Public Projects Research Articles

Institutional Environment, Institutional Arrangements, and Risk Identification and Allocation in Public–Private Partnerships: A Multilevel Model Analysis Based on Data from 31 Provinces in China

As an important part of market-based reforms, the issue of “risk” has always been a part of the public–private partnership (PPP) debate, and the way in which risks are managed determines the sustainability of market-based reforms. This study systematically examines how the institutional environment and institutional arrangements affect the effectiveness of PPP risk identification and allocation. The study aims to establish a multi-source database of all publicized PPP projects in 31 provinces during the period of 2017–2021 in China, and it incorporates different levels of influencing factors, such as the institutional environment and institutional arrangements, into a framework. Through the application of a multilevel model, the impact of the political–institutional structure at the provincial level and institutional arrangements at the social capital and project levels on PPP risk identification and allocation is judged hierarchically. It is found that only social capital at the institutional environment level can directly and positively contribute to the effective identification and allocation of PPP risks, while both the degree of potential market competition and the degree of integration at the project level have a positive effect on its risk profile. In addition, there are cross-level moderating effects, with social capital, government transparency, and government–business relations positively improving risk allocation and identification through the degree of market competition, with no significant coordinating effect on the degree of contractual integration. This study goes beyond the existing one-dimensional risk profile analysis and risk typology to dismantle the “black box” of risk identification and allocation, which is a process of continuous negotiation, and to provide a sustainable governance mechanism for the market-oriented reform of public services in the institutional arena.

An interpretive structural modelling approach to determine the critical causes and effects of design changes in public infrastructure projects

An interpretive structural modelling approach to determine the critical causes and effects of design changes in public infrastructure projects

Unpacking the agricultural innovation and diffusion for modernizing the smallholders in rural China: From the perspective of agricultural innovation system and its governance

Innovation is perceived as a crucial tool for addressing the serious global challenges faced by the agriculture sector. This paper focuses on a new local public agricultural innovation project in the context of rural China, and intends to capture the embodied agricultural innovation and dissemination network for modernizing the smallholders. Through integrating the concepts of Agricultural Innovation System and Agricultural Innovation Governance, we develop a comprehensive framework for understanding the partnerships between agri-technicians and small farmers within the network structured by innovation governance practices. In-depth interview and network analysis methods were used to scrutinize the linkages among actors engaged with the agricultural innovation programme in case area and detect the achievements in enabling smallholders to upgrade technical trajectories in production and fostering modern farmers at the local levels. Our empirical analysis suggests that the single-center and multi-level network produced in the agricultural innovation practices, which is distinctive to the previous simplistic linear model for technology transfer, demonstrates obvious effectiveness in diffusing the new knowledge both vertically and horizontally, and that the grassroots sub-network generates the interaction space between agronomic experts and farmers for building mutual trust and co-producing technologies suitable for local conditions. Through allocating financial resources and supervising the public agricultural innovation projects, the provincial government indirectly dominates the directionality of local agricultural innovation for enabling smallholders to learn emerging technologies and cultivating the new generation of professional farmers. Nevertheless, the current agricultural innovation practice in case area has not completely avoided the social selection bias due to the clear marginalization of some vulnerable smallholders, and the duration of innovation projects imposed negative influence on the persistent collaborations between agri-technicians and smallholders in places. It is argued that for meeting the national agenda of agricultural modernization and common prosperity in rural area, how to reform the management measures of public innovation projects and enable the vulnerable farmers to equally engage with the innovation activities and share the interests brought by new technologies are the urgent challenges need to be addressed in the future.

Feminist publishing projects after Franco: Solidarity through cultural translation

In the 1960s and 1970s, second-wave feminism promoted important feminist publishing platforms, especially in North American and European countries. After the dictatorship of Francisco Franco (1939-1975), the need to seek foreign ideological mothers led to the emergence of the first feminist series and journals in Spain. In Barcelona, in 1976, the journal Vindicación Feminista(1976-1979) was born, giving voice to many international feminist authors and their publications. A year later, in 1977, inMadrid, the publishing house Debate produced the series Tribuna Feminista(1977-1982). In 1978, in Barcelona, the first Spanish feminist publishing house, LaSal. Edicions de les Dones (1978-1990), was founded. In this article, three post-Francoist feminist publishing projects based on “solidarities” arepresented. All of them were “agents of cultural translation” that shared a main objective: to normalize Iberian feminism by introducing new literary movements, works and authors for theoretical discussion after the National-Catholic-patriarchal regimeof Francoism. The arrival of feminist literature through practices of “solidary cultural translation” was crucial to the social transformations at the time.

