Coat-tailing behaviour in decision

Leroy A. White & Isabella M. Lami

IFORS – Barcelona 13 -18 July 2014

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Introduction• Organizations and organizing are increasingly

accomplished through the complex interaction of people, artifacts, instruments and interventions (Clegg et al 2002).

• OR interventions are exemplary but there is a gap in our knowledge in understanding effect on people/outcomes, and OR interventions in situ

• The importance of studying the effectiveness of OR interventions from a sociocultural process perspective have been previously highlighted (White, 2006a; White, 2006b).

• However, significant methodological and epistemological challenges remain in the study of group learning processes (Packer & Goicoechea, 2000)).

• We explore the use of activity theory as one means to study interventions as complex interaction of people, artifacts, instruments and context.

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Outline of the presentation

• Introduce our context: Infrastructure• Introduce AT• Describes somes cases• Analysis• Discussion

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Infrastructure

• Infrastructure poses new challenges for organizational research (Lami, 2014, Hickman and Banister 2014, Bond et al. 2010).

• Most research focus on infrastructure assets rather than infrastructure as organization that is open to the organizational theory/studies.

• We attempt to understand infrastructure as organization and focus on a few examples of infrastructure; i.e., railway, transport and communication infrastructure in a city/urban/regeneration context.

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Application of OR on infrastructure/1• Many tools available to design and

analyse infrastructure, ranging from economic and financial approaches to MCDA (Lami 2014, Browne and Ryan 2011).

• Data and approaches do not entirely correspond to the fears and desires of local population, even to the public authority (this problem is called here “territorial conflict”) (eg high speed train route (HS2) 3° runway at Heathrow, High speed France and Italy “Corridor 5”.

• There is thus a need for new approaches, but also a need to understand the efficacy of these approaches.

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Application of OR on infrastructure/2

• These new approaches as interventions are difficult in themselves to be evaluated,

• Why? – They are normally, one-off, – Often there are no counterfactual

or comparator,– They are often social processes,

where the behavioural aspect of the group and the group’s interactions with the process are little known.

• We explore AT as a way to study (soft OR) applications to infrastructure.

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Activity Theory – AT /1

• In this paper, we use Activity Theory (AT) to (re) examine the cases

• AT sees interventions as social practices, which should be understood as tool-mediated activities (Engestrom et al 1997)

• AT considers an entire work/activity system (including teams, organizations, etc.) beyond just one actor or user.

• This system includes the object (or objective), subject, mediating artifacts (models, signs and tools), rules, community and division of labour

• AT suggests that human activity is directed towards an object, mediated by artifacts or instruments, and socially constituted within the surrounding environment (Bertelsen and Bodker 2003)

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Activity Theory – AT /2

• The subject is the active element of the process; it can be either an individual or a group.

• The object transformed by the activity can be either an ideal or material object (Fuentes et al. 2003).

• The transformation process is enabled and supported by various instruments, either physical or logical.

• The basis of the analysis is that during the interaction, subjects internalize and/or externalize their cognitive schemes and their understanding of the relationship between themselves and the external objects, instruments, surroundings, and other factors

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Activity Theory – AT /3

• AT suggests three interrelated levels of interaction:

• Coordination- what are people doing independent of each others action in the achievement of the common task

• Co-operation-social interaction when doing things together

• Co-construction –re-elaboration of practices based on reflective communication on meta-level

• To manage these artifacts (models) are used to serve as anchors between the levels

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Doing AT

• Anchoring is important and focuses on the interconnectivity between mediational artifacts in order to solve inherent contradictions of an actvity system.

• Contradictions are important for system design, in that they indicate emergent opportunities for activity development and can be used as sources of improvement (Kuutti 1991).

• Contradictions may take place either inside the key constructs (e.g., subject) or between them (Engeström 1999). In the context of our cases, there may exist a number of contradictions among the sites and activities

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AT framework mediating artifacts

subject

rolecommunity

division of Labour

object outcomes social issues

technical issues

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AT structureThe requirements for the methodology are :• The unit of analysis is neither the individual nor the organization,

but the system of activity (Engeström, 2001) (Cobb and Bowers,1999), and

• the analysis of activity systems involves the identification of material, social and linguistic material that make knowledge possible (Engeström, 2001), and

• explanatory properties devised to understand perception and action must have a relational nature,

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Case studies: port of Genoa /1Subject: Genoa shipowners and terminal operators, experts from the Institute o f Research SitiObject: Transformation of port  considered as an “island” and railway link with a dry port beyond the Apennines via an around 20 kilometers tunnel reserved for goods transport via electric powered shuttles.Community: Genoa Port Authority, shipping operators, Ligurian and Piedmontese Local Authorities, workers and white collars, citizens of Genoa, National Minister of Transport, other Ligurian ports. Instrument: Projects, specific studies, economic evaluations, video simulations, public presentations.Rule : Port master planDivision of labour: One of the Genoan shipping operator had the idea, Siti analyze all the technical aspect to make this “vision” real with the collaboration of the whole group of the shipping operators

