In contrast, the narratives encourage viewing projects as spaces of ongoing struggles over meaning. In the three project narratives this respectively involves the definition of abstract NPM concepts such as ‘reliability’, ‘innovation’ or ‘customer orientation’, central to the management’s dominant narrative of change. The findings of this study suggest that during the process of organisational change, organisations may use project narratives as a means to engage individual organisation members in a dialogue that recognises the validity of different experiences, rather than as a means to create closed and fixed templates for future work practices. If we accept the view that reform strategies and narratives are scripts against which organisational members improvise, the dominant narrative of change should not be regarded as a framework that has to be implemented, but rather as a sensitising or steering concept that initiates dialogues and helps to develop new practices. In this light, competing narratives are sensemaking efforts, rather than implementation gaps. Exchanging competing narratives encourages organisation members to reflect upon the possibilities and challenges of change, precisely because of their differences. Organisational change managers would do well to anticipate the emergence of competing narratives, and find ways to elicit and compare them in the service of experimentalist learning. Organisational researchers in turn can go beyond (re)constructing competing narratives and fostering dialogue (valuable in its own right), and use those opportunities to address further research questions, e.g., what are better and worse strategies for eliciting and comparing change narratives? How do organisation members strategically use narratives to legitimate or deligitimate processes of organisational change? How are competing narratives edited and by whom? And how do staff and managers improvise to devise better, more consensual, provisional solutions? The narratives presented in this paper are ultimately our (i.e., the researchers’) constructions of project narratives, based on accounts (micro stories) of the actors involved. The described and analysed narratives do not give insight into the ‘overall
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projects’ truth’. A narrative analysis allows us to gain insight into the project members’ experiences, their changing perspectives, descriptions and the perceived consequences of the NPR with regard to their daily work, that is, within the project environment. As such these project narratives present an (not the only or the ultimate) interpretation of the process and the aim is not just to inform, but also to enrich our understanding (see also Brown, 1998; 2000). This corresponds with the ideas of the philosopher Rorty, who argues that we as humans are subjective beings that cannot step outside of ourselves, our powers of examination and our thought processes to find an objective truth (Rorty et al., 1984). Rorty states that people are always dealing with multiple and conflicting claims of truth, none of which can be conclusively established. Instead of focusing on a quest for truth, narratives can provide insight into the language that humans need and use to think, process and organise experiences. The argument we pursue here is that these kinds of project narratives – consisting of micro stories referring to specific incidents of experiences related to the project – are continuously being constructed and reconstructed within the organisation involved. Ever since the organisation’s top management started propagating its doctrinal narrative of change (introduced as ‘the New Performance Routine’), we witnessed a constant quest for project narratives amongst organisational members (including top management itself) in order to make sense of it. Paradoxically the project narratives may serve to enlarge ambiguity rather than reduce it. The ‘interpretive flexibility’ through which the NPR becomes enacted in practice, to date acts more as a legitimation to alternative working practices rather than to establish a set of universally applicable best practices. This paper, in using a narrative approach, provided empirical illustrations of the ways NPM can be contested in the day-to-day developments of project members. Our analysis leads us to conclude that precisely because most administrative reforms such as NPM are challenging for key actors to make sense of and implement, the quest should not be for ‘best practices’ but for ‘better and more consensually provisional practices’, and that organisational leaders could use narratives to engage individual organisation members in such a collaborative process of developing new practices.
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