Vietnamese Citizen Participation in Local Governance

Local governance is characterized by the interaction between government agencies and people in the local social management process, in which people are encouraged to actively play a part in government management activities as regulated by laws. This study addresses the people's rights to directly and indirectly participate in local governance activities in Vietnam. A survey of 360 people from 4 localities representing three regions of Vietnam, including Thai Binh province, Hung Yen province (Northern region), Quang Binh province (Central region), Ca Mau province (Northern region) was conducted to evaluate citizen participation in governance activities of commune-level authorities. The results show that the citizen participation in local governance activities do exist, but are limited to the direct participation. To some extent, the people also have rights to self-determine local issues on infrastructure construction and public welfare projects with their own contributions; however, their self-development of programs and projects and proposals to local authorities for implementation has not been clearly demonstrated. These findings suggest expanding the people's rights to participate in local governance activities as innovations for the improvement local governance effectiveness.

Applied Informatics Innovation Within a Childhood Blood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program Resulted in Improved Data Management and Demonstrated Client Outcomes.

This poster presentation describes innovative use of the Omaha System, a standardized terminology, into public health nurses' (PHNs) workflow and electronic records within a local health department's Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program. The Omaha System facilitated the tracking of evidence-based interventions and client outcomes, showing a significant improvement in record completeness (from 33% pre-implementation to 84% post-implementation) and client outcomes in health care supervision, growth and development, and nutrition. Outcome data analysis revealed improvement across all post-implementation records from initial assessments to interim assessments for Health care supervision (p<.001), Growth and development (p<.001), and Nutrition (p = .025). This achievement has given program leaders and employees the ability to clearly present their services and results to policymakers, facilitating better assessment of the program's effectiveness. The successful implementation illustrates its potential applicability to other public health projects and areas.

The Road to Crime: An Unintended Consequence of the Interstate Highway System

Abstract The necessity to overhaul national infrastructure has become one of the key issues of US domestic policy in recent years. While the benefits of infrastructure spending are often straightforward, its unintended consequences are less well understood. This paper studies the impact of transportation infrastructure on local crime, focusing on the construction of the Interstate Highway System (IHS), the largest public works project in US history. Using a staggered difference-in-differences design and a county-by-year panel dataset spanning all US counties between 1960 and 1993, we find that a highway opening in a county led to an 8% rise in total index crime. This effect is driven by property crime (burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft), although some evidence suggests an increase in violent crime as well. Exploring potential mechanisms, we show that the positive effect of highways on crime is concentrated in counties with low pre-existing stock of police resources where increased connectivity may have raised the returns to crime. Moreover, we find that highway construction induced higher local employment, average firm size, and the local population size, thus increasing the returns to criminal activity, and ultimately the risk of victimisation in the newly-connected counties.

Digitalization and alternative marketing channels in the Uruguayan fruit and vegetable chain

This study aims to delve into the potentials and difficulties of digitalization on the real commercial experience of some of the fundamental actors in the Uruguayan fruit and vegetable chain (producers, merchants, intermediaries, consumers, and private and public technicians). For that, these social actors and their projects were described and consulted in search of appreciations or points of view regarding technical innovations, barriers to commercialization, family labor, public policies, pressure for land use, and other complex problems. Through a “snowball sampling”, carrying out semi-structured questionnaires for more than 4 months from INIA Las Brujas, we obtained information mainly from actors in the south and some points in the northwest and east-central Uruguay. Opinions come from the complexity of people in their different roles, with the expected emergence of tensions and contradictions at different moments of the participatory-action research. We could appreciate that the Fourth and Fifth Industrial Revolution are having a significant impact in the Uruguayan fruit and vegetable chain. Digital technology is providing new tools for marketing such as: electronic commerce platforms, mobile applications, traceability and monitoring technologies for data analysis, etc. Support in this transformation comes both from private initiatives and public projects, some of which are outlined. We discuss some causes of digitalization disparities and some solutions, debating the role of each one of the represented actors and their possibilities of change.

