The application of public asset management in Indonesian local government : a case study in South Sulawesi Province

Purpose To identify the challenges faced by local government in Indonesia when adopting a Public Asset Management Framework. Design A Case Study in South Sulawesi Provincial Government was used as the approach to achieving the research objective. The case study involved two data collection techniques - interviews and document analysis. Findings The result of the study indicates there are significant challenges that the Indonesian local government need to manage when adopting a public asset management framework. Those challenges are: absence of an institutional and legal framework to support the asset management application; non-profit principle of public assets; multiple jurisdictions involved in the public asset management processes; the complexity of local government objectives; unavailability of data for managing public property; and limited human resources. Research Limitation This research is limited to one case study. It is a preliminary study from larger research that uses multiple case studies. The main research also investigates opportunities for local government by adopting and implementing public asset management. Originality/Value Findings from this study provide useful input for the policy makers, academics and asset management practitioners in Indonesia to establish a public asset management framework resulting in efficient and effective organizations, as well as an increase of public services quality. This study has a potential application for other developing countries.

Sustainable urban infrastructure management : integration of urban computer modelling

Purpose - This paper seeks to examine the complex relationships between urban planning, infrastructure management, sustainable urban development, and to illustrate why there is an urgent need for local governments to develop a robust planning support system which integrates with advance urban computer modelling tools to facilitate better infrastructure management and improve knowledge sharing between the community, urban planners, engineers and decision makers. Design/methodology/approach - The methods used in this paper includes literature review and practical project case observations. Originality/value - This paper provides an insight of how the Brisbane's planning support system established by Brisbane City Council has significantly improved the effectiveness of urban planning, infrastructure management and community engagement through better knowledge management processes. Practical implications - This paper presents a practical framework for setting up a functional planning support system within local government. The integration of the Brisbane Urban Growth model, Virtual Brisbane and the Brisbane Economic Activity Monitoring (BEAM) database have proven initially successful to provide a dynamic platform to assist elected officials, planners and engineers to understand the limitations of the local environment, its urban systems and the planning implications on a city. With the Brisbane's planning support system, planners and decision makers are able to provide better planning outcomes, policy and infrastructure that adequately address the local needs and achieve sustainable spatial forms.

Brisbane urban growth model : an integrated infrastructure management framework for Brisbane, Australia

In recent years, local government infrastructure management practices have evolved from conventional land use planning to more wide ranging and integrated urban growth and infrastructure management approaches. The roles and responsibilities of local government are no longer simply to manage daily operational functions of a city and provide basic infrastructure. Local governments are now required to undertake economic planning, manage urban growth; be involved in major infrastructure planning; and even engage in achieving sustainable development objectives. The Brisbane Urban Growth model has proven initially successful to ensure timely and coordinated delivery of urban infrastructure. This model may be the first step for many local governments to move toward an integrated, sustainable and effective infrastructure management.

A public asset management framework for Indonesian local governments

The decentralisation reform in Indonesia has mandated the Central Government to transfer some functions and responsibilities to local governments including the transfer of human resources, assets and budgets. Local governments became giant asset holders almost overnight and most were ill prepared to handle these transformations. Assets were transferred without analysing local government need, ability or capability to manage the assets and no local government was provided with an asset management framework. Therefore, the aim of this research is to develop a Public Asset Management Framework for provincial governments in Indonesia, especially for infrastructure and real property assets. This framework will enable provincial governments to develop integrated asset management procedures throughout asset‘s lifecycle. Achieving the research aim means answering the following three research questions; 1) How do provincial governments in Indonesia currently manage their public assets? 2) What factors influence the provincial governments in managing these public assets? 3) How is a Public Asset Management Framework developed that is specific for the Indonesian provincial governments‘ situation? This research applied case studies approach after a literature review; document retrieval, interviews and observations were collated. Data was collected in June 2009 (preliminary data collection) and January to July 2010 in the major eastern Indonesian provinces. Once the public asset management framework was developed, a focus group was used to verify the framework. Results are threefold and indicate that Indonesian provincial governments need to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of current practice of public asset management in order to improve public service quality. The second result shows that the 5 major concerns that influence the local government public asset management processes are asset identification and inventory systems, public asset holding, asset guidance and legal arrangements, asset management efficiency and effectiveness, and, human resources and their organisational arrangements. The framework was then applied to assets already transferred to local governments and so included a system of asset identification and a needs analysis to classify the importance of these assets to local governments, their functions and responsibilities in delivering public services. Assets that support local government functions and responsibilities will then be managed using suitable asset lifecycle processes. Those categorised as surplus assets should be disposed. Additionally functions and responsibilities that do not need an asset solution should be performed directly by local governments. These processes must be measured using performance measurement indicators. All these stages should be guided and regulated with sufficient laws and regulations. Constant improvements to the quality and quantity of human resources hold an important role in successful public asset management processes. This research focuses on developing countries, and contributes toward the knowledge of a Public Asset Management Framework at local government level, particularly Indonesia. The framework provides local governments a foundation to improve their effectiveness and efficiency in managing public assets, which could lead to improved public service quality. This framework will ensure that the best decisions are made throughout asset decision ownership and provide a better asset life cycle process, leading to selection of the most appropriate asset, improve its acquisition and delivery process, optimise asset performance, and provide an appropriate disposal program.

