Construction work is associated with high risks of fatalities. Effective, deep and lasting learning from incidents is important for the safety of employees, but not well developed in the construction sector. We studied the organizational processes after a fatality through an auto-ethnographic field work study and found three distinct, but interrelated processes to normalize construction work; juridical, ethical and operational processes. Balanced attention to all three processes supports an effective, deep and lasting learning from incidents. We contribute to the learning from incidents literature with the insight that balanced attention for all three processes helps to learn from incidents and to improve the safety of workers. Furthermore, second victims can be important for the learning of incidents process. Finally, the findings throw new light on inadequate supervision of safety procedures, as the temporary characteristics of projects forces workers to deviate from safety procedures.

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Silence and noise have become an important theme that emerges in studies of collective workspaces. Drawing on an ethnographic field study of a major bank in Paris, this study offers a rhythmanalysis of noise in the context of flexible offices. Findings center noise rhythms as an unfolding in time-space that involves an interlaced relationship between order, and alternations of harmony and conflict. These findings reflect the relational ontological nature of noise and add to a multiplicity perspective on space in organization studies.@en

Transferring knowledge across strategic projects is challenging. This study investigates how informal practices of members of the parent organization shape the transfer of knowledge across strategic projects. This was addressed through an in-depth case study of strategic projects in an innovation trajectory of a large public organization aiming to accelerate to transition towards circular construction. We identified five disabling practices: shaming and blaming, disconnecting, holding onto the department and project boundaries, fostering one-way relationships and avoiding internal conflict. Furthermore, we identified three enabling practices: supporting circular projects, sharing similarities across projects and integral visioning. The results contribute to the cross-project knowledge transfer literature by showing how members of partner organizations can enable or disable knowledge transfer across strategic projects. Furthermore, the results contribute to the strategic project literature by illuminating the importance of informal practices of members of the parent organization.

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This editorial scrutinizes the dichotomy of a project’s success and failure, which, in our opinion is too rigid, inflexible, and unnuanced. The aim of this special issue is to nuance this dichotomy by moving toward a process view on how imperfection is brought about in projects. We introduce and discuss five topics important for such a process view: (1) improvisation, (2) temporality, (3) power and politics, (4) transition, and (5) intentionality. We argue that a holistic, processual view of imperfections premises emergence and continuous learning and judgments of the project both in and over time. All five articles in this special issue deal with at least one of the discussed themes of our proposed process view on imperfect projects.

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This article examines the change process of implementing hybrid workspace within organizations. Hybrid workspace involves employees working from multiple locations and has become an important topic during and after the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. This study aims to better understand the tensions emerging in the change process towards hybrid workspace and the responses by organizational members. Drawing on a case study of a major bank in Paris, this study finds four relevant tensions that emerge when implementing hybrid workspace: (1) connecting with vs. disconnecting from others, (2) agile vs. sedentary work, (3) paperless vs. paper-based working, and (4) telework vs. corporate space routines. These findings contribute to reshaping workspace literature by viewing organizational change through a tension lens while connecting different micro-processes of the planned change. Furthermore, this study contributes to the debates on hybrid workspace by viewing space as an ongoing process, through the dynamic interaction between individuals and technology in producing hybrid workspace.

MAD statement
This article aims to Make a Difference (MAD) by viewing hybrid workspaces and organizational change as mutually constituted in a process connecting technology and human agency. This study provides important contributions by identifying possible tensions that might emerge in the implementation of hybrid workspace. By revealing employees’ responses to each tension, we provide practitioners with insights into discrepancies among planning, implementing, and the daily use of hybrid workspace, and into creative ways to transcend oppositions. To improve employees’ well-being and reduce inequalities at work, we call for a managerial shift from disregarding or eliminating sources of tensions to managing them.@en

For projects to contribute to sustainability transitions, traditional roles of project actors need to be challenged. This paper focus on the changing role of demolishers in circular construction projects. We explore the role changes needed and the tactics adopted to negotiate these changes. Therefore, we collected data across 10 demolishers and two construction projects in the Netherlands. We identified required changes related to task, timing, position, and image. The studied demolishers adopted six different tactics to negotiate these changes. These findings contribute to the sustainability transitions literature by highlighting the important function of projects in operationalizing role changes and enabling change in the roles of incumbent actors. Furthermore, the results contribute to the debate on roles in sustainable projects, and on the roles of demolishers in particular, showing the different elements and non-linear nature of role change, including the unique challenges and tactics adopted by demolishers to negotiate these changes.