Toward inclusive justice: Applying the Diverse Voices design method to improve the Washington State Access to Justice Technology Principles

Just court systems are enabled by inclusive justice practices. Toward creating conditions for more inclusive justice–specifically engaging with and enabling experiential experts–we applied the Diverse Voices method to improve the Access to Justice Technology Principles (ATJ-TPrinc) which guide court administration in Washington State, USA. We situate our work in literature on inclusive justice, public interest technology in the courts, value sensitive design, and experiential experts. Then we present our research context, the Washington State ATJ-TPrinc, and our method, the Diverse Voices. We provide details on our methods, including our project genesis and implementation of the Diverse Voices process. We conducted experiential expert panels with four stakeholder groups: legal professionals, currently/formerly incarcerated people, immigrant communities, and rural communities. We then report key concerns and insights that surfaced during the panels as well as the review process and adoption of the revised Principles by the Washington State Supreme Court. We document changes to the ATJ-Princ informed by feedback from the expert panelists, including two new principles – P11 Human Touch and P12 Language Access. The discussion focuses on evidence for success, skillful implementation of the Diverse Voices method, the need for complementary regulation, and benefits to inclusive justice efforts and public interest technology projects. Our contributions entail: (1) a case study demonstrating the use of the Diverse Voices method to improve a tech policy document for the Washington State court system; (2) for public interest technology, a model for public engagement around tech policy that foregrounds participation of experiential experts, as well as the conditions necessary to ensure concerns raised are both heard and acted upon; (3) facilitation techniques and skills for enabling diverse stakeholder groups to express their concerns around responsible computing systems; and (4) revised and expanded access to justice technology principles to support more inclusive justice.

Design With, Not For, Local Community: Utilizing e-Participation Tools in the Design of Socially Sustainable Vertical Emirati Public Housing

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is slowly transitioning from traditional single-family public housing to a ‘vertical’ typology to meet the increasing demand on public housing, solve the problem of the scarcity of land in urban areas, and contribute to achieving its local agenda for sustainable development goals. However, the direct involvement of Emirati residents in the design process of the recently developed limited number of vertical public housing projects has been missing. This research aims to involve a sample of Emirati residents, representing the targeted category for vertical public housing, in the pre-occupancy evaluation of the design of Al Ghurfa, the very recently developed vertical public housing project, focusing mainly on assessing the attainment of social sustainability in this design. The research method included four phases, including initiating a conceptual framework from relevant literature reviews, digitalizing the case study design, developing the conventional and e-Participation interview scenarios and scripts, and selecting a sample of Emirati young citizens who participated in the study. The results of the study successfully highlighted the participating residents’ preferences and concerns regarding the design of the investigated pioneering vertical public housing project. The findings revealed the interviewed citizens’ perceptions of the investigated social sustainability principles in the vertical housing design pertaining to mixed-use development within and outside the vertical residential building, social integration among neighbors of the building, vertical and horizontal accessibility inside and outside the building, security measures for the residents of the buildings and their privacy, design measures of the high-quality living environments, the user-responsive design of the housing units, and the importance of their involvement in the design. This helped propose a set of recommended design actions for attaining social sustainability in vertical housing design tailored to the specific needs of Emirati residents. The research has also revealed the successful merger between the conventional and advanced e-Participation tools in involving the residents in assessing the professional design of vertical public housing as a new emerging typology that is expected to prevail in the near future.

Talking past each other: Institutional complexity in public projects

Large-scale public projects often experience delays and cost overruns, in part because they require extensive coordination between numerous organizations, both private and public. In this paper, we draw on the perspective of new institutionalism to explore differences between stakeholders in large-scale projects. We develop a topic modeling approach based on a state-of-the-art computational text analysis technique and apply it to a set of transcripts from parliamentary select committee hearings in the United Kingdom to uncover cultural-cognitive differences that reflect a variety of institutional logics. The application of this technique to four different projects reveals significant institutional differences between groups of actors. We argue that greater awareness of these institutional differences may support attempts to understand why large-scale projects experience such significant management challenges and how such challenges could be addressed. We use data for the period 2000–2019 from two different sectors, defence, and public transport.

