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on Project, Program and Portfolio Management |
| By: | Margaux Grall (CRG I3 - Centre de Recherche en Gestion I3 - X - École polytechnique - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris - I3 - Institut interdisciplinaire de l’innovation - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Florence Charue-Duboc (CRG I3 - Centre de Recherche en Gestion I3 - X - École polytechnique - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris - I3 - Institut interdisciplinaire de l’innovation - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Sihem Benmahmoud-Jouini (GREGHEC - Groupement de Recherche et d'Etudes en Gestion - HEC Paris - Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) |
| Abstract: | This article examines how design thinking can enrich project management, especially in digital transformation contexts. While recent research calls for renewing project studies, few empirical works explore design thinking -project management integration. Based on a longitudinal case study within a company using design thinking to implement digital transformation, we analyze how design thinking supports projects involving major managerial and operational shifts, complex stakeholder environments, and ambiguous objectives. We identify key characteristics of the implemented approach that overcome difficulties faced in digital transformation projects and intense change projects, showing how it helps shape the projects by focusing on the stakeholders. |
| Keywords: | ethnography, organizational transformation, change management, stakeholder management, design thinking, project management |
| Date: | 2025–05–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05544348 |
| By: | Mechthild Donner (UMR MoISA - Montpellier Interdisciplinary center on Sustainable Agri-food systems (Social and nutritional sciences) - Cirad - Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement - IRD - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement - CIHEAM-IAMM - Centre International de Hautes Etudes Agronomiques Méditerranéennes - Institut Agronomique Méditerranéen de Montpellier - CIHEAM - Centre International de Hautes Études Agronomiques Méditerranéennes - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement - Institut Agro Montpellier - Institut Agro - Institut national d'enseignement supérieur pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement); Damien Guimond (INRAE Transfert); Emmanuelle Lagendijk (INRAE Transfert); Maurine Mamès (UMR IATE - Ingénierie des Agro-polymères et Technologies Émergentes - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement - Institut Agro Montpellier - Institut Agro - Institut national d'enseignement supérieur pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement - UM - Université de Montpellier); Angela Baker (INRAE Transfert); Hugo de Vries (UMR IATE - Ingénierie des Agro-polymères et Technologies Émergentes - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement - Institut Agro Montpellier - Institut Agro - Institut national d'enseignement supérieur pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement - UM - Université de Montpellier) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates critical success factors for managing multi‐actor research partnerships for sustainable food systems along their lifecycle. Such partnerships coordinate both internal activities and manage externally funded projects. Drawing on evidence from case studies and workshops with diverse experts, the study identifies critical success factors for distinguishable development and operational phases, core pillars, and management categories for supported research projects. Guiding principles like adaptability, trust, transparency, consensus, and proactiveness are essential for ensuring inclusiveness and sustainability‐orientation. Additionally, successful partnership management depends on key performance indicators, in critical success factor represented areas, for continuous coordination and management, monitoring and reporting, and coherent communication, dissemination, and exploitation. Based on these unique expert‐driven insights, a novel conceptual Modus Operandi framework is developed, contributing to knowledge on research partnership management. Once validated in different contexts, this framework can support project managers and policymakers in effectively managing and guiding food system research partnerships. |
| Keywords: | sustainable food systems, research partnerships, modus operandi framework, key performance indicators, critical success factors, collective intelligence guiding principles |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05557438 |
| By: | Bell, Peter |
| Abstract: | Governments around the world increasingly acquire, rescue, or inherit capital-intensive projects that private actors are unable or unwilling to complete, operate, or remediate. These interventions are often framed as exceptional policy failures or discretionary rescues. This paper argues instead that such outcomes reflect a structural feature of capital-intensive projects: long-lived obligations associated with environmental risk, site-specific assets, and public safety cannot be extinguished through market exit alone. Building on the concept of forward-looking project valuation, the paper develops a complementary institutional framework that focuses on the costs and constraints of state operation after private exit has occurred. The analysis shifts attention from project-level profitability to institutional capacity, emphasizing that state ownership entails the assumption of complex operational, regulatory, and governance responsibilities that generate real economic costs over time. These institutional