Adhocracy in the Bureaucracy

QC 20240522

Abstract

The building of infrastructure is a capital and resource-demanding activity, generally carried out in large interorganizational projects. Most infrastructure clients are public entities, implying that contracting processes are governed by public procurement regulations. Many infrastructure projects have high requirements for sustainability, both regarding impact on the local environment and the climate footprint. In addition to this, the construction often takes place in urban areas. To manage this complexity and uncertainty it has, over the past decades, become more common for public clients to apply procurement strategies that aim at fostering a good collaboration and integrate processes between client and contractor. Despite examples of advantages with such collaborative contracting the results vary and the institutionalization of collaborative contracting practices has proven difficult. Additionally, concepts and models vary between contexts and are hard to compare. How clients develop their procurement strategies and project practices, therefore, merits close attention. When the public sector uses procurement as tools to achieve their strategic goals, it is reasonable to analyze such decisions and processes as cases of policy implementation. Still, however, a large part of existing research on procurement of collaborative contracting focuses on a single project. By directing focus toward the organization as a whole, and on the implementation process of procurement strategies in several projects over time, the thesis aims to increase the understanding of how new organizational practices develop at different levels in public project-based organizations.

The empirical foundation of the thesis is a longitudinal case study that follows the implementation of a new procurement strategy in the Swedish Transport Administration over seven years. The material includes data from seven projects that all used a two-stage Early Contractor Involvement model (called High collaboration). The case also includes material from the permanent organization, mainly in the Purchasing department. The five papers in the thesis analyze the implementation process from several perspectives, with specific attention to the characteristics of the organization as both public and project-based and how these features influence routines, legitimacy, learning and collaboration at different levels. The study adopts a practice perspective where interviews and observations focus on the actions and experiences of the individuals in the study. The result shows that there is a strong project autonomy, which is reinforced both by the project-based structure and by the public character of the client organization. Subsequently, there are few overarching structures at the central level to develop routines and procurement strategies in collaboration with the projects and suppliers. Thus, project managers have had a great influence on the finalization of project-specific procurement models and experiences has principally been shared between individuals, resulting in large variations between projects and limited organizational learning. Nonetheless, decisions in the permanent organization still influence the conditions at the operational project level, by dedicating resources and focusing attention on the topmanagement priorities. At the central level, collaborative contracting, as a concept has had varying legitimacy over time, and the initial problems in some of the seven projects gained considerable strategic importance by reinforcing such pendulum movements. Legitimacy seeking at higher organizational levels has also contributed to a variation in concepts and models, further complicating structured learning in the field of collaborative contracting.

The thesis contributes to the construction management literature by providing deeper insights into why procurement models and collaborative practices vary between projects. Furthermore, the results contribute to project studies by expanding the understanding of how the specific character of public project-based client organizations impacts on learning processes for collaborative contracting. Finally, the thesis is relevant for public procurement research, as well as for practitioners in infrastructure and public procurement, since it provides novel insights into how the project-based nature of anorganization affects implementation and procurement processes. 

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