Jennifer Whyte | Imperial College London (original) (raw)

Papers by Jennifer Whyte

Research Policy, 2017

Digital delivery of complex projects, using integrated software and processes, is an important em... more Digital delivery of complex projects, using integrated software and processes, is an important emerging phenomenon as it transforms relationships across the associated ecology of project-based firms. Our study analyses how a project-based firm, 'Global Engineering', builds new project capabilities for digital delivery through work on three major road and railway infrastructure projects. We find that it seeks to: (1) align the project setup with the firm's existing capabilities; and (2) reconcile differing agendas and capabilities in collaborating firms across the project ecology. Here, aligning involves influencing the setup of digital delivery and renegotiating that setup during project implementation; and reconciling involves managing across multiple digital systems; accommodating and learning other firms' software and processes; and using digital technologies to create shared identity across the firms involved in delivery. We argue that creating relative stability enables firms to use existing, and build new, project capabilities, and hence aligning and reconciling are important to project-based firms in environments where there is high interdependence across heterogeneous firms and rapid technological change. We find that building these capabilities involves both 'economies of repetition' and 'economies of recombination'; the former enabling the firm to capture value by mobilizing existing resources and the latter, requiring additional work to re-combine existing and new resources. Our study thus provides insight into how project-based firms build project capabilities for the digital delivery of complex projects in order to remain competitive in their existing markets, and has broader implications for learning in the project ecologies associated with these projects.

International Journal of Cooperative Information Systems, 2000

WSPC Journals Online,WorldSciNet.

Computing in Civil and Building Engineering (2014), 2014

Engineering Project Organization Journal, 2014

ABSTRACT The delivery of complex engineering projects today often involves globally distributed t... more ABSTRACT The delivery of complex engineering projects today often involves globally distributed teams. In these teams, engineers must check for inadvertent errors by following the assumptions, logic and computations of others and define processes to reduce these errors. Engineering firms are thus increasingly using digital technologies to enable teams to do transnational work. While project management research on global virtual teams articulates how team performance relates to composition and characteristics, it has paid less attention to reliability and how this is achieved in such transnational work. This paper considers how constructs related to reliability—trust, culture and communication—become inter-related in work on complex projects. Recent research on work practice, which examines dynamics over time, is brought into dialogue with the literature on global virtual teams, re-conceptualizing trust as enacted in practice; culture as a resource for action and communication as a mediated dialogue. Vignettes from pilot work are used to support this re-conceptualization and illustrate how it extends research on teams to enable new insights into reliable performance in transnational work. The paper suggests a new agenda for project management research on achieving reliability in complex projects where delivery is digitally mediated and involves a global team, concluding by highlighting areas for further research.

Social Interaction in a Technological World, 2012

Automation in Construction, 2012

As digital technologies become widely used in designing buildings and infrastructure, questions a... more As digital technologies become widely used in designing buildings and infrastructure, questions a rise about their impacts on construction safety. This review explores relationships between construction safety and digital design practices with the aim of fostering and directing further research. It surveys state-of-the-art research on databases, virtual reality, geographic information systems, 4D CAD, building information modeling and sensing technologies, finding various digital tools for addressing safety issues in the construction phase, but few tools to support design for construction safety. It also considers a literature on safety critical, digital and design practices that raises a general concern about 'mindlessness' in the use of technologies, and has implications for the emerging research agenda around construction safety and digital design. Bringing these strands of literature together suggests new kinds of interventions, such as the development of tools and processes for using digital models to promote mindfulness through multi-party collaboration on safety.

Simulation and prototyping tools are now widely used. In the construction sector, prototypes buil... more Simulation and prototyping tools are now widely used. In the construction sector, prototypes built from interactive 3D visualizations are being used for simulating operations, co-ordinating design and scheduling construction. In biomedicine, simulations are becoming increasingly ...

... INNOVATION NETWORKS Florian Taeube Tanaka Business School, Imperial College, London f.taeube@... more ... INNOVATION NETWORKS Florian Taeube Tanaka Business School, Imperial College, London f.taeube@imperial.ac.uk Jennifer Whyte Tanaka Business School, Imperial College, London jkwhyte@imperial.ac.uk Abstract: This ...

As integrated software solutions reshape project delivery, they alter the bases for collaboration... more As integrated software solutions reshape project delivery, they alter the bases for collaboration and competition across firms in complex industries. This paper synthesises and extends literatures on strategy in project-based industries and digitally-integrated work to understand how ...