Paul Gardiner | SKEMA Business School (original) (raw)

Papers by Paul Gardiner

Proceedings of the seventh international conference on 3D Web technology, 2002

A collaborative virtual environment system is described that is designed to support location-inde... more A collaborative virtual environment system is described that is designed to support location-independent shared analysis of spatial data and urban planning proposals. The system seeks to extend the physical workplace of participants into the virtual environment, while preserving traditional textual and verbal communication and cooperation mechanisms. The systems aim is to improve productivity, quality and achieve more transparency in the planning process. The architecture of the Collaborative Urban Planner or CUP system is described and some experimental results that demonstrate urban development control tasks performed within this environment are presented. An application scenario offers a vision of future urban planning practice using CUP. The scenario also diagrammatically demonstrates virtual settings and scenes that could become everyday meeting places for remote planners, architects or engineers assessing proposals and discussing possible alterations to designs.

The 'benefit pipeline ' approach to the strategic implementation of projects

Construction Conflict Management and Resolution, 2003

Purpose-This study explores the impact of cultural values on the importance individuals assign to... more Purpose-This study explores the impact of cultural values on the importance individuals assign to project success/failure factors. Design/methodology/approach-Themes emerging from 40 interviews of project practitioners based in Brazil, China, Greece, Nigeria, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States are integrated with literature evidence to design a survey instrument. 1313 practitioner survey responses from the eight countries are analysed using multi-group, structural equation modelling. Findings-Ten project success/failure indicators (PSFIs) are found to reduce to two main project success/failure factors (PSFFs): (1) project control and extra-organisational goals, and (2) project team management/development and intra-organisational goals. It is found that the levels of importance individuals assign to both factors are dependent, not only on age and gender, but also on cultural values measured as constructs based on Hofstede's individualism, masculinity, power distance and uncertainty avoidance dimensions. Research limitations-The snowballing method used to gather survey data and analysis of relationships at individual level reduce generalisability. Practical implications-The results reveal insights on how best to match the cultural values of project participants to project characteristics. They also increase knowledge on the likely perceptual differences among culturally-diverse individuals within projects. Originality/value-This research contributes to the literature on culture in project environments by defining a factor structure of multiple-dependent project success/failure indicators and increases insight on how specific cultural values may impact on the perception of the so-defined project success/failure factors.

Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2014

Measuring Business Excellence, 2003

Performance improvement is high on the agenda of many companies around the world and with the gro... more Performance improvement is high on the agenda of many companies around the world and with the growing number of improvement models now available care has to be taken to adopt an approach that will yield the most attractive return on investment. This paper compares and contrasts two widely known and well‐publicized improvement models: Kaplan and Norton’s Balanced Scorecard and the EFQM Excellence Model. Each consists of a non‐prescriptive template offering managers a relatively small number of categories of key performance metrics to focus on. Here, they are examined from a critical perspective with regard to five central issues represented by five questions relating to objectives, strategies and plans, target setting, reward structures and information feedback loops. The analysis conducted reveals that despite having some significant differences both approaches seem to be developed from similar concepts. The paper concludes that it is difficult to find a perfect match between a comp...

The purpose of this article is to bring to light the depth of involvement of industrialists on re... more The purpose of this article is to bring to light the depth of involvement of industrialists on re-thinking their business processes. In a research study within several UK and Brazilian companies, two themes have appeared consistently; namely (1) a basic awareness of the importance of understanding business process flow, and (2) no clear demonstration of how business processes have actually been re-designed, or in some cases of how they have been considered at all. Possible reasons are given why some of ...

Theoretical analysis of current literature on project portfolio management reveals a bottleneck i... more Theoretical analysis of current literature on project portfolio management reveals a bottleneck in the early stages of the process at the strategic (decision making) resource level. This bottleneck is analysed here using Luehrman's option theory, Goldratt's theory of constraints and Lave and Wenger's theory of legitimate peripheral participation. These theories provide a strong foundation for the proposed'benefit pipeline'model, which draws upon the authors' combined experiences and early empirical research data to provide a ...

