Styhre, A and Brorström, S (2023) Syndicated leadership in urban development projects: The case of the River City Gothenburg project. Construction Management and Economics, 41(5), pp. 387-401. ISSN 01446193
Abstract
Large-scale urban development projects are complex economic and politically shaped activities, and such projects have oftentimes proved to be more costly and demanding more time to complete than is frequently being stipulated from the outset. Based on these conditions, urban development projects demand effective cross-organizational collaborations to optimize the use of available expertise, the capacity to process data and information, and to optimize public interests (being monitored by democratically elected entities in democratic societies). Based on a study of a major urban development project in Gothenburg, Sweden, this article introduces the concept of syndicated leadership, derived from the concept of syndicated investment in the venture capital industry. Syndicated leadership is based on the centralization of decision-making authority and resource allocation to a team of leaders, each representing (in the case examined) a private corporation, a municipality corporation, or a municipality agency having specific responsibilities in the shared urban development project, but also being dependent on the capacity to coordinate and align project activities. As the case indicates, syndicated leadership demands new expertise and communicative capacities and political skills, but when implemented effectively, it holds the promise of avoiding costly and embarrassing urban development project failures as it makes better use of the expertise of the participant organizations and better accommodate public interests.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | leadership practice; syndicated leadership |
| Index terms: | urban development, Sweden, project failure, public interest, resource allocation, municipality, agency, collaboration, decision-making, political skill, society |
| Subjects: | urban design, employment law, Geography, management, political science, administrative law, communities and social development, sociology, decision analysis, project completion, resource management |
| Topics: | Urban Studies, Legal Issues, Site Management, Organizational Design, Geographical Context, Project Management, Research Practice, Governance, Stakeholder Management, Risk Management |
| Descriptive scope: | 3 PCT |
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