YAWL4Industry : reflections on using YAWL for industry projects

The Yet Another Workflow Language (YAWL) language and environment has been used to prototype, verify, execute and analyse business processes in a wide variety of industrial domains, such as telephony, construction, supply chain, insurance services, medical environments, personnel management and the creative arts. These engagements offer the YAWL researcher community a great opportunity to validate our research findings within an industry setting, as well as discovery of possible enhancements from the end user perspective. This paper describes three such industry projects, discusses why YAWL was chosen and how it was used in each, and reacts on the insights gained along the way.

Management issues in developing a sustainable model for supporting entrepreneurs in Africa

Small and micro-enterprises play a significant part in economic growth and poverty alleviation in developing African countries. There are, however, a range of management issues that arise when looking at the support required for local enterprise development, the role and management style of the local support agency and the role and style of the, usually Western, funding body. This paper explores the management philosophy required to establish and resource micro-enterprise development and compares the local management processes with those expected by a Western funding body.

Towards an integrated maturity model of asset management capabilities

Asset service organisations often recognize asset management as a core competence to deliver benefits to their business. But how do organizations know whether their asset management processes are adequate? Asset management maturity models, which combine best practices and competencies, provide a useful approach to test the capacity of organisations to manage their assets. Asset management frameworks are required to meet the dynamic challenges of managing assets in contemporary society. Although existing models are subject to wide variations in their implementation and sophistication, they also display a distinct weakness in that they tend to focus primarily on the operational and technical level and neglect the levels of strategy, policy and governance as well as the social and human resources – the people elements. Moreover, asset management maturity models have to respond to the external environmental factors, including such as climate change and sustainability, stakeholders and community demand management. Drawing on five dimensions of effective asset management – spatial, temporal, organisational, statistical, and evaluation – as identified by Amadi Echendu et al. [1], this paper carries out a comprehensive comparative analysis of six existing maturity models to identify the gaps in key process areas. Results suggest incorporating these into an integrated approach to assess the maturity of asset-intensive organizations. It is contended that the adoption of an integrated asset management maturity model will enhance effective and efficient delivery of services.

Identifying Core Functions of Asset Management

It is widely acknowledged that effective asset management requires an interdisciplinary approach, in which synergies should exist between traditional disciplines such as: accounting, engineering, finance, humanities, logistics, and information systems technologies. Asset management is also an important, yet complex business practice. Business process modelling is proposed as an approach to manage the complexity of asset management through the modelling of asset management processes. A sound foundation for the systematic application and analysis of business process modelling in asset management is, however, yet to be developed. Fundamentally, a business process consists of activities (termed functions), events/states, and control flow logic. As both events/states and control flow logic are somewhat dependent on the functions themselves, it is a logical step to first identify the functions within a process. This research addresses the current gap in knowledge by developing a method to identify functions common to various industry types (termed core functions). This lays the foundation to extract such functions, so as to identify both commonalities and variation points in asset management processes. This method describes the use of a manual text mining and a taxonomy approach. An example is presented.

Challenges for implementation of a new model of collaborative design management: Analyzing the impact of human factor

The ineffectiveness of current design processes has been well studied and has resulted in widespread calls for the evolution and development of new management processes. Even following the advent of BIM, we continue to move from one stage to another without necessarily having resolved all the issues. CAD design technology, if well handled, could have significantly raised the level of quality and efficiency of current processes, but in practice this was not fully realized. Therefore, technology alone can´t solve all the problems and the advent of BIM could result in a similar bottleneck. For a precise definition of the problem to be solved we should start by understanding what are the main current bottlenecks that have yet to be overcome by either new technologies or management processes, and the impact of human behaviour-related issues which impact the adoption and utilization of new technologies. The fragmented and dispersed nature of the AEC sector, and the huge number of small organizations that comprise it, are a major limiting factor. Several authors have addressed this issue and more recently IDDS has been defined as the highest level of achievement. However, what is written on IDDS shows an extremely ideal situation on a state to be achieved; it shows a holistic utopian proposition with the intent to create the research agenda to move towards that state. Key to IDDS is the framing of a new management model which should address the problems associated with key aspects: technology, processes, policies and people. One of the primary areas to be further studied is the process of collaborative work and understanding, together with the development of proposals to overcome the many cultural barriers that currently exist and impede the advance of new management methods. The purpose of this paper is to define and delimit problems to be solved so that it is possible to implement a new management model for a collaborative design process.

