Deciding on Innovation at a Railway Network Operator: A Grounded Theory Approach

Deciding on Innovation at a Railway Network Operator: A Grounded Theory Approach

Van den Hoogen, J.
Meijer, S.A.

Technology, Policy and Management

Multi Actor Systems

2012-06-18

Innovation at a railway network operator depends on the decision-making processes in the daily work of operational professionals and staff. This paper is about innovative measures at a railway network operator, required to increase capacity on the railway network without investing in expensive infrastructural extensions. Using field observations and open interviews, the authors found out that project managers early on in the decision-making process limit their design space. The range of alternatives under study is limited to decrease the technical and social complexity. By doing so, project managers are able to realize a phased and sequential decision making process that leads to a working proof-of-concept. The solutions are only valid under highly restrictive assumptions. The uncertainty about the value of a solution once implemented in the total railway system therefore remains high and many innovation processes therefore end with the proof-of-concept. This studies’ contribution to existing theory is the provision of an alternate explanation for the rigidity of railway systems and network-based infrastructures in general. Rather than incremental innovations as a result of political decision making in a network of interdependent actors with conflicting incentives, incremental innovations can also be a result of a more sequential and phased decision making processes as project managers purposefully decrease the technical and social complexity beforehand.

decision making
process innovation
railway systems

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:f74accdc-d369-4360-8918-f47b9a96e54f

CESUN 2012: 3rd International Engineering Systems Symposium, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands, 18-20 June 2012

Institutional Repository

conference paper

(c) 2012 The Author(s)
Creative Commons BY NC