Early termination of R&D projects

Early project termination is one of the most difficult decisions to be made by Research and Development managers. While there is the risk of terminating good projects, there is also the opposite risk of not terminating bad projects and overspend resources in unproductive research. Criteria used for identifying these projects are common subject of research in Business Administration. In addition, companies might take important lessons from its interrupted projects that could improve their overall portfolio technical and commercial success. Finally, the set and weight of criteria, as well as the procedures companies use for achieve learning from cancelled projects may vary depending on the project type. This research intends to contribute to the understanding of policies applied to projects that were once considered attractive, but by some reason is not appreciated anymore. The research addressed the question: How companies deal with projects that become unattractive? More specifically, this research tried to answer the following questions: (1) Are projects killed or (otherwise) they die naturally by lack of resources? (2) What criteria are used to terminate projects during development? (3) How companies learn from the terminated projects to improve the overall portfolio performance? (4) Are the criteria and learning procedures different for different types of projects? In order to answer these questions, we performed a multiple case study with four companies that are reference in business administration and innovation: (1) Oxiteno, considered the base case, (2) Natura, the literal replication, (3) Mahle and (4) AES, the theoretical replications. The case studies were performed using a semi-structured protocol for interviews, which were recorded and analyzed for comparison. We found that the criteria companies use for selecting projects for termination are very similar to those anticipated by the literature, except for a criteria related to compliance. We have evidences to confirm that the set of criteria is not altered when dealing with different project types, however the weight they are applied indeed varies. We also found that learning with cancelled projects is yet very incipient, with very few structured formal procedures being described for capturing learning with early-terminated projects. However, we could observe that these procedures are more common when dealing with projects labeled as innovative, risky, big and costly, while those smaller and cheaper derivative projects aren\'t subject of a complete investigation on the learning they brought to the company. For these, the most common learning route is the informal, where the project team learns and passes the knowledge though interpersonal information exchange. We explain that as a matter of cost versus benefit of spending time to deeply investigate projects with little potential to bring new knowledge to the project team and the organization

Local resources and procurement practices in humanitarian supply chains:an empirical examination of large-scale house reconstruction projects

Different procurement decisions taken by relief organizations can result in considerably different implications in regards to transport, storage, and distribution of humanitarian aid and ultimately can influence the performance of the humanitarian supply chain and the delivery of the humanitarian aid. In this article, we look into what resources are needed and how these resources evolve in the delivery of humanitarian aid. Drawing on the resource-based view of the firm, we develop a framework to categorize the impact of local resources on the configuration of humanitarian supply chains. In contrast to other papers, the importance of localizing the configuration of the humanitarian supply chain is not only conceptually recognized, but empirical investigations are also provided. In terms of methodology, this article is based on the analysis of secondary data from two housing reconstruction projects. Findings indicate that the use of local resources in humanitarian aid has positive effects on programs' overall supply chain performance and these effects are not only related to the macroeconomic perspective, but benefits expand to improvements related to the use of knowledge. At the same time, it was found that local sourcing often comes with a number of problems. For example, in one of the cases, significant problems existed, which were related to the scarcity of local supplies. Both housing reconstruction projects have indicated the continuous need for changes throughout the programs as a dynamic supply chain configuration is important for the long-term sustainability of reconstruction aid. © 2014 Decision Sciences Institute.

Value creation in capital waterway projects: Application of a transaction cost and transaction benefit framework for the Miami River and the New Orleans Inner Harbour Navigation Canal

Waterways have many more ties with society than as a medium for the transportation of goods alone. Waterway systems offer society many kinds of socio-economic value. Waterway authorities responsible for management and (re)development need to optimize the public benefits for the investments made. However, due to the many trade-offs in the system these agencies have multiple options for achieving this goal. Because they can invest resources in a great many different ways, they need a way to calculate the efficiency of the decisions they make. Transaction cost theory, and the analysis that goes with it, has emerged as an important means of justifying efficiency decisions in the economic arena. To improve our understanding of the value-creating and coordination problems for waterway authorities, such a framework is applied to this sector. This paper describes the findings for two cases, which reflect two common multi trade-off situations for waterway (re)development. Our first case study focuses on the Miami River, an urban revitalized waterway. The second case describes the Inner Harbour Navigation Canal in New Orleans, a canal and lock in an industrialized zone, in need of an upgrade to keep pace with market developments. The transaction cost framework appears to be useful in exposing a wide variety of value-creating opportunities and the resistances that come with it. These insights can offer infrastructure managers guidance on how to seize these opportunities.