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Case studies: port of Genoa /2Contradiction:• between rules and object: In this case, we propose a transformation implemented by private individuals, with a complete transformation of the technologies to be used in port and be developed with project financing. The breaking of this project compared to the past is the total•between the object and the instruments. This project is based on an idea of the port management completely disruptive with the past. The fact that It was discussed in public before the development of evry technical details (and also before a complete political agreement settled) generated huge debates and distrust in many stakeholders .•in the division of labour itself. the shippers and terminalists, who are extremely rich because they know how to act in the port according to its conformation, seemed extremely worried about a possible radical transformation of the port. I.e: they were officially in the group to study and develop the project, but I often had the impression that they wanted to check and know what might happen  here it is possible to develop also some reflection about the participation

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Case studies: Turin railway station/1 Subject: City of Turin, experts from the Institute o f Research Siti.

Object: Pre-feasibility study in order to assess the opportunity of an intervention of urban redevelopment linked to the infrastructural reorganization of the railway areas between Porta Nuova and Lingotto.   

Community: The Italian Railway Company (RFI): actor directly affected obviously by any transformation of the stations, but NOT directly involved in the study, at least at the beginning. In the first part of the study all the data about the trains’ operation was SIMULATED by Siti because RFI didn’t want to cooperate.

City of Torino, citizens, commercial and tourists activities located nearby the stations

Instrument: Each phase of the study was characterised by the creation and assessment of different explorative scenarios

Rule : Railway masterplan and urban masterplan,

Division of labour: Siti did the study, designing the scenarios of possible transformations, the City of Torino chose the preferred one among the four proposed.

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Case studies: Turin railway station/2 Contradiction: between rules and object: Siti was studying possible transformation of a very peculiar area without, at the beginning, any collaboration with the owner of the real estate. This is particularly strange because, even if this study was requested from the City who has the resource of the masterplan (legally binding in Italy), we had no power at all to suggest what to do on that surfaces, because the urban masterplan is NOT legally binding on the areas of RFI

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Case studies: Zurich railway station/1 Subject: The Swiss Railway company (DB) Object: design of a new master plan for Zurich Central Station Community: DB, Post Office (one of the owner of the area interested by the redevelopment operation), City of Zurich, citizens. Instrument: Three international design firms were invited to take part in the competition structured in the form of a workshop. The Swiss railways adopted a very active policy when evaluating their property, based on the assumption that ¾ of the net value to be created must be obtained before the actual construction. Rule. Negotiations, urban plan, participatory methods Division of labour: DB promoted the competition for the master plan and attempted to work closely with the city of Zurich since the beginning of the process.

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Case studies: Zurich railway station/2Contradiction:• between the subject and the community: instead of blindly pursuing opposite interests (the railway authority and Post Office, which owned the site, aimed at achieving a very high index, while the City, on the other hand, wanted a moderate density), they channel diverse interests into the project, combining the different strategies •between the object and the rules. The political issues were separated from technical ones, particularly separating the idea of urban quality from the definition of building density indicators

Case studies: Bristol future city /1• Arup and UoB appointed to assist Bristol City Council to help clarify

thinking on the development of a Future (SMART) City service for the City.• Partners (subject) identified the value provided by providing a single point

of access to the City Council, and in facilitating the “ecosystem” of partners in Bristol (object)

• Smart projects need a range of public, private and third sector stakeholders to work together in delivery (rules), and so the importance of the Future City service’s role in bringing together these disparate partners should not be underestimated (contradiction relate to private, public and NGO value differences).

• Outcome:– Bristol as a ‘Laboratory for Change’,– Use data and infrastructure effectively to solve city challenges, building on success and

opportunities from other projects. – Continue to develop relationships with partners across sectors, giving the future city

agenda a visible presence, and enabling co-creation of solutions with citizens, SMEs, industry, the public sector and academia.

– Be strongly anchored with the City Council, the council as public broker

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Case studies: Bristol future city /2

Insight from AT •the overall objective and goals of the activities of the many and diverse actors have to be anchored in order to link coordination and cooperation•co-configuration through models needs coat-tailing, aligning individual actions to overall (collective) activity of the group and therefore couple achievement of tasks with the project as a whole•Organisations coat-tail with each other through building on each others’ positions therefore leading to doing one thing together

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Conclusion

• Infrastructure is an important area organisationally to work on• OR has opportunities to be applied to this area• Behavioural issues pertain to application of OR to infrastructure• AT is a useful methods to understand the interventions in this area• Insights from AT include collective behaviour and coat tailings

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