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The competing public values of quality, responsibility, and responsiveness play a leading role. In the Dutch case, quality concerns the realization of public infrastructure to improve the Dutch economy or mobility objectives, in cases of specific projects. The classic iron triangle of project values, aimed at the realization of a project by balancing time, budget, scope, and quality strongly relates to the perception of projects as a success or failure. Responsibility and responsiveness are procedural public values. Responsibility concerns the extent to which both public and private partners comply with the contractual agreements and output specifications agreed at the start of the PPP project. Responsiveness implies the ability of the partners to influence and adjust contractual agreements and output specifications before and after contract closure, to deal with unexpected developments and new insights. The chapter discusses the emergence of DBFM (design, build, finance, maintain) contracts in Dutch road and water infrastructure megaprojects and analyses how public values transpired in a less and a more successful megaproject. The second case was less successful due to the emphasis on the value of responsibility. Attempts to keep parties to the agreed strict division of responsibilities did not resolve conflicts between the public and private partners. The first project focused on relational contracting and building a resilient partnership to find the right balance between responsibility and responsiveness. Managing competing public values entails coping strategies that overcome zero sum-situations and that realize synergies, not building firewalls but enhancing responsiveness and capacity to learn and adapt.@en

While work becomes increasingly flexible, distributed, multi-located, and asynchronous, the understanding of its spatial dimensions is still limited. This study explores the evolving nature of organizational spaces in the context of multi-location work (i.e., when the workplace consists of a multiplicity of locations). Using a topological spatial perspective, we investigate how organizational spaces adapt to meet the demands of multi-location work. Using a mixed-method approach, we investigate the work experiences of academics from three higher education organizations during and after the Covid-19 pandemic. Preliminary results uncover two key topological changes and various linked topological shapes. This research provides a novel lens for understanding the dynamic and relational nature of spatial arrangements in contemporary work practices, offering valuable insights for organizations adapting to changing work landscapes. @en

This paper captures a better understanding of the career development of people leading megaprojects through the use of biographical research method. The
characteristics of megaprojects cause serious and diverse challenges for their leaders, but programs where they are trained to overcome these challenges are not easily available around the world. We used a biographic research to gather sixteen life histories of megaproject leaders from ten different countries. This approach helps to explore megaproject leaders as people and how they have learned to become leaders. Findings show that leaders learned to manage megaprojects through a lifetime interaction of: (1) personal characteristics of leaders, (2) turning points in their lives, (3) value orientations stemming from their family, region or religion, (4) their relationship to the project team, and (5) their professionalization through a diversity of projects. These findings add to our knowledge on leaders’ career development that this not only depends on individual agency but also on contextual influences which span a lifetime. Furthermore, the findings contribute to the debate on narrative inquiry methods by demonstrating the full potential of biographical research method for understanding megaproject leadership. Finally, the findings contribute to the debate on megaprojects leaders with real accounts of how people have become leaders through self-development.@en

Research on the circular built environment has to date focussed mainly on technical aspects of circularity in the built environment, emphasising the development of methods, tools, and frameworks to facilitate technical solutions that can narrow, slow, close, and regenerate materials cycles. Despite progress made in understanding the technical possibilities of circularity in the built environment, and although there has been longstanding acknowledgement that new forms of inter- and transdisciplinary collaboration are needed to accelerate and scale up solutions for the circular built environment, studies have also consistently highlighted the lack of collaboration as a significant barrier. In this position paper, we argue that existing research tends to focus on collaboration at the level of the building project, and this neglect calls for developing longer-term collaboration for circularity as a multi-level transition that considers the interactions between multiple parties involved in extended and multiple product lifecycles traversing multiple scales beyond the building project.@en

The energy transition process nowadays is characterized by the replacement of fossil fuels-based means of production with renewable energy (RE). Alongside the diffusion of decentralized RE, this process is associated with the increased promotion of RE megaprojects. Such megaprojects, however, are often shaped by path-dependent lock-ins and thus continue to be promoted with limited changes despite the emergence of better alternatives along the way. This study explores the role of lock-ins in the irreversibility of RE megaprojects while highlighting the notion of regret cost. In particular, the study sheds light on the influence of lock-ins within megaprojects, specifically focusing on their execution stage. Using the establishment process of Ashalim, a giant thermal solar power station in southern Israel, as a case study, we demonstrate how various lock-ins increase regulators’ regret cost, thus escalating their commitment to the megaproject and causing them to neglect diverse “exit doors” during execution. We thus illuminate the irreversibility of RE megaprojects and question their capability to meet the growing need of energy markets for flexibility.@en

This chapter discusses a cultural perspective of megaproject governance. The characteristics of megaprojects bring along specific needs for complex governance arrangements to ensure their smooth execution. However, such ex ante arrangements have proven to be too limited to anticipate for the uncertain, ambiguous, or invisible issues that emerge during execution. A cultural perspective of megaproject governance contributes to the debate on project governance with a focus on the, sometimes hidden, cultural practices of megaproject governance. Three examples of cultural practices in megaprojects are discussed: trust development, transitional rituals, and managing cultural differences. Insights into these practices help to understand the impact of governance arrangements on the daily work of megaproject actors.@en

This study focuses upon knowledge governance mechanisms of integrating specialised knowledge on underground utilities in large infrastructure projects. The integration of knowledge is essential for the realisation of such projects. The study explores the formal and informal knowledge governance mechanisms in three large infrastructure projects and compares these mechanisms to reveal their effects on knowledge integration. The findings show that combining reward systems, project culture and trust are targeting the motivation of underground experts to share their knowledge and allocation of authority and project network are mechanisms aimed at the coordination between managers and underground experts to integrate knowledge. We contribute to studies on knowledge governance by enabling further empirical insight in the relationships between formal and informal mechanisms.