Creating New Design-Build-Test Experiences as Outputs of Undergraduate Design-Build-Test Projects

This paper describes a methodology of using individual engineering undergraduate student projects as a means of effectively and efficiently developing new Design-Build-Test (DBT) learning experiences and challenges.
A key aspect of the rationale for this approach is that it benefits all parties. The student undertaking the individual project gets an authentic experience of producing a functional artefact, which has been the result of a design process that addresses conception, design, implementation and operation. The supervising faculty member benefits from live prototyping of new curriculum content and resources with a student who is at a similar level of knowledge and experience as the intended end users of the DBT outputs. The multiple students who ultimately undertake the DBT experiences / challenges benefit from the enhanced nature of a learning experience which has been “road tested” and optimised.
To demonstrate the methodology the paper will describe a case study example of an individual project completed in 2015. This resulted in a DBT design challenge with a theme of designing a catapult for throwing table tennis balls, the device being made from components laser cut from medium density fibreboard (MDF). Further three different modes of operation will be described which use the same resource materials but operate over different timescales and with different learning outcomes, from an icebreaker exercise focused on developing team dynamics through to full DBT where students get an opportunity to experience the full impact of their design decisions by competing against other students with a catapult they have designed and built themselves.

Decisions, decisions everywhere (in the open data era).

Abstract: Decision support systems have been widely used for years in companies to gain insights from internal data, thus making successful decisions. Lately, thanks to the increasing availability of open data, these systems are also integrating open data to enrich decision making process with external data. On the other hand, within an open-data scenario, decision support systems can be also useful to decide which data should be opened, not only by considering technical or legal constraints, but other requirements, such as "reusing potential" of data. In this talk, we focus on both issues: (i) open data for decision making, and (ii) decision making for opening data. We will first briefly comment some research problems regarding using open data for decision making. Then, we will give an outline of a novel decision-making approach (based on how open data is being actually used in open-source projects hosted in Github) for supporting open data publication. Bio of the speaker: Jose-Norberto Mazón holds a PhD from the University of Alicante (Spain). He is head of the "Cátedra Telefónica" on Big Data and coordinator of the Computing degree at the University of Alicante. He is also member of the WaKe research group at the University of Alicante. His research work focuses on open data management, data integration and business intelligence within "big data" scenarios, and their application to the tourism domain (smart tourism destinations). He has published his research in international journals, such as Decision Support Systems, Information Sciences, Data & Knowledge Engineering or ACM Transaction on the Web. Finally, he is involved in the open data project in the University of Alicante, including its open data portal at http://datos.ua.es

Defining the Resolution of a Network for Transportation Analyses: a New Method to Improve Transportation Planning Decisions

Travel demand models are important tools used in the analysis of transportation plans, projects, and policies. The modeling results are useful for transportation planners making transportation decisions and for policy makers developing transportation policies. Defining the level of detail (i.e., the number of roads) of the transport network in consistency with the travel demand model’s zone system is crucial to the accuracy of modeling results. However, travel demand modelers have not had tools to determine how much detail is needed in a transport network for a travel demand model. This dissertation seeks to fill this knowledge gap by (1) providing methodology to define an appropriate level of detail for a transport network in a given travel demand model; (2) implementing this methodology in a travel demand model in the Baltimore area; and (3) identifying how this methodology improves the modeling accuracy. All analyses identify the spatial resolution of the transport network has great impacts on the modeling results. For example, when compared to the observed traffic data, a very detailed network underestimates traffic congestion in the Baltimore area, while a network developed by this dissertation provides a more accurate modeling result of the traffic conditions. Through the evaluation of the impacts a new transportation project has on both networks, the differences in their analysis results point out the importance of having an appropriate level of network detail for making improved planning decisions. The results corroborate a suggested guideline concerning the development of a transport network in consistency with the travel demand model’s zone system. To conclude this dissertation, limitations are identified in data sources and methodology, based on which a plan of future studies is laid out.