costs are endogenous, state-contingent, and often amplified under conditions of deep uncertainty and project failure. Using stylized examples drawn from resource extraction, infrastructure, and environmental remediation, the paper shows how projects may transition from productive assets to pure liabilities, and why governments frequently become residual claimants by necessity rather than by choice. The framework highlights the intergenerational consequences of deferred remediation and underinvestment in institutional capacity, and reframes state intervention as a response to persistent project-level obligations rather than as an ideological departure from market governance. The contribution of the paper is conceptual rather than prescriptive. It does not propose optimal ownership structures or regulatory instruments. Instead, it provides a structured way to analyze the economic significance of institutional capacity when governments assume responsibility for capital-intensive projects whose liabilities outlive private profitability. |
| Keywords: | State intervention, Institutional capacity, Capital-intensive projects, Project failure, Environmental remediation, State-owned enterprises, Long-tail risk, Intergenerational equity, Infrastructure governance, Resource extraction |
| JEL: | D23 H11 H54 L32 Q38 Q53 |
| Date: | 2026–01–24 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:127844 |
| By: | Lee, Amy PhD; Volker, Jamey PhD; Handy, Susan PhD |
| Abstract: | The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) requires lead agencies to evaluate the environmental impacts of major projects, including highway expansion projects, and to mitigate those impacts to the extent feasible. In 2013, SB 743 (Steinberg) changed how transportation impacts are evaluated by shifting the performance measure from traffic delay to vehicle miles traveled (VMT), a measure of total driving. This change reflected evidence that the metric of VMT captures the influence that transportation projects have on driving behavior and its related environmental and social impacts, such as greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution, safety, and public health. How have lead agencies implemented the requirement to analyze and mitigate VMT induced by highway expansion projects? To better understand how SB 743 has affected highway expansion projects in practice, we reviewed state regulation and guidance and evaluated the Environmental Impact Reports (EIRs) for the six highway expansion projects that have started the environmental review process since the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) adopted guidance in 2020 to implement SB 743. In this brief, we focus on how lead agencies propose to mitigate any increases in VMT from each of the six highway expansion projects, including the measures proposed, the extent to which mitigation reduces VMT, the cost associated with mitigation, and sources of funding for VMT mitigation. |
| Keywords: | Social and Behavioral Sciences |
| Date: | 2026–03–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdl:itsdav:qt0r61q59c |
| By: | Kamlage, Jan-Hendrik; Rogall, Marius; Sasse, David; Mohr, Kim |
| Abstract: | Der Ausbau der Stromübertragungsnetze spielt im Rahmen der deutschen Energiewende eine zentrale Rolle, aber führt in den betroffenen Kommunen regelmäßig zu Konflikten. Die Übertragungsnetzbetreiber (ÜNB) setzen auf informelle Formate der Stakeholderbeteiligung, um die Akzeptanz und Legitimität der Stromleitungsprojekte zu fördern. Diese informellen Beteiligungsprozesse haben die ÜNB in den letzten 15 Jahren kontinuierlich weiterentwickelt. Ziel des Beitrags ist es, diese Entwicklung kritisch zu beleuchten. Der Beitrag zeigt auf, wie sich frühe experimentelle und dialogorientierte Ansätze zu zunehmend professionalisierten und standardisierten, kampagnenartigen Beteiligungsformaten entwickelt haben. Während diese Praktiken die Transparenz und Akzeptanz von Planungsverfahren und der ÜNB als Projektentwickler erhöhen, bleibt ihr Einfluss auf die Akzeptanz der Infrastrukturprojekte selbst begrenzt. Auf der Grundlage dieser Analyse identifiziert der Beitrag fünf strukturelle Hindernisse – ungleiche Verteilung von Lasten und Nutzen, hohe Komplexität und Ressourcenknappheit, begrenzte lokale Entscheidungsbefugnisse, die Doppelrolle der ÜNB sowie lokal spezifische Akzeptanzkonstellationen –, die die Wirksamkeit informeller Beteiligung systematisch einschränken. Abschließend plädiert der Beitrag für einen systemischen und kontextsensitiven Ansatz für die lokale Governance der Energieinfrastruktur. The expansion of electricity transmission grids plays a central role in Germany’s energy transition, but regularly leads to conflicts in the local communities affected. Transmission system operators (TSOs) rely on informal forms of stakeholder engagement to promote acceptance and legitimacy of power line projects. The TSOs have continuously refined these informal engagement processes over the last 15 years. The aim of this paper is to critically examine this development. It demonstrates how early experimental and dialogue-oriented approaches have evolved into increasingly professionalised and standardised, campaign-style participation formats. Whilst these practices enhance the transparency and acceptance of planning procedures and of the TSOs as project developers, their influence on the acceptance of the infrastructure projects themselves remains limited. Based on this analysis, the paper identifies five structural barriers – unequal distribution of costs and benefits, high complexity and resource scarcity, limited local decision-making powers, the dual role of the TSO, and locally specific acceptance constellations – which systematically limit the effectiveness of informal participation. In conclusion, the paper advocates a systemic and context-sensitive approach to the local governance of energy infrastructure. |
