Change Factors

Wayne Vucinic Book Prize 2007, "for the most important contribution to Russian, Eurasian, and East European studies in any discipline of the humanities or social sciences." 

Endorsement by Slavoj Zizek:

"Alexei Yurchak's Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More immediately seduced me by its very title with a profound philosophical implication that eternity is a historical category--things can be eternal for some time. The same spirit of paradox runs through the entire book--it renders in wonderful details the gradual disintegration of the Soviet system from within its ideological and cultural space, making visible all the hypocrisy and misery of this process. I consider Yurchak's book by far the best work about the late epoch of the Soviet Union--it is not just history, but a pleasure to read, a true work of art." (Slavoj Zizek, author of In Defense of Lost Causes)

Abstract:

Soviet socialism was based on paradoxes that were revealed by the peculiar experience of its collapse. To the people who lived in that system the collapse seemed both completely unexpected and completely unsurprising. At the moment of collapse it suddenly became obvious that Soviet life had always seemed simultaneously eternal and stagnating, vigorous and ailing, bleak and full of promise. Although these characteristics may appear mutually exclusive, in fact they were mutually constitutive. This book explores the paradoxes of Soviet life during the period of "late socialism" (1960s-1980s) through the eyes of the last Soviet generation.

Root cause analysis is perhaps the most widely used tool in healthcare risk management, but does it actually lead to successful risk control? Are there categories of risk control that are more likely to be effective? And do healthcare risk managers have the tools they need to support the risk control process? This systematic review examines how the healthcare sector translates risk analysis to risk control action plans and examines how to do better. It suggests that the hierarchy of risk controls should inform risk control action planning and that new tools should be developed to improve the risk control process.

How does teachers' technological pedagogical content knowledge ("TPACK") inform their instructional planning? How can this knowledge be enhanced? In an interpretivist study of experienced secondary social studies teachers' planning, we sought to discover clues to the nature and development of these teachers' TPACK-in-action as it was expressed in their planning processes.

Whilst the condition of a damaged ethical life has received due scholarly attention to date, only rarely is resistance to it conceived as an actual possibility with the potential of real effects on a macro-social scale. This is not just a curious lacuna in the literature. To ignore or miss concrete possibilities or even instances of resistance is to reinforce the apparent naturalness and inevitability of structures of injustice. The aim of this edited collection is to help address this epistemological neglect, exploring the multiplicity of motives, presuppositions, sites, ways, and consequences of acts of resistance. As shown in the ensuing contributions, resistance can be recalcitrant or transformative in its aims, discursive or physical in its means, and local or generalised in its loci. If there is a single argument that can be distilled, it is that the emergence of progressive resistance entails the incessant rational critique of so-styled ‘common sense’ and prevalent ethical claims–a process which could be called ‘the banality of good’. Contributors (in alphabetical order): Andrea Mubi Brighenti, Leonidas K. Cheliotis, Lilie Chouliaraki, Spiros Gangas, Richard Kearney, Alison Liebling, John O’Neill, Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Justice Tankebe, Ezra Tessler, Sappho Xenakis.


Contents

List of Contributors
Acknowledgements

1. Roots, Rites, and Sites of Resistance: The Banality of Good: An Introduction
Leonidas K. Cheliotis

2. Values, Crisis, and Resistance: Prospects for Freedom Reconsidered
Spiros Gangas

3. Narcissism, Humanism, and the Revolutionary Character in Erich Fromm’s Work
Leonidas K. Cheliotis

4. Thinking after Terror: An Interreligious Challenge
Richard Kearney

5. Ecce Homo: The Political Theology of Good and Evil
John O’Neill

6. Resistance as Transformation
Andrea Mubi Brighenti

7. Acting on Vulnerable Others: Ethical Agency in Media Discourse
Lilie Chouliaraki

8. Sites of Resistance: Death Row Homepages and the Politics of Compassion
Ezra Tessler

9. Face to Face with Abidoral Queiroz: Death Squads and Democracy in Northeast Brazil
Nancy Scheper-Hughes

10. Resisting Submission? The Obstinacy of ‘Balkan’ Characteristics in Greece as Dissidence against ‘The West’
Sappho Xenakis

11. Legitimation and Resistance: Police Reform in the (Un)Making
Justice Tankebe

12. ‘Governmentality’ and Governing Corrections: Do Senior Managers Resist?
Alison Liebling

Most changes fail - according to Mike Hammer (the father of business re-engineering).