Optimal Budget-Constrained Sample Allocation for Selection Decisions with Multiple Uncertain Attributes

A decision-maker, when faced with a limited and fixed budget to collect data in support of a multiple attribute selection decision, must decide how many samples to observe from each alternative and attribute. This allocation decision is of particular importance when the information gained leads to uncertain estimates of the attribute values as with sample data collected from observations such as measurements, experimental evaluations, or simulation runs. For example, when the U.S. Department of Homeland Security must decide upon a radiation detection system to acquire, a number of performance attributes are of interest and must be measured in order to characterize each of the considered systems. We identified and evaluated several approaches to incorporate the uncertainty in the attribute value estimates into a normative model for a multiple attribute selection decision. Assuming an additive multiple attribute value model, we demonstrated the idea of propagating the attribute value uncertainty and describing the decision values for each alternative as probability distributions. These distributions were used to select an alternative. With the goal of maximizing the probability of correct selection we developed and evaluated, under several different sets of assumptions, procedures to allocate the fixed experimental budget across the multiple attributes and alternatives. Through a series of simulation studies, we compared the performance of these allocation procedures to the simple, but common, allocation procedure that distributed the sample budget equally across the alternatives and attributes. We found the allocation procedures that were developed based on the inclusion of decision-maker knowledge, such as knowledge of the decision model, outperformed those that neglected such information. Beginning with general knowledge of the attribute values provided by Bayesian prior distributions, and updating this knowledge with each observed sample, the sequential allocation procedure performed particularly well. These observations demonstrate that managing projects focused on a selection decision so that the decision modeling and the experimental planning are done jointly, rather than in isolation, can improve the overall selection results.

Empirical studies on share issuance and repurchase decisions

Financial constraints influence corporate policies of firms, including both investment decisions and external financing policies. The relevance of this phenomenon has become more pronounced during and after the recent financial crisis in 2007/2008. In addition to raising costs of external financing, the effects of financial crisis limited the availability of external financing which had implications for employment, investment, sale of assets, and tech spending. This thesis provides a comprehensive analysis of the effects of financial constraints on share issuance and repurchases decisions. Financial constraints comprise both internal constraints reflecting the demand for external financing and external financial constraints that relate to the supply of external financing. The study also examines both operating performance and stock market reactions associated with equity issuance methods. The first empirical chapter explores the simultaneous effects of financial constraints and market timing on share issuance decisions. Internal financing constraints limit firms’ ability to issue overvalued equity. On the other hand, financial crisis and low market liquidity (external financial constraints) restrict availability of equity financing and consequently increase the costs of external financing. Therefore, the study explores the extent to which internal and external financing constraints limit market timing of equity issues. This study finds that financial constraints play a significant role in whether firms time their equity issues when the shares are overvalued. The conclusion is that financially constrained firms issue overvalued equity when the external equity market or the general economic conditions are favourable. During recessionary periods, costs of external finance increase such that financially constrained firms are less likely to issue overvalued equity. Only unconstrained firms are more likely to issue overvalued equity even during crisis. Similarly, small firms that need cash flows to finance growth projects are less likely to access external equity financing during period of significant economic recessions. Moreover, constrained firms have low average stock returns compared to unconstrained firms, especially when they issue overvalued equity. The second chapter examines the operating performance and stock returns associated with equity issuance methods. Firms in the UK can issue equity through rights issues, open offers, and private placement. This study argues that alternative equity issuance methods are associated with a different level of operating performance and long-term stock returns. Firms using private placement are associated with poor operating performance. However, rights issues are found empirically to be associated with higher operating performance and less negative long-term stock returns after issuance in comparison to counterpart firms that issue private placements and open offers. Thus, rights issuing firms perform better than open offers and private placement because the favourable operating performance at the time of issuance generates subsequent positive long-run stock price response. Right issuing firms are of better quality and outperform firms that adopt open offers and private placement. In the third empirical chapter, the study explores the levered share repurchase of internally financially unconstrained firms. Unconstrained firms are expected to repurchase their shares using internal funds rather than through external borrowings. However, evidence shows that levered share repurchases are common among unconstrained firms. These firms display this repurchase behaviour when they have bond ratings or investment grade ratings that allow them to obtain cheap external debt financing. It is found that internally financially unconstrained firms borrow to finance their share repurchase when they invest more. Levered repurchase firms are associated with less positive abnormal returns than unlevered repurchase firms. For the levered repurchase sample, high investing firms are associated with more positive long-run abnormal stock returns than low investing firms. It appears the market underreact to the levered repurchase in the short-run regardless of the level of investments. These findings indicate that market reactions reflect both undervaluation and signaling hypotheses of positive information associated with share repurchase. As the firms undertake capital investments, they generate future cash flows, limit the effects of leverage on financial distress and ultimately reduce the risk of the equity capital.