| Date: | 2026–03–24 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:8e34r_v1 |
| By: | Akcan Balkir |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the effectiveness and incidence of the renewable energy Production Tax Credit (PTC) and Investment Tax Credit (ITC). I leverage new geographical variation in the 2023 PTC and ITC to test whether renewable energy credits had real economic impacts. Communities with greater tax credits accumulated 32% more renewable energy capital and produced 28% more renewable energy compared to similar counties. These renewable investments had local economic spillovers, increasing county level construction wages by 7%. However, local increases in investment and wages from renewable projects did not improve political support for renewable energy, but rather increased opposition to congressional action on climate change by 2%. |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2604.00582 |
| By: | Moh Hosseinioun; Brian Uzzi; Henrik Barslund Fosse |
| Abstract: | Investment in artificial intelligence (AI) has grown rapidly, yet its returns to scientific research remain poorly understood. We study how AI reshapes the production of science using a comprehensive dataset of research proposals submitted to a large international funding agency, including both funded and unfunded projects. Combining keyword extraction with large language model classification, we identify the presence, type, and functional role of AI within each proposal and link these measures to detailed budget allocations, team structure, and subsequent publication outcomes. We find that, in the short run, AI adoption is associated with modest improvements in scientific outcomes concentrated in the upper tail. Instead, its primary effects arise in the organization of research: AI-enabled projects reallocate resources toward human capital, involve larger teams, and undertake a broader set of tasks. These patterns are consistent with a reorganization of the scientific production process rather than immediate efficiency gains, in line with theories of general-purpose technologies. Task-level analyses further show that activities expanded in AI-enabled projects, particularly ideation and experimentation, are increasingly compatible with large language model capabilities, suggesting potential for future productivity gains as these technologies mature. |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2603.27956 |
| By: | Minh Ha-Duong (CIRED - Centre International de Recherche sur l'Environnement et le Développement - Cirad - Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - AgroParisTech - Université Paris-Saclay - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris) |
| Abstract: | The CIRED.digital project successfully demonstrated the feasibility of deploying an artificial intelligence system for accessing the laboratory's scientific publications. Over a five-month period (April-October 2025), the project team developed, tested, and deployed a retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) digital librarian -rather than a general-purpose chatbot -providing natural-language access to the Centre International de Recherche sur l'Environnement et le Développement (CIRED) knowledge. Project Scope and OutcomesThe project pursued these objectives: (1) deploying a functional natural language interface to CIRED's publications for non-experts; (2) implementing a technically robust architecture supporting service continuity open to public access, without user authentication; ( 3) contributing replicable open-source tools enabling other research institutions to deploy similar systems; (4) ensuring ethical compliance including user privacy protection and transparent citation mechanisms; (5) evidence-based learning on usage patterns and costs to inform decision-making and (6) Internal capacity building on AI technology.The system underwent three distinct phases: initial development (April-May 2025), integration and user testing (May-June 2025), and public deployment with monitoring (June-October 2025). All objectives were substantially achieved within the project timeline and budget constraints, though data collection limits disallows statistical analyses. The system provides access to approximately 1 238 CIRED publications from HAL. The project's environmental footprint (3-4 kg CO₂ for 96 days) demonstrates sustainability comparable to conventional literature access methods, while operational costs (€50-200/year) remain accessible to research institutions with modest budgets. Key FindingsThe system attracted 259 unique sessions over 96 days of public availability, generating 1, 849 documented events from 290 user queries. Users represented diverse constituencies including researchers, students, science communicators across CIRED partner institutions and the general public. Query patterns revealed strong demand for publication search, research synthesis, and methodological information. Identifed priorities for future enhancement including multi-turn discussion and extending the knowledge base. Main RecommendationsThe project recommends: (1) continued system operation for 12 months; (2) transition to institutional hosting infrastructure to reduce costs and ensure data sovereignty; and (3) dissemination of findings to the research community through publication and workshop engagement. Detailed recommendations for CIRED leadership, other research institutions, and the broader research community are provided in the conclusion. |
| Date: | 2025–12–20 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:ciredw:hal-05448829 |