Many of the change enablement tools we use are useful to project managers and sponsors, but these tools merely invite and increase resistance.

The article visits a number of the most prevalent change activities and programmes, describing how they can be implemented. A model of change enablement activities are presented, detailing those that merely rely on power and those that rely on empowerment.

This article examines five common misunderstandings about case-study research: (a) theoretical knowledge is more valuable than practical knowledge; (b) one cannot generalize from a single case, therefore, the single-case study cannot contribute to scientific development; (c) the case study is most useful for generating hypotheses, whereas other methods are more suitable for hypotheses testing and theory building; (d) the case study contains a bias toward verification; and (e) it is often difficult to summarize specific case studies. This article explains and corrects these misunderstandings one by one and concludes with the Kuhnian insight that a scientific discipline without a large number of thoroughly executed case studies is a discipline without systematic production of exemplars, and a discipline without exemplars is an ineffective one. Social science may be strengthened by the execution of a greater number of good case studies.

Phronetic organizational research is an approach to the study of management and organizations focusing on ethics and power. It is based on a contemporary interpretation of the Aristotelian concept phronesis, usually as ‘prudence’. Phronesis is the ability to think and act in relation to values, to deliberate about ‘things that are good or bad for humans’ in the words of Aristotle (1976:1140a24–b12). Phronetic organizational research effectively provides answers to the following four value-rational questions, for specific problematics in management and organization studies: 1. Where are we going with this specific management problematic? 2. Who gains and who loses, and by which mechanisms of power? 3. Is this development desirable? 4. What, if anything, should we do about it?

The Aalborg Project may be interpreted as a metaphor of modern politics, modern administration and planning, and of modernity itself. The basic idea of the project was comprehensive, coherent, and innovative, and it was based on rational and democratic argument. During implementation, however, when idea met reality, the play of Machiavellian princes, Nietzschean will to power, and Foucauldian rationality-as-rationalization resulted in the fragmentation of the project.

This paper reports on the struggle to create a major urban street that will help liveability and sustainability in the city of Tel-Aviv, Israel. Begin Road used to be a major inter-urban road linking the centre of Tel-Aviv with its eastern and northern suburbs. With the construction of the Ayalon Freeway running parallel to it, the new suburban rail system and the planned light rail subway that will run underneath, Begin Road is in the process of being transformed into the future main street of the Tel-Aviv central business district. The paper follows the development of the design from a criticism of an auto-oriented artery proposed for the street, through the development of alternatives based on different types of boulevard, to the design development of a multi-way boulevard. While the boulevard vision was generally accepted, existing difficulties with the current regulatory and professional context, as well as an auto-oriented city policy and lack of coordination of land use and transportation planning, still hinder the realisation of a great street.

At the same time that case studies are widely used and have produced canonical texts, it may be observed that the case study as a methodology is generally held in low regard, or is simply ignored, within the academy. For example, only 2 of the 30 top-ranked U.S. graduate programs in political science require a dedicated graduate course in case study or qualitative methods, and a full third of these programs do not even offer such a course. In contrast, all of the top 30 programs offer courses in quantitative methods and almost all of them require training in such methods, often several courses. In identifying this paradox of the case study’s wide use and low regard, Gerring rightly remarks that the case study survives in a “curious methodological limbo,” and that the reason is that the method is poorly understood. In what follows, we will try to resolve Gerring’s paradox and help case study research gain wider use and acceptance.