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This paper addresses the lack of attention for the behaviours and agency of actors in organizations in the sustainability transitions literature by focussing on practices of inter-organizational collaboration in the transition to circular construction. Practices of inter-organizational collaboration can slow down this transition and are deeply embedded in the construction regime, creating critical points of intersection. This research therefore investigated how reflective interventions can enable project actors to change their practices and support the transformation of critical points of intersection into points of opportunity in circular construction. To answer this question, we adopted a case study approach with action research elements. The results of this study contribute to the sustainability transitions literature by showing how reflective interventions can assist in the transformation of critical points of intersection through five processes, including prioritising reflection on practices, critically evaluating practices, creating a breeding ground for new practices, implementing new practices and embedding new practices in partner organizations. Furthermore, we move away from the focus on policy interventions and offer more room for the agency of actors in projects, by showing how reflective interventions can create experimental environments close to the day-to-day activities of project actors enabling them to simultaneously unlearn obsolete practices and learn new practices.

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This chapter presents a holistic investigation into construction culture from an organisation studies as well as project management perspective, mobilising the concept of toxic project cultures as a novel conceptual lens to explore new ways to transform the construction industry into a more dynamic, innovative, and socially responsible sector. All levels of culture will need to change, and to be effective, attention on the part of project leadership to the change process is required on an everyday basis. Inter-organisational strategic change projects can serve as 'temporary trading zones', in which actors from different organisations bring in different work practices, narratives, norms, and values, thus creating opportunities for experimenting, knowledge exchange, and changing behaviour. In these arenas, doing things in unusual ways should always be on the agenda, to unlearn ingrained routines. Unlearning involves very different cognitive processes to learning.

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Power in interorganizational strategic projects, used for implementing strategic change, is essential but not well understood. This paper devises a conceptual framework in which power relations, strategic practices and an order and conflict view are integrated. An ethnoventionist approach, including ethnography and interventions, is used to show power relations and strategic practices in an interorganizational change project. This project aimed to improve the collaboration between nine organizations in the joint building of subsurface utilities and telecom networks. The findings show four relevant power relations and the delegating of power from top managers to shop-flow workers, which triggered middle managers to constrain the change process. implementation of these innovations. Theoretically, the study contributes to the debate on interorganizational strategic projects with a conceptual framework including power relations, strategic practices and the order and conflict view, demonstrating the long-term effects of strategic change projects.

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Recently, scholars have called for a focus on subjective aspects of risk management as a suitable lens for understanding how it functions. In line with this lens, this study focuses on project actors’ viewpoints on risk management in the context of construction projects to provide novel insights in risk management. Drawing on Renn's model and following a Q methodology, we identify four risk management approaches among asset managers and project managers working at the Dutch Schiphol Airport. The action-oriented and future-oriented viewpoints are dominant, while the expert input and stakeholder-centric viewpoints are in the minority. Our findings extend the risk management debate by showing that (1) there are various approaches to risk management that have been identified independently from the formal risk management; (2) these approaches cannot be explained by a project actor's role or objective within the project; and (3) that project actors have a dominant focus on managing complexity-induced risks at the expense of managing other types of risks.

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The development of trust is a major challenge for the governance of public private infrastructure megaprojects. Contractual pre-arrangements should provide a blueprint for collaborative behavior and trust development but the characters of megaprojects challenge such arrangements. This longitudinal study explores practices of trust development in the collaboration of commissioner and contractor consortia in the Dutch road infrastructure megaproject ‘Schiphol, Amsterdam and Almere’ (SAA). The findings show that six different types of workshops have been used to intervene in the collaboration of project partners in order to develop trust. The study contributes to the debate on governance in megaprojects showing how governance arrangement are enacted in the daily practice in megaprojects. To buffer the potential loss of trust through conflicts, project partners negotiated for a balanced reciprocal relationship, which is the simultaneous exchange of equivalent resources without delay.

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Governing material conditions—including physical, material subjects such as machines, build constructions, construction materials, and subsoils—is a crucial challenge within projects and is underrepresented in project governance theory. To clarify the relationship between project governance and materiality, we draw on translation theory, which is essentially about the reinterpretation, appropriation, and representation of interests related to materials. This paper studies the challenges of governing the underground during the construction of the new terminal at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport. The findings show that, during the project life cycle, the translation of the underground by project actors hampered the necessary relocation of utilities in this project. This eventually resulted in delays and unforeseen costs. This translation is explained by a combination of the governance of the project, strategic interactions of project actors, and the characteristics and context of the material conditions. We contribute to project governance studies by demonstrating the usefulness of translation theory to better understand the mechanisms at play in governing underrepresented material conditions in infrastructure projects.

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