Towards a more connected Europe: An exploratory research on overcoming interorganizational incompatibilities in cross-border railway projects

Towards a more connected Europe: An exploratory research on overcoming interorganizational incompatibilities in cross-border railway projects

Orona Calleros, Daniela (TU Delft Civil Engineering and Geosciences)

Bakker, H.L.M. (mentor)
Bosch-Rekveldt, M.G.C. (graduation committee)
Leijten, M. (graduation committee)
Marskamp, M. (graduation committee)

Delft University of Technology

Civil Engineering | Construction Management and Engineering

2021-10-15

As a subset of Large Infrastructure Projects (LIPs), cross-border projects are characterized by their technical complexity, lead time, diverse actors involved and immense coordination and collaboration challenges due to the participation of organizations coming from different nations and institutional frameworks. As researchers recognize, these conditions are a source of managerial complexity as Project Delivery Organizations (PDOs) face interorganizational incompatibilities due to the multiple and sometimes conflicting logics or ways of thinking. To date, these conditions continue to be a source of managerial complexity, yet no formal addressing towards the importance of tackling these incompatibilities within the internationals PDOs collaborating has been made. Therefore, this study investigates the incompatibilities these organizations commonly face in theory and practice to provide a solution that addresses them on time so a collaborative partnership between PDOs can be achieved. To fulfill this objective this research follows the Double-Diamond methodology and divides this research into four parts, these being literature review, case studies, design of a conceptual framework for implementation and expert validation. In the first part of the research, literature is reviewed to gain insight into interorganizational incompatibilities and the influence these have on collaboration between PDO partners. Results from this step show that differences in Regulations, Norms, Culture, Interpartner relations and Structural characteristics are among the most frequent incompatibilities found. As a second step, exploratory interviews in two case studies are conducted to investigate the incompatibilities present in practice and delve into how different PDOs deal with them. Results from this step show that the incompatibilities found in the literature are similarly observed in practice. Similarly, it was found the presence of these incompatibilities often leads to misunderstandings, relationship damage, collaboration difficulties and others, which in turn hamper the management and performance of projects. In addition to the previously identified categories, incompatibilities in Interpartner relations and Politics are found. Based on these results, the third step of research focuses on developing a framework that PDOs can implement in the front-end phase of project development to establish a collaborative relationship between PDOs partners and thus overcome interorganizational differences. This framework consists of three preconditions that need to be present throughout the process of partnership establishment, while six other strategies follow a step-by-step approach for targeting the previously identified incompatibilities. As the last step of research, the previously designed framework is validated with four experts on its usefulness and applicability. The results from this study suggest that cross-border projects are more complex to manage due to multiple interdependent participants which are embedded in different institutional contexts. Yet, through the proposed conceptual framework, this research contributes to developing a coherent package of strategies for overcoming the most relevant incompatibilities so PDOs can improve the process of achieving interoperability and collaboration in cross-border projects.

Cross-border projects
Collaboration
Interorganizational incompatibilities
Framework development

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:609c6c34-6b2d-417b-84c2-b66e31fb5975

Student theses

master thesis

© 2021 Daniela Orona Calleros