Our understanding of the cross-cultural aspects of personal epistemology is limited. In particular, cross-cultural comparisons of elementary school teachers’ and students’ personal epistemology have received very little theoretical or empirical attention. The current chapter aims to examine German and U.S. elementary schools in terms of their philosophical and practical similarities and differences in personal epistemology. Both theoretical and empirical work will be reviewed to support a more holistic model of personal epistemology, the Educational Model of Personal Epistemology. In light of this model, we discuss our expectations for differences and similarities in the epistemic climate of elementary classrooms in the U.S. and Germany. Drawing from this discussion, we suggest that researchers should approach cross-cultural research in personal epistemology from a more holistic standpoint, employ a diversity of methods, and obtain a solid understanding of the educational context under study. Regarding educational implications, we propose a possible fusion of the educational philosophies held in the U.S. and Germany concerning the implementation of teacher training and classroom education. Finally, we recommend that fostering evaluativistic thinking (i.e., a way of knowing that focuses on the evaluation and decision-making among differing viewpoints) should be a main goal for education starting at the elementary level to ensure students’ future roles as productive citizens in Western societies and stress the role of the teacher in this endeavor.

"This paper uses an ethnographically-inspired methodology to look at the dynamics of anglicization and resistance against it in a culturally and linguistically homogeneous project team. We show that changing working language can be extremely disruptive to team work. Over the surface, efficiency is impaired as working in a foreign language restricts speakers’ accuracy, fluency and willingness to speak.  The  team  leader’s  important  and  difficult  role  is  to  limit “losses”.  Under  the  surface,  the
language  change  turns  out  to  strike  a  new  balance  of  power,  in  response  to  which  potentially harmful individual strategies emerge to in- or decrease the weight of English in team work, notably through  language-switching.  Ambiguity  as  a  policy  reaches  its  limits  there,  although  explicit negotiation may not be an option. Corporate language policy should in any case be thought of as dialectically co-constructed by decision-makers and language-users themselves."

L La a c co om mm mu un ni ic ca at ti io on n i in nt te er rn ne e a au u s se er rv vi ic ce e d du u c ch ha an ng ge em me en nt t --C M Me em mb br re es s d du u j ju ur ry y P Pr ré és si id de en nt t M. Bouzid AZZOUZI Professeur à l'ISCAE, Directeur de Recherche S Su uf ff fr ra ag ga an nt ts s M. Mustapha SLIMANI Professeur à l'ISCAE M. Mohammed BENDRISS BENAHMED Directeur de la Caisse Marocaine des Retraites M. Hassan MAOUNI Vice-président de la Chambre des Représentants, Ancien Ministre A l'ouverture de la première session de la 5 ème année législative (Vendredi 12 octobre 2001) « Louange à Dieu seul, Que la prière et la paix soient sur le Prophète, Sa Famille et Ses Compagnons,

The concept of managing a wide range of cultural diversity in the workplace is challenging but not impossible and one of increasing importance.  According to Johnson & Johnson (2006), there is an increasing interdependence on each other thus diversity in any setting is increasingly inevitable, the globalisation of business resulting in a more diverse workforce.

Triandis & Wasti (2008) explains organisational culture as shared behaviour and human made aspects of society including practices (how things are done here) and values (how things should be done).  Moreover, both Barak (2000) and Leonard & Straus (1997), summarise what is sometimes called the ‘platinum rule’, meaning that valuing diversity involves treating others as they wish to be treated.

Diversity in organizations is managed by the inclusion and awareness of minority groups such as ethnic, gender, aged and disabled workers.  These minority groups and women are often excluded in organizations despite projections showing they will make up the majority of workplace entrants in the next decade causing ongoing concern expressed by governments and business officials (Rubaii-Barrett & Beck, 1993).

Much empirical research has gone into the benefits of effectively managing this workplace diversity providing a wide range of strategies and actions.

This paper addresses the diversity of organisational culture on a macro level and what constitutes effective management of diversity on a micro level.