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY PROJECTS IN NONPROFIT UNIVERSITY: A PROJECT GOVERNANCE PERSPECTIVE

The universities rely on the Information Technology (IT) projects to support and enhance their core strategic objectives of teaching, research, and administration. The researcher’s literature review found that the level of IT funding and resources in the universities is not adequate to meet the IT demands. The universities received more IT project requests than they could execute. As such, universities must selectively fund the IT projects. The objectives of the IT projects in the universities vary. An IT project which benefits the teaching functions may not benefit the administrative functions. As such, the selection of an IT project is challenging in the universities. To aid with the IT decision making, many universities in the United States of America (USA) have formed the IT Governance (ITG) processes. ITG is an IT decision making and accountability framework whose purpose is to align the IT efforts in an organization with its strategic objectives, realize the value of the IT investments, meet the expected performance criteria, and manage the risks and the resources (Weil & Ross, 2004). ITG in the universities is relatively new, and it is not well known how the ITG processes are aiding the nonprofit universities in selecting the right IT projects, and managing the performance of these IT projects. This research adds to the body of knowledge regarding the IT project selection under the governance structure, the maturity of the IT projects, and the IT project performance in the nonprofit universities. The case study research methodology was chosen for this exploratory research. The convenience sampling was done to choose the cases from two large, research universities with decentralized colleges, and two small, centralized universities. The data were collected on nine IT projects from these four universities using the interviews and the university documents. The multi-case analysis was complemented by the Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) to systematically analyze how the IT conditions lead to an outcome. This research found that the IT projects were selected in the centralized universities in a more informed manner. ITG was more authoritative in the small centralized universities; the ITG committees were formed by including the key decision makers, the decision-making roles, and responsibilities were better defined, and the frequency of ITG communication was higher. In the centralized universities, the business units and colleges brought the IT requests to ITG committees; which in turn prioritized the IT requests and allocated the funds and the resources to the IT projects. ITG committee members in the centralized universities had a higher awareness of the university-wide IT needs, and the IT projects tended to align with the strategic objectives. On the other hand, the decentralized colleges and business units in the large universities were influential and often bypassed the ITG processes. The decentralized units often chose the “pet” IT projects, and executed them within a silo, without bringing them to the attention of the ITG committees. While these IT projects met the departmental objectives, they did not always align with the university’s strategic objectives. This research found that the IT project maturity in the university could be increased by following the project management methodologies. The IT project management maturity was found higher in the IT projects executed by the centralized university, where a full-time project manager was assigned to manage the project, and the project manager had a higher expertise in the project management. The IT project executed under the guidance of the Project Management Office (PMO) has exhibited a higher project management maturity, as the PMO set the standards and controls for the project. The IT projects managed by the decentralized colleges by a part-time project manager with lower project management expertise have exhibited a lower project management maturity. The IT projects in the decentralized colleges were often managed by the business, or technical leads, who often lacked the project management expertise. This research found that higher the IT project management maturity, the better is the project performance. The IT projects with a higher maturity had a lower project delay, lower number of missed requirements, and lower number of IT system errors. This research found that the quality of IT decision in the university could be improved by centralizing the IT decision-making processes. The IT project management maturity could be improved by following the project management methodologies. The stakeholder management and communication were found critical for the success of the IT projects in the university. It is hoped that the findings from this research would help the university leaders make the strategic IT decisions, and the university’s IT project managers make the IT project decisions.

The Influence of Place Attachment, Aspirations, and Rapidly Changing Environments on Resettlement Decisions