The slow violence of waiting in the unmaking of public housing

ABSTRACT While the unmaking of public housing in the US and the subsequent displacement of residents is a widely studied phenomenon, this intervention aims to bring awareness to an absence of waiting in our reading of urban displacement. The literature on waiting, coming mostly from forced migration and refugee studies, has so far not been applied to the case of persons displaced from their homes in US cities. This contribution critically reflects current debates on temporalities in urban redevelopment and aims to thoroughly engage with waiting as an integral part of displacement to flesh out the slow violence and power-geometries of home-unmaking. To illustrate the importance of waiting for urban geography, this intervention briefly discusses the redevelopment of a public housing project in Washington, DC. Five years after the demolition of the project, it is still a brownfield, with its residents scattered across the city, even though they were promised that they could return. The residents thus struggle to inhabit the liminal spaces they are in, while they battle the uncertainty and arbitrariness of waiting to return to their homes.

Monitoring the Sustainable Development Goals based on the relationship between Citizen Science and Information Science

Citizen Science has the potential to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by promoting the active participation of citizens in scientific projects. In the same context, Information Science provides a theoretical framework for Citizen Science, with a view to dealing with the management and access to scientific information generated by public participation projects. To this end, the aim of this article is to highlight the contributions and influences of Information Science in relation to the potential of Citizen Science for monitoring the SDGs of the 2030 Agenda. Methodologically, the research described has basic characteristics, through a bibliographic survey, since it seeks to identify the current level of knowledge, points of view and new discoveries around the topic addressed, using the data triangulation technique to treat the results. The results show the potential of Citizen Science and the contributions of Information Science, according to researchers and institutions in the field, in relation to the guidelines for implementing the 2030 Agenda. The conclusion is that the potential of Citizen Science, in the light of the contributions and alignment with Information Science, for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, can more effectively guarantee the broad diversity of projects and actions aimed at citizen participation both in scientific research and in achieving global goals.

A comparison of new transport projects in Sydney, Australia: Decomposition of the impact on residential property prices

Public transport projects are expensive, long-lived and their funding is often a challenge. As a result, relevant authorities around the world are concerned in understanding the economic impacts induced by these new public transport projects and, in particular, whether any increases in land value which may follow an investment (referred to as land value uplift) can be ‘captured’ as a potential source of funding. Land value uplift can occur at different stages of a project and might not be only due to the improved accessibility of the project. This study focusses on understanding the complexity of land value uplift on residential properties resulting from three public transport projects in Sydney, Australia (two light rail projects and one heavy rail), as a way of providing insights to create evidence-based value capture policies. Multilevel models are presented comparing the affected or ‘catchment’ areas of the projects with what is referred to as a ‘control area’ where the investment has not had an impact. The total residential land value uplift is analysed prior and post implementation – and decomposed into what can be attributed to improved accessibility, property characteristics, neighbourhood characteristics, time series, and unobserved uplift. The results show that the anticipated value uplift before the projects’ implementation is significantly higher for the heavy rail project (between 12 and 15 per cent after its construction process started for properties located within 800 m from the station) than for the light rail project (5.7 per cent only for properties located within 400 m from the station), but it is close to zero for the project that represents the anticipated uplift for a light rail extension project after its announcement. However, there is a significant value uplift for the light rail extension project after its implementation (around 6 per cent) which is mainly due to the accessibility improvements. The distance to stations also showed to be significant in the light rail and heavy rail projects, with properties closer to the stations having a higher anticipated value uplift.