Introduction
This case study focuses on a fast growing online business services startup platform in Australia.  It operates as its own functioning business unit under the umbrella of News Ltd, who own a cluster of individual digital companies also known as Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, one of the world’s largest global media companies.  This case study examines a change that occurred when almost the entire senior management staff level was replaced including the CEO two years ago. 

Organisational change is something that occurs throughout an organisation’s life cycle and effects the entire organisation rather than one part of it.  Employing a new person is one example.  Change is increasing due to a number of forces including globalisation led by rapidly advancing technologies, cultural diversity, environmental resources and the economy; therefore the ability to recognise the need for change as well as implement change strategies effectively, in a proactive response to internal and external pressures is essential to organisational performance.  Internal changes can include organisational structure, process and HR requirements and external changes involve government legislation, competitor movements and customer demand (Wood et al, 2010).

Change does not need to be a painful process, as it may seem when observing the amount of failed change management initiatives with reports as low as 10% of researched success rates (Oakland & Tanner, 2007), when successful change management strategies are utilised and planned, including effective communication strategies, operational alignment, readiness to change and implementation, which all lower and overcome resistance (Wood et al, 2010). 

There is a great amount of literature on the negative aspects and difficult management with employees resisting change, however Wood et al (2010) challenge this notion by questioning the change management process as people do not resist change itself but aspects of the change that affects them personally such as fear of the unknown, status, remuneration and comfort.  Resistance to these changes is a healthy reaction and can be managed effectively in the beginning by ensuring communication and using one of the change initiatives described here .

In this paper we argue that the use of the communicative theory of Jürgen Habermas in planning theory is problematic because it hampers an understanding of how power shapes planning. We posit an alternative approach based on the power analytics of Michel Foucault which focuses on ‘what is actually done’, as opposed to Habermas’s focus on ‘what should be done’. We discuss how the Foucauldian stance problematises planning, asking difficult questions about the treatment of legitimacy, rationality, knowledge and spatiality. We conclude that Foucault offers a type of analytic planning theory which offers better prospects than does Habermas for those interested in understanding and bringing about democratic social change through planning.

Although it is probably the best-known Prospective Hazard Analysis (PHA) tool, Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is far from the only option available. This paper introduces one of the alternatives: The Structured What-If Technique (SWIFT). SWIFT is a flexible, high-level risk identification technique that can be used on a standalone basis, or as part of a staged approach to make more efficient use of bottom-up methods like FMEA.

In this paper we describe the method, assess the evidence related to its use in healthcare using a systematic literature review, and suggest ways in which it could be better adapted for use in the healthcare industry. Based on the limited
evidence available, it appears that healthcare workers find it easy to learn, easy to use, and credible. Especially when used as part of a staged approach, SWIFT appears capable of playing a useful role as component of the PHA
armamentarium.

This article presents results from the first statistically significant study of cost escalation in transportation infrastructure projects. Based on a sample of 258 transportation infrastructure projects worth US$90 billion and representing different project types, geographical regions, and historical periods, it is found with overwhelming statistical significance that the cost estimates used to decide whether such projects should be built are highly and systematically misleading. Underestimation cannot be explained by error and is best explained by strategic misrepresentation, that is, lying. The policy implications are clear: legislators, administrators, investors, media representatives, and members of the public who value honest numbers should not trust cost estimates and cost-benefit analyses produced by project promoters and their analysts.

This article presents the theoretical and methodological considerations behind a research method which the author calls ‘phronetic planning research’. Such research sets out to answer four questions of power and values for specific instances of planning: (1) Where are we going with planning? (2) Who gains and who loses, and by which mechanisms of power? (3) Is this development desirable? (4) What, if anything, should we do about it? A central task of phronetic planning research is to provide concrete examples and detailed narratives of the ways in which power and values work in planning and with what consequences to whom, and to suggest how relations of power and values could be changed to work with other consequences. Insofar as planning situations become clear, they are clarified by detailed stories of who is doing what to whom. Clarifications of that kind are a principal concern for phronetic planning research and provide the main link to praxis.