Value management in design planning : a systems-based framework for multi-disciplinary team involvement

This thesis investigates the Value Management processes used by construction project clients that effects project team involvement in VM workshops during the design stage of the projects. It is based on five case studies of the Malaysian international airport construction project packages. The focus of the research is on how issues related to infrastructure design that can improve construction processes on-site are being identified, analysed and resolved through multi-disciplinary team participation. The degrees of interaction, diversity of visualisation aids, certain cultural dimensions and the system thinking approach are found to have significant influence in maximizing participation among project team members during the entire VM workshop process.

Knowledge management challenges in small-and medium-sized enterprises

Background & Research Focus Managing knowledge for innovation and organisational benefit has been extensively investigated in studies of large firms (Smith, Collins & Clark, 2005; Zucker, et al., 2007) and to a large extent there is limited research into studies of small- and medium- sized enterprises (SMEs). There are some investigations in knowledge management research on SMEs, but what remains to be seen in particular is the question of where are the potential challenges for managing knowledge more effectively within these firms? Effective knowledge management (KM) processes and systems lead to improved performance in pursuing distinct capabilities that contribute to firm-level innovation (Nassim 2009; Zucker et al. 2007; Verona and Ravasi 2003). Managing internal and external knowledge in a way that links it closely to the innovation process can assist the creation and implementation of new products and services. KM is particularly important in knowledge intensive firms where the knowledge requirements are highly specialized, diverse and often emergent. However, to a large extent the KM processes of small firms that are often the source of new knowledge and an important element of the value networks of larger companies have not been closely studied. To address this gap which is of increasing importance with the growing number of small firms, we need to further investigate knowledge management processes and the ways that firms find, capture, apply and integrate knowledge from multiple sources for their innovation process. This study builds on the previous literature and applies existing frameworks and takes the process and activity view of knowledge management as a starting point of departure (see among others Kraaijenbrink, Wijnhoven & Groen, 2007; Enberg, Lindkvist, & Tell, 2006; Lu, Wang & Mao, 2007). In this paper, it is attempted to develop a better understanding of the challenges of knowledge management within the innovation process in small knowledge-oriented firms. The paper aims to explore knowledge management processes and practices in firms that are engaged in the new product/service development programs. Consistent with the exploratory character of the study, the research question is: How is knowledge integrated, sourced and recombined from internal and external sources for innovation and new product development? Research Method The research took an exploratory case study approach and developed a theoretical framework to investigate the knowledge situation of knowledge-intensive firms. Equipped with the conceptual foundation, the research adopted a multiple case study method investigating four diverse Australian knowledge-intensive firms from IT, biotechnology, nanotechnology and biochemistry industries. The multiple case study method allowed us to document in some depth the knowledge management experience of the theses firms. Case study data were collected through a review of company published data and semi-structured interviews with managers using an interview guide to ensure uniform coverage of the research themes. This interview guide was developed following development of the framework and a review of the methodologies and issues covered by similar studies in other countries and used some questions common to these studies. It was framed to gather data around knowledge management activity within the business, focusing on the identification, acquisition and utilisation of knowledge, but collecting a range of information about subject as well. The focus of the case studies was on the use of external and internal knowledge to support their knowledge intensive products and services. Key Findings Firstly a conceptual and strategic knowledge management framework has been developed. The knowledge determinants are related to the nature of knowledge, organisational context, and mechanism of the linkages between internal and external knowledge. Overall, a number of key observations derived from this study, which demonstrated the challenges of managing knowledge and how important KM is as a management tool for innovation process in knowledge-oriented firms. To summarise, findings suggest that knowledge management process in these firms is very much project focused and not embedded within the overall organisational routines and mainly based on ad hoc and informal processes. Our findings highlighted lack of formal knowledge management process within our sampled firms. This point to the need for more specialised capabilities in knowledge management for these firms. We observed a need for an effective knowledge transfer support system which is required to facilitate knowledge sharing and particularly capturing and transferring tacit knowledge from one team members to another. In sum, our findings indicate that building effective and adaptive IT systems to manage and share knowledge in the firm is one of the biggest challenges for these small firms. Also, there is little explicit strategy in small knowledge-intensive firms that is targeted at systematic KM either at the strategic or operational level. Therefore, a strategic approach to managing knowledge for innovation as well as leadership and management are essential to achieving effective KM. In particular, research findings demonstrate that gathering tacit knowledge, internal and external to the organization, and applying processes to ensure the availability of knowledge for innovation teams, drives down the risks and cost of innovation. KM activities and tools, such as KM systems, environmental scanning, benchmarking, intranets, firm-wide databases and communities of practice to acquire knowledge and to make it accessible, were elements of KM. Practical Implications The case study method that used in this study provides practical insight into the knowledge management process within Australian knowledge-intensive firms. It also provides useful lessons which can be used by other firms in managing the knowledge more effectively in the innovation process. The findings would be helpful for small firms that may be searching for a practical method for managing and integrating their specialised knowledge. Using the results of this exploratory study and to address the challenges of knowledge management, this study proposes five practices that are discussed in the paper for managing knowledge more efficiently to improve innovation: (1) Knowledge-based firms must be strategic in knowledge management processes for innovation, (2) Leadership and management should encourage various practices for knowledge management, (3) Capturing and sharing tacit knowledge is critical and should be managed, (4)Team knowledge integration practices should be developed, (5) Knowledge management and integration through communication networks, and technology systems should be encouraged and strengthen. In sum, the main managerial contribution of the paper is the recognition of knowledge determinants and processes, and their effects on the effective knowledge management within firm. This may serve as a useful benchmark in the strategic planning of the firm as it utilises new and specialised knowledge.