Mitigating work alienation in public sector service-delivery projects caused by perceived overqualification: the roles of empowering leadership and the psychological contracts

PurposeThe study investigates the nature of an understudied yet salient relationship between perceived overqualification (POQ) and work alienation in project management. It employs relative deprivation theory to propose two dimensions of the psychological contract, i.e. relational and transactional, as underlying mediating mechanisms and how empowering leadership mitigates the adverse effects of POQ.Design/methodology/approachTo this end, in two waves, we surveyed 232 project members of three public-sector information and communication technologies (ICT) projects in Punjab, Pakistan. The data was analyzed using Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM).FindingsThe key findings are: (1) POQ leads to work alienation, (2) relational and transactional contracts mediate this relationship, and (3) empowering leadership can mitigate the adverse effects of POQ in project management settings.Originality/valueThis research adds valuable insights to the scant POQ literature in public-sector project management settings. It also contributes by identifying the mediating role of relational and transactional psychological contracts and the moderating role of empowering leadership to mitigate the adverse effects of POQ in these settings.

How has digital participatory mapping influenced urban planning: Views from nine planning cases from Finland

Although the successfulness of public participation projects has been studied from many different perspectives, there is a lack of knowledge of how participation influences the planning outcomes. Through the interview study of nine Finnish urban planning projects, we studied how the use of a digital public participation GIS tool has influenced the outcomes of urban planning. In the selected cases the information collected with a PPGIS tool has been highly valued by the planners, leading to concretely influential participation in 6 out of 9 cases. In these cases, the planners gave concrete examples of how the information had influenced the created plan or draft. We created a model that describes how the information produced by participants is traveling from the participants to the outcome of the planning process. With this model, the main factors limiting the degree of influence were recognized, and actions were presented that could increase the influence.

The cost of open access: comparing public projects’ budgets and article processing charges expenditure

The cost of open access: comparing public projects’ budgets and article processing charges expenditure

On the History of the Unpublished VAPP Reference Book “10 Years of Proletarian Literature” (1927–1928)

The article examines the history of the creation of the unpublished reference publication of the All-Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (VAPP) “10 Years of Proletarian Literature”, which was conceived as a reporting work for the decade of the Revolution. The work on the handbook was initiated as a publishing project that accompanied the solution of priority tasks to strengthen the positions of the VAPP, which strives to become a control center that unites all regional and republican proletarian literary organizations around itself. Also related to the work on the handbook are the failed attempts to introduce the VAPP into the State Academy of Artistic Sciences (GAKhN), which was initially entrusted with most of the work on the book. Approved by Glavlit in August 1928, the reference book was never published. The reasons for the cancellation of the publication are obviously related to the failure of the national policy of the VAPP — the unification under his leadership of all the proletarian literatures of the republics of the USSR did not happen by mid-1928; creation in May 1928 the RAPP, which actually replaced the VAPP, the reference book was not needed; in addition, the untimeliness of the book and the outdated material even before publication would have made it an easy target for criticism, which at the same time took up arms, at the suggestion of Gorky, against another similar publication of the State Academic Academy of Arts — the dictionary “Writers of the Modern Era”.

Determinants of poor planning in public sector construction projects in Nigeria

The study assessed the determinants of poor planning in public-sector construction projects in Nige­ria. The paper adopted a questionnaire survey. A struc­tured questionnaire was administered to 217 construc­tion professionals, out of which 156, representing 71.9%, correctly filled questionnaires were analysed. The study deployed descriptive statistics such as mean and stand­ard deviation for data analysis. Results indicated that the primary determinants of poor project planning are the need for qualified personnel, with a mean of 4.70; experience, with a mean of 4.63; and poor communica­tion among the project teams, with a mean of 4.63. The significant factors influencing the implementation of project planning in public sector construction projects include natural occurrences, the use of computers and ICT, differing approaches of those who produce the plans and those who deliver the project, the leadership of the project team, application of planning techniques, only trained project managers should plan the project, non-availability of labour, lack of experience. The criti­cal barriers to project planning implementation in pub­lic construction projects include lack of communication, performance problems, political influence, dissatisfied project teams, abandonment of the project, time over­run, absence of new technology and software for plan­ning, compromised project quality, and wrong estima­tion. The research suggests that contractors involved in public sector construction projects in Nigeria should enhance their planning and performance through various measures. These measures include conducting financial and ethical client checks, employing dedicated project managers, utilising com­puterised planning systems, and improving team communication through reliable channels.

Sustainability and legal scenarios of higher education in public policy projects in Ecuador

Sustainability and legal scenarios of higher education in public policy projects in Ecuador