Megaproject Planning and Management: Essential Readings contains the seminal articles from the growing body of research on megaproject planning and management along with an original introduction by the editor, Bent Flyvbjerg. The leading and most cited authority in the field, Flyvbjerg has used crowdsourcing and 25 years of experience to cherry-pick from several hundred articles and books the writings that define the field. This volume will be an indispensable source for those wishing to speak with authority about how megaprojects are prepared, delivered, and fought over. The target audience is students, academics, practitioners, and media pundits alike, as well as communities affected by megaprojects.

Back cover text: If the new fin de siècle marks a recurrence of the real, Bent Flyvbjerg’s Rationality and Power epitomizes that development and sets new standards for social and political inquiry. The Danish town of Aalborg is to Flyvbjerg what Florence was to Machiavelli: a laboratory for understanding the real workings of power, and for grasping what they mean to our more general concerns of social and political organization. Politics, administration, and planning are examined in ways that allow  a rare, in-depth understanding. The reader witnesses, firsthand, the classic and endless drama which defines what modernity and democracy are and can be.

Back cover text: Megaprojects and Risk provides the first detailed examination of the phenomenon of megaprojects. It is a fascinating account of how the promoters of multi-billion dollar megaprojects systematically and self-servingly misinform parliaments, the public and the media in order to get projects approved and built. It shows, in unusual depth, how the formula for approval is an unhealthy cocktail of underestimated costs, overestimated revenues, undervalued environmental impacts and overvalued economic development effects. This results in projects that are extremely risky, but where the risk is concealed from MPs, taxpayers and investors. The authors not only explore the problems but also suggest practical solutions drawing on theory, experience and hard, scientific evidence from the several hundred projects in twenty nations and five continents that illustrate the book. Accessibly written, it will be the standard reference for students, scholars, planners, economists, auditors, politicians and interested citizens for many years to come.

The article first describes characteristics of major infrastructure projects. Second, it documents a much neglected topic in economics: that ex ante estimates of costs and benefits are often very different from actual ex post costs and benefits. For large infrastructure projects the consequences are cost overruns, benefit shortfalls, and the systematic underestimation of risks. Third, implications for cost–benefit analysis are described, including that such analysis is not to be trusted for major infrastructure projects. Fourth, the article uncovers the causes of this state of affairs in terms of perverse incentives that encourage promoters to underestimate costs and overestimate benefits in the business cases for their projects. But the projects that are made to look best on paper are the projects that amass the highest cost overruns and benefit shortfalls in reality. The article depicts this situation as ‘survival of the unfittest’. Fifth, the article sets out to explain how the problem may be solved, with a view to arriving at more efficient and more democratic projects, and avoiding the scandals that often accompany major infrastructure investments. Finally, the article identifies current trends in major infrastructure development. It is argued that a rapid increase in stimulus spending, combined with more investments in emerging economies, combined with more spending on information technology is catapulting infrastructure investment from the frying pan into the fire.

Although it is probably the best-known prospective hazard analysis (PHA) tool, failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) is far from the only option available. This article introduces one of the alternatives: The structured what-if technique (SWIFT). SWIFT is a flexible, high-level risk identification technique that can be used on a stand-alone basis, or as part of a staged approach to make more efficient use of bottom-up methods like FMEA. In this article we describe the method, assess the evidence related to its use in healthcare with the use of a systematic literature review, and suggest ways in which it could be better adapted for use in the healthcare industry. Based on the limited evidence available, it appears that healthcare workers find it easy to learn, easy to use, and credible. Especially when used as part of a staged approach, SWIFT appears capable of playing a useful role as component of the PHA armamentarium.