The increase in globalization and the growing cooperation among organizations around the globe ha... more The increase in globalization and the growing cooperation among organizations around the globe has brought about the need for „global projects‟: projects involving stakeholders in different countries, from diverse cultures, speaking different languages and working in skewed time zones. This paper evaluates the existing literature for success factors that address the challenges created by this evolving paradigm. The analysis draws from literature on colocated projects, virtual teams and virtual project management and ...

International Journal of Project Management, 2000

The Handbook of Project Portfolio Management

Business excellence models are holistic and cover all aspects of organisation management. Success... more Business excellence models are holistic and cover all aspects of organisation management. Successful implementation requires huge effort and investment and involves all levels of an organisation starting from top management. Performance improvement and transformation from one maturity level to a higher level needs to be planned and managed in a consistent and interconnected manner. Many research studies report the importance of managing the maturity journey from one level to another. This paper presents the results of a pilot case study conducted to investigate, how in practice, public sector organisations in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) can benefit from the implementation of Business Excellence Models (BEM) in developing organisational capabilities. The research philosophy is based on the practice turn theory.

ABSTRACT This study explores the project management literature and produces a novel model of succ... more ABSTRACT This study explores the project management literature and produces a novel model of success factors for global project management. Most academic papers provide partial recommendations on how to increase the success of global projects. However, to be effective, these suggestions should be applied in a holistic manner. This is a fundamental characteristic of the model presented in this article. The model is also modular, allowing an independent implementation of success factors, and scalable, able to accommodate newly discovered factors to be tested by future exploratory research studies. A global project management framework (GPMF), previously defi ned and published by the authors, is presented and compared to other studies carried out on the management of global projects. The success factors presented by these papers are used to test the validity and completeness of the GPMF as well as how this can be improved. This results in three new success factor categories and one knowledge area (global risk factors). A model is then created by adding (i) the concept of inputs-process-outputs to the framework as well as (ii) the main challenges of global projects, (iii) the success factors for their management aligned with existing bodies of knowledge and (iv) the benefi ts achieved from successful global project management. This systemic view allows the model to be used in future studies with potential research opportunities identifi ed throughout the paper.

International Journal of Project Management

Many researchers have investigated the organizational structural factors and their influence on p... more Many researchers have investigated the organizational structural factors and their influence on project success. Later, researchers moved towards investigating the portfolio success and effectiveness as a new area of study. We note that all such constructs are a product of strategy, and if not aligned correctly, a dichotomy will appear between strategy (portfolio) and its translation (structure) with an effect on performance. Our literature review revealed that no research has investigated the relationship between structure and portfolio elements. In this research we present the portfolio success and the Project Portfolio Management (PPM) effectiveness in one global construct which represents business efficiency for the project-based organization. A significantly strong relationship was then established between the project manager's influence on the organizationas part of its structure/designand the business efficiency constituent variables. We also investigated steering committee's level of involvement which successfully acted as a moderator for the research established relationships.

Construction Management and Economics, 2016

Production Planning & Control

The notion of 'project delivery' is well embedded in and across the management and organisational... more The notion of 'project delivery' is well embedded in and across the management and organisational sciences literature-generating a narrative that reflects and recognises the instrumental nature of projects and programmes in strategy execution. Project management, as a distinct and well-established body of research enquiry, has increasingly sought to focus our attention on the impacts of complexity, risk and uncertainty in projects; the corollary being a desideratum to strengthen our theoretical understanding of how insight and learning from projects may influence improvements to organisational efficiency. The wider literature suggests that organisational learning remains a challenging proposition, particularly in the context of organisations operating in environments of high complexity. In this paper, we enhance the conversation on organisational learning through a series of case studies, generating evidence of thirteen 'learning modes'. The paper proposes that mature organisations tend to exhibit a greater number of learning modes and that there is a tendency to capture and socialise knowledge with a greater emphasis on the context of the learning situation rather than the learning artefact in isolation. The empirical evidence gathered in this paper forms the basis of a capability model, characterised by the thirteen modes of learning. The model intimates that learning occurs, and is more effective, when knowledge and information are enacted in practice through the learning modes which form a nucleus of the organisational learning capability. The research concludes with a call to action that emphasises the strategic importance to improve learning practices in project orientedorganisations.