Wong, K-w K (2014) Integrative approach to addressing societal needs in infrastructure development projects. PhD thesis, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.
Abstract
Opinions from society have become increasingly important in the development of public infrastructure projects as governments and organizations place greater emphasis on public consultation and engagement efforts. With a developing trend around the world (including in Hong Kong) towards greater public involvement in the decision-making processes for public infrastructure projects, it is imperative that decision-makers give sufficient consideration into the needs and concerns from different sectors of society. Inability to do so can lead to project delays, protests and litigation. Existing public consultation and engagement exercises often attract those with the loudest voices or with special interests / motives (political, financial, etc.). Moreover, comments and feedback collected from public consultation and engagement events are often not systematically organized and codified for use as reference in future projects. This leads to the loss of potentially valuable lessons when preparing for new projects. Public engagement, addressing the needs of society and social capital are mostly looked at from the social sciences perspective. Research in these areas focusing on infrastructure development and construction remain limited. Furthermore, there is currently no comprehensive approach and strategy on addressing the needs of society to continuously capture the lessons learned from previous projects. Previous research work on stakeholder engagement in construction focused on analyzing and resolving conflicts between stakeholders; stakeholder identification and prioritization of engagement items based on ethical practices; and integration of project management and asset management teams for providing better feedback on end-user needs. However, these studies did not address some fundamental problems in stakeholder engagement such as the lack of participation from a larger, more representative audience; the need to proactively engage certain groups or sectors of society that are most severely impacted by a project; and identifying the connection between the public and other construction stakeholders to illustrate how the rest of society can contribute and relate to a public infrastructure project. This Study aims to: i) develop an Integrative Approach that can help decision-makers of public infrastructure projects better anticipate, consider and subsequently address the needs and concerns of society when planning and designing public infrastructure projects by empowering stakeholders with knowledge and lessons learned from previous experiences; ii) demonstrate how a broad range of project stakeholders, including the public and various groups in society, can be embraced and connected through mobilization and utilization of social capital; and iii) illustrate the facilitation of knowledge exchange between the various stakeholders of a public infrastructure project. Through a comprehensive research process involving a combination of literature review, interviews with relevant experts, observations at public engagement events in Hong Kong, organizing a public engagement event in collaboration with an NGO, conducting an empirical case study and hosing a workshop with construction industry experts, the Integrative Approach to Addressing Societal Needs was developed, which consist of a Stakeholder Knowledge Transfer (SKT) model, a Relational Knowledge Base (RKB), as well as a set of Strategies and Implementation Measures for putting the SKT model and RKB into practice.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | asset management; collaboration; conflicts; feedback; integration; litigation; participation; public infrastructure; Hong Kong; case study; social science; government; infrastructure project; project stakeholder; stakeholder; interview |
| Index terms: | project stakeholder, knowledge transfer, user need, integration, collaboration, project delay, lessons learned, stakeholder identification, society, knowledge base, interview, infrastructure development, social capital, asset management, literature review, strategy, stakeholder engagement, social science, knowledge exchange, public consultation, project management, construction industry, implementation, infrastructure project, case study, public infrastructure, exercise, workshop, Hong Kong, litigation, decision-making process, motive, public engagement |
| Subjects: | psychology, contractual arrangements, knowledge management, construction type, research dissemination and communication, health behaviours and lifestyles, asset management, communities and social development, theoretical framing, Geography, infrastructure engineering, data analysis and analytics, participation process, data collection methods, user-centered design, dispute resolution, community and social dimensions, project controls, organizational analysis, sociology, decision analysis, infrastructure and transport systems, industry analysis, information systems, management, project management theory and practice, professional development |
| Topics: | Human Resources, Design Practice, Digital Applications, Organizational Design, Time Control, Research Practice, Information Management, Business Strategy, Construction Technology, Stakeholder Management, Legal Issues, Project Management, Geographical Context, Engineering Principles, Health and Safety, Procurement, Risk Management |
| Descriptive scope: | 5 PCTEA |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here