Baldursdottir, N and Ottosson, E (2012) Managing change through participation: Developing shared construction guidelines in 26 public organisations. In: Smith, S D (ed.) Proceedings of 28th Annual ARCOM Conference, 3-5 September 2012, Edinburgh, UK.
Abstract
Increasingly public sector clients are being asked to do more for less and are pushed to achieve higher levels of transparency and accountability. Thus, organizations' ability to address challenges like these has become increasingly important. As a result, a range of models have emerged to help organizations successfully manage this development. The research presented in this paper draws on an exploratory case study of an ongoing change process in the City of Gothenburg, where 26 municipal organizations are developing a shared process (Shared Construction Guidelines) for how to conduct building and infrastructure projects in the City. The aim is to describe this case of participatory change and to shed light on its complexities. Findings show that there is a high degree of commitment and participation in the case of Shared Construction Guidelines. However, there seems to be a gap between top management and the rest of the change organization and resources are limited, especially in terms of time. Also, several findings indicate challenges regarding the understanding of the change. Altogether, this might explain why all members do not feel that they can fully affect the process, even though it is based on broad participation. Finally it is highlighted how the existing literature on change management falls short when describing complex participatory change processes.
| Item Type: | Conference Paper (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | change management; organisational change; participation; shared processes |
| Index terms: | organizational change, commitment, transparency, infrastructure project, top management, complexity, falls, case study, accountability, change management, public-sector client |
| Subjects: | professional development, management, systems engineering, liability law, data collection methods, health risk and incident analysis, business, sociology, psychology, infrastructure and transport systems |
| Topics: | Legal Issues, Health and Safety, Information Management, Engineering Principles, Organizational Design, Research Practice, Stakeholder Management |
| Descriptive scope: | 3 PCE |
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