Investigating the role of knowledge management at various maturity levels of project management office

This thesis is an exploratory study to scrutinise Project Knowledge Management in Project-Based Organisations, specifically in the Project Management Office (PMO). It is the first attempt to investigate the maturity of Project Management, from a Knowledge Management perspective. The findings of this study address multiple Knowledge Management processes and practices to both assess the level of Knowledge Management Maturity in PMOs, and improve the capability of Project Knowledge Management in Project-based Organisations. This research significantly contributes to bridge the current gap in the existing Project Management Maturity Models.

Coping with information silos: An examination of the medication management process in residential aged care facilities (RACFs)

The aim of this study was to examine the actions of geographically dispersed process stakeholders (doctors, community pharmacists and RACFs) in order to cope with the information silos that exist within and across different settings. The study setting involved three metropolitan RACFs in Sydney, Australia and employed a qualitative approach using semi-structured interviews, non-participant observations and artefact analysis. Findings showed that medication information was stored in silos which required specific actions by each setting to translate this information to fit their local requirements. A salient example of this was the way in which community pharmacists used the RACF medication charts to prepare residents' pharmaceutical records. This translation of medication information across settings was often accompanied by telephone or face-to-face conversations to cross-check, validate or obtain new information. Findings highlighted that technological interventions that work in silos can negatively impact the quality of medication management processes in RACF settings. The implementation of commercial software applications like electronic medication charts need to be appropriately integrated to satisfy the collaborative information requirements of the RACF medication process.

Personnel Managers and Crisis Situations. Emotion-handling Strategies

This study focuses on personnel managers in crisis situations. The interviewed personnel managers referred to emotions as a central element to be dealt with in a crisis. However, until recently, the exploration of emotions in organisational life has been de-emphasised or ignored. This study aims to bring to the surface aspects of personnel work that have so far been neglected or remained invisible. It specifically examines how personnel managers handle employees’ and their own emotions in a crisis. Based on the interviews, a number of emotional episodes were constructed. They describe the type and context of the crisis and the person(s) whose emotions are handled. The main findings of the study are the five emotion-handling strategies that could be constructed from the data. The negotiation-like manner in which personnel managers handled emotions in crisis situations proved especially interesting. They were actually negotiating emotional value for their organisations. Further, they handled their own emotions within the frame of two logics of appropriateness labelled mothering and guide-following. The episodes described also enabled identification of the values enacted by the personnel managers in handling emotions. The study provides descriptive information on emotion handling, a current and relevant feature in the practice of personnel management. It seeks to offer a frame for developing practical principles that can be helpful in a crisis. It also offers the opportunity to consider a variety of difficult situations that personnel managers may confront in their work.

The politics of participation: Evaluating stakeholder equity in co-management regimes

Within natural resource management, there is increasing criticism of the traditional model of top-down management as a method of governance, as researchers and managers alike have recognized that resources can frequently be better managed when stakeholders are directly involved in management. As a result, in recent years the concept of co-management of natural resources, in which management responsibilities are shared between the government and stakeholders, has become increasingly popular, both in the academic literature and in practice. However, while co-management has significant potential as a successful management tool, the issue of equity in co-management has rarely been addressed. It is necessary to understand the differential impacts on stakeholders of co-management processes and the degree to which diverse stakeholders are represented within co-management. Understanding the interests of various stakeholders can be a way to more effectively address the distributional and social impacts of coastal policies, which can in turn increase compliance with management measures and lead to more sustainable resource management regimes. This research seeks to take a closer look at the concepts of co-management and participation through a number of case studies of marine protected areas (MPAs) in the Caribbean. (PDF contains 4 pages)