Road maintenance is a road handling activity in the form of prevention, maintenance, and repair so that it continues to function optimally to serve traffic. The long segment road maintenance scheme is divided into effective and non-effective scopes. The effective scope of the implementation period is determined by the specific terms of the contract, and the non-effective scope ends December 31 of the current year. Implementation control is determined in the schedule. The project is considered critical if it is minus (-10%) for period I and minus (-5%) for period II. If it is critical, control is carried out by conducting a Show Cause Meeting (SCM). The non-effective scope applies performance indicators (IK) in the first 90 days. Financial sanctions are imposed on service providers if minus (-5%) is in the critical (late) category. The purpose of this study is to determine the factors that have a positive and significant effect on project delays. The method used is descriptive quantitative analysis method and Smart PLS version 3 analysis tool, with a sample size of 82 respondents. The results of the study (T-statistics), human resource factor (0.161), financial factor (3.400), material factor (0.024), equipment factor (2.097), and implementation method factor (2.144), had a significant effect if T-statistic > 1, 96, the dependent variable is the delay in the long segment scheme project in Central Sulawesi Province.

Why is Change difficult?
Are you managing to manage change?

Change the Way you Think about Change
• Push/Pull and Theory E/O
• Change Truths and Myths
• Mindsets

Create a Change Culture
• Transforming Mindsets
• Strategic Change Journeys
• Managing Culture Change

The Dynamics of Change Management
• Change Fatigue
• Power Dynamics
• Story-telling

HR as Change Agent(s)

Author: Johan Herholdt
Price: R225.00
ISBN: 9781869221782
Date published: 01 October 2011
 
Please note that the prices quoted will be subject to exchange rate fluctuations and any increase in manufacturing costs or government duties.

The above prices include V.A.T."

This article provides an answer to what has been called the biggest problem in theorizing and understanding planning: the ambivalence about power found among planning researchers, theorists, and students. The author narrates how he came to work with issues of power and gives an example of how the methodology he developed for power studies—phronetic planning research—may be employed in practice. Phronetic planning research follows the tradition of power studies running from Machiavelli and Nietzsche to Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu. It focuses on four value-rational questions: (1) Where are we going with planning? (2) Who gains and who loses, and by which mechanisms of power? (3) Is this development desirable? (4) What should be done? These questions are exemplified for a specific instance of Scandinavian urban planning. The author finds that the questions, and their answers, make a difference to planning in practice. They make planning research matter.

As megaprojects have become ubiquitous, their real benefits and costs have come under increased scrutiny. We interviewed Bent Flyvbjerg, who has extensively studied megaproject development. Flyvbjerg has found systematic problems in the development process: by intentionally misrepresenting information and deliberately disregarding risks, proponents instigate projects that result in fewer benefits and higher costs than promised.

The Supplementary Green Book Guidance on Optimism Bias (HM Treasury 2003) with reference to the Review of Large Public Procurement in the UK (Mott MacDonald 2002) notes that there is a demonstrated, systematic, tendency for project appraisers to be overly optimistic and that to redress this tendency appraisers should make explicit, empirically based adjustments to the estimates of a project’s costs, benefits, and duration. HM Treasury recommends that these adjustments be based on data from past projects or similar projects elsewhere, and adjusted for the unique characteristics of the project in hand. In the absence of a more specific evidence base, HM Treasury has encouraged departments to collect data to inform future estimates of optimism, and in the meantime use the best available data. In response to this, the Department for Transport (henceforth DfT), has contracted Bent Flyvbjerg in association with COWI to undertake the consultancy assignment "Procedures for dealing with Optimism Bias in Transport Planning". The present Guidance Document is the result of this assignment.