Resettlement associated with development projects results in a variety of negative impacts. This dissertation uses the resettlement context to frame the dynamic relationships formed between peoples and places experiencing development. Two case studies contribute: (a) the border zone of Mozambique’s Limpopo National Park where residents contend with changes to land access and use; and (b) Bairro Chipanga in Moatize, Mozambique where a resettled population struggles to form place attachment and transform the post-resettlement site into a “good” place. Through analysis of data collected at these sites between 2009 and 2015, this dissertation investigates how changing environments impact person-place relationships before and after resettlement occurs. Changing environments create conditions leading to disemplacement—feeling like one no longer belongs—that reduces the environment’s ability to foster place attachment. Research findings indicate that responses taken by individuals living in the changing environment depend heavily upon whether resettlement has already occurred. In a pre-resettlement context, residents adjust their daily lives to diminish the effects of a changing environment and re-create the conditions to which they initially formed an attachment. They accept impoverishing conditions, including a narrowing of the spaces in which they live their daily lives, because it is preferred to the anxiety that accompanies being forced to resettle. In a post-resettlement context, resettlement disrupts the formation of place attachment and resettled peoples become a placeless population. When the resettlement has not resulted in anticipated outcomes, the aspiration for social justice—seeking conditions residents had reason to expect—negatively influences residents’ perspectives about the place. The post-resettlement site becomes a bad place with a future unchanged from the present. At best, this results in a population in which more members are willing to move away from the post-resettlement site, and, at worse, complete disengagement of other members from trying to improve the community. Resettlement thus has the potential to launch a cycle of movement- displacement-movement that prevents an entire generation from establishing place attachment and realizing its benefits. At the very least, resettlement impedes the formation of place attachment to new places. Thus, this dissertation draws attention to the unseen and uncompensated losses of resettlement.

Improving waste management in construction projects: an Australian study

Construction waste generation has been identified as one of the major issues in the construction industry due to its direct impacts on the environment as well as the efficiency of the construction industry. As the industry cannot continue to practice if the environmental resources on which it depends are depleted, the significance of waste management needs to be understood in order to encourage stakeholders to achieve related goals. Therefore, this research aims to determine effective approaches to eliminate and/or minimise waste generation in construction projects. Mixed methods were adopted by combining qualitative and quantitative research approaches. Interviews and a questionnaire survey were conducted as the primary data collection methods. The findings reveal twenty six critical solutions for waste management. Five factors of solutions for waste management were extracted from the exploratory factor analysis. These factors were: team building and supervision; strategic guidelines in waste management; proper design and documentation; innovation in waste management decisions; and lifecycle management. The evidence from this study suggests that both technologies and attitudinal approaches require improvement to eliminate/minimise waste generation in construction projects. Similarly, attention should be paid to being mindful of the environmental effects of waste generation and avoiding waste generation as early as possible in construction projects.

Attitudinal and behavioural approaches to improving waste management on construction projects in Australia: Benefits and limitations

This research aims to understand the attitudes and behaviours of stakeholders towards waste management and consequently identify ways of improving waste management practices in construction projects. Semi-structured interviews were conducted. The findings reveal that most of the decisions in construction projects are based on their financial returns unless there is a special requirement to comply with Green Star or any other sustainable building rating system. Even though there is a trend towards environment-friendly construction, contractors are favourable towards methods involving financial incentives. Results also indicate that private developers are more price-driven compared with government clients. Findings reveal the necessity of enforcing legislation to improve waste management practices until such practices become culturally embedded in organizations across the supply chain. Similarly, end users' motivation towards waste management was also identified as a key to encouraging stakeholders of construction projects and improving their attitudes and behaviours towards waste management practices.

Management of industrialization projects

Short time-to-market is a key success factor in the todays’ dynamic business environment and many companies are trying to improve their product development processes. A challenge is to develop products according to the time plan and at the same time keeping the cost low and the quality high. This study focuses on the project management within the product development process in an automotive industry. The background of this study started as a request from the research and development department at the automotive company, which led to the following questions; 1) what are the most crucial factors for project success? 2) How can these factors contribute to a more successful outcome? 3) How can project management decrease product development lead time by sharing knowledge? The research approach is a case study and the data collection consist of interviews and questioners at two companies connected to project management in product development projects. Spider charts are created from the collected data containing eleven dimensions to show similarities and differences between the project managers working within the research and development department as well as between the two companies. The main conclusions are that there is a need to allow a certain level of flexibility when managing projects, in order to more easily handle late changes. Being involved in a project from the concept phase could facilitate the product development activities later on, due to a deeper understanding regarding previous decisions. Further, knowledge sharing methods, such as databases, has to be designed to be suitable for a specific organization and user friendly which enables the users to more easily search for specific types of knowledge. Lastly, a low level on the detailed focus is shown to be another success factor, however, in some cases there is still a need of this detailed focus to solve specific problems but the details may never become a higher focus than the holistic view.