"Over budget, over time, over and over again" appears to be an appropriate slogan for large, complex infrastructure projects. This article explains why cost, benefits, and time forecasts for such projects are systematically over-optimistic in the planning phase. The underlying reasons for forecasting errors are grouped into three categories: delusions or honest mistakes; deceptions or strategic manipulation of information or processes; or bad luck. Delusion and deception have each been addressed in the management literature before, but here they are jointly considered for the first time. They are specifically applied to infrastructure problems in a manner that allows both academics and practitioners to understand and implement the suggested corrective procedures. The article provides a framework for analyzing the relative explanatory power of delusion and deception. It also suggests a simplified framework for analyzing the complex principal-agent relationships that are involved in the approval and construction of large infrastructure projects, which can be used to improve forecasts. Finally, the article illustrates reference class forecasting, an outside view de-biasing technique that has proven successful in overcoming both delusion and deception in private and public investment decisions.

Niccolò Machiavelli, the founder of modern political and administrative thought, made clear that an understanding of politics requires distinguishing between formal politics and what later, with Ludwig von Rochau, would become known as Realpolitik. No such distinction has been employed in the study of rationality. Yet I will argue that distinguishing between formal rationality and real rationality is as important for the understanding of rationality and planning as the distinction between formal politics and Realpolitik has been for understanding politics.

The purpose of the present chapter is to demonstrate how social scientists may engage with mass media to have their research impact public deliberation, policy and practice. Communicating research to practice is part and parcel of applied phronesis and not something external to it. Even in Aristotle's original definition of phronesis, laid down more than two millennia ago, the knowledge–action relationship is clear. A defining characteristic of phronesis is, in Aristotle's words, that it is ‘reason capable of action’ (The Nicomachean Ethics, 1976: Bk VI, 1140a24–1140b12). Phronetic research results (‘reason’) are therefore results only to the extent they have an impact on practice (‘action’). In public affairs, reason is made capable of action by effectively having reason enter the public sphere and public deliberation. It is reason times exposure in the public sphere that matters, not reason alone. Today, mass media dominate the public sphere in liberal democracies. The relationship of research with media therefore needs to be reflected. However, to my knowledge no study exists that describes in detail this aspect of phronetic research. Even in social science as a whole, studies of how scholars work with mass media to secure public impact of their research seem rare (Bagdikian 2004; McCombs 2004; Bryant and Oliver 2009). This, then, is the purpose of the present chapter: to begin to close this gap in our knowledge of social science and phronesis. Because the field is underexplored, it was found to be prudent to start with a phenomenological case study. The study shows how a group of phronetic social scientists, including the author, engaged with media, including world-leading titles such as The New York Times, in order to place their research results on the public agenda and initiate change in their chosen field of interest: megaproject policy and management.

This article presents results from the first statistically significant study of traffic forecasts in transportation infrastructure projects. The sample used is the largest of its kind, covering 210 projects in 14 nations worth U.S.$59 billion. The study shows with very high statistical significance that forecasters generally do a poor job of estimating the demand for transportation infrastructure projects. For 9 out of 10 rail projects, passenger forecasts are overestimated; the average overestimation is 106%. For half of all road projects, the difference between actual and forecasted traffic is more than ±20%. The result is substantial financial risks, which are typically ignored or downplayed by planners and decision makers to the detriment of social and economic welfare. Our data also show that forecasts have not become more accurate over the 30-year period studied, despite claims to the contrary by forecasters. The causes of inaccuracy in forecasts are different for rail and road projects, with political causes playing a larger role for rail than for road. The cure is transparency, accountability, and new forecasting methods. The challenge is to change the governance structures for forecasting and project development. Our article shows how planners may help achieve this.

Les entreprises internationalisées offrent de plus en plus de postes à dimension internationale, qui requièrent des compétences interculturelles. Les ressources humaines (RH) se trouvent face à un dilemme : comment évaluer ces compétences complexes de façon simple, opérable et cependant pas trop réductrice ? Notre article, fondé sur une étude de cas dans une entreprise internationale française, montre dans la pratique sur deux indicateurs assez frustes : le niveau en anglais, mesuré par un test standardisé, .

This article addresses the extent to which the concept of ‘new penology’ is helpful in understanding penal currents, particularly as they relate to the older paradigms of retribution and rehabilitation. In the light of theoretical, historical and empirical evidence, support is lent to the arguments: that the new penology thesis downplays the role of human agency at the level of implementing criminal justice policies; that it ignores the potentially positive aspects of managerialism; and that it misses the continuity between past and contemporary penal features. It is concluded that, despite its merits, new penology remains a hypothesis, rather than a realized penal rationale.

Do different types of megaprojects have different cost overruns? This apparently simple question is at the heart of research at the University of Oxford aimed at understanding the characteristics of megaprojects, particularly in terms of how they are established, run and concluded. In this study, we set out to investigate cost overruns in the Olympic Games. To do so, we examined the costs of the Games over half a century, including both summer and winter Olympics. We looked at the evolution of final reported costs and compared these to the costs established in the Games bids, submitted to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) up to seven years before the Games occurred. In so doing we established the largest dataset of its kind, and documented for the first time in a consistent fashion the costs and cost overruns for the Olympic Games, from 1960 to 2012. We discovered that the Games stand out in two distinct ways compared to other megaprojects: (1) The Games overrun with 100 per cent consistency. No other type of megaproject is this consistent regarding cost overrun. Other project types are typically on budget from time to time, but not the Olympics. (2) With an average cost overrun in real terms of 179 per cent – and 324 per cent in nominal terms – overruns in the Games have historically been significantly larger than for other types of megaprojects, including infrastructure, construction, ICT, and dams. The data thus show that for a city and nation to decide to host the Olympic Games is to take on one of the most financially risky type of megaproject that exists, something that many cities and nations have learned to their peril. For the London 2012 Games, we find that: (1) With sports-related real costs currently estimated at USD14.8 billion, London is on track to become the most costly Olympics ever. (2) With a projected cost overrun of 101 per cent in real terms, overrun for London is below the historical average for the Games, but not significantly so. (3) The London cost overrun is, however, significantly higher than overruns for recent Games since 1999. London therefore is reversing a positive trend of falling cost overruns for the Games.

Taken together, the works of Jurgen Habermas and Michel Foucault highlight an essential tension in modernity. This is the tension between the normative and the real, between what should be done and what is actually done. Understanding this tension is crucial to understanding modern democracy, what it is and what it could be. It has been argued that an effective way of making democracy stronger is to strengthen civil society. This article contains a comparative analysis of the central ideas of Habermas and Foucault as they pertain to the question of democracy and civil society. More specifically, the discourse ethics of Habermas is contrasted with the power analytics and ethics of Foucault evaluating their usefulness for those interested in understanding, and bringing about, democratic social change.

The article provides an in-depth analysis of previous literature that led to the understanding of the four interactive components of "e" learning and how we can utilize these components to maximize the positive and minimize the negative results of "e" learning. The four interactive dimensions of "e" learning are the following three originally described in Moore's editorial (1989): (1) interaction with the content, (2) interaction with the instructor, (3) interaction with the students, and an additional new fourth dimension, interaction with the system, which considered all of the new computer technology since his article. In our viewpoint we will highlight the impact that this fourth technological interactive dimension has on the results of "e" learning. The question then is not "to 'e' or not to 'e'," since "e" learning is already an essential factor of our contemporary learning environment. The question is how to "e", based on the understanding of the four interactive components of "e" learning, and the understanding that these four types of interactions are different from the ones we are accustomed to in the traditional learning environment.

This paper proposes to adapt the socio-linguistically based concept of language boundaries to a corporate context and interpret language change in a multinational corporation (MNC) in terms of their movement. Language boundaries in an organization are born from, but not bound up with, interfaces with foreign partners. The analysis of three cases in a French MNC shows that their dynamics result from conflict between actors as much as from top-down management decisions. Translation, a central, costly, mostly invisible process, often turns out to be the bone of contention: no one wants to bear its burden. We suggest that hierarchy and information flows also play a role in determining conflict outcomes. A better understanding of language boundary dynamics will help managers design a viable language policy and deal with actors’ resistance to its implementation.