The trickle-down effect of psycho-social constructs and knowledge deficiencies as organizational barriers to cost performance on highway projects

Purpose The study proffers a theoretical narrative explaining the poor financial performance of public highway agencies in Nigeria. This study critically spotlights seminal works in the literature offering theoretical narratives on the poor financial performance of public infrastructure projects, to discuss whether they adequately capture the relationship between psychological factors, project governance/leadership issues, and knowledge/skill deficiencies related to the cost performance of infrastructure projects in the developing world. The evaluation reveals the predominant contextual exclusivity of these theoretical narratives to the developed world, which tend to under-represent developing countries, such as those on the African continent. Design/methodology/approach Using a case study research strategy, longitudinal documentary/archival data for 61 highway projects were analyzed. Sixteen interviews were also conducted with highway officials from the three highway agencies responsible for the execution of the projects. A two-stage deductive-inductive thematic analysis of the collated data was carried out to identify barriers to the financial management of public highway projects, the result of which is cognitively mapped out. Findings The study showcases empirical insight on cost overruns experienced in Nigerian public projects, due to the trickle-down effect of human and organizational environment, as well as due to workers’ knowledge/skill deficiencies. Research limitations/implications The developed theory is contextual to Nigeria, as such there is scope for testing its generalisability to other developing nations. Originality/value The in-depth trajectory provided, uncovers an intricate web of technical and psycho-social, organizational and institutional issues, which have not been identified and explained by previous theoretical narratives

Transport Infrastructure for Med11 Countries

Lack of adequate infrastructure is a significant inhibitor to increased trade of the countries of the Mediterranean region. Bringing their transport infrastructure to standards comparable with countries of a similar per capita GDP will be costly but worthwhile. We compare the current quantities of six types of transport infrastructure with international, and estimate the additional quantities needed to reach the benchmarks. We also estimate the cost of that infrastructure and express it as a percentage of GDP. Finally we make tentative estimates of how much trade might be generated and how this might impact on GDP. All the estimates are made for each MED11 country and for each of four scenarios. The highest need for additional infrastructure will be for airport passenger terminals (between 52% and 56%), whereas the lowest need was for more unpaved roads (between 7% and 13%). The investment (including maintenance) cost would be between 0.9% of GDP and 2.4% of GDP, although the investments in some countries would be between 1.4% and 4.5% of GDP. The impact on non-oil international trade would be substantial, but with differences between imports and exports. The overall trade balance of the MED11 region would be an improvement of between 5.4% and 17.2%, although some countries would continue to have a negative balance. A final assessment was of the benefit ratio between the increase in GDP and the cost of transport investment. This varied between about 3 and 8, an indication of the high return to be expected from increased investment in transport infrastructure

The Fifth Stage in Water Management: Policy Lessons for Water Governance

Effective management of water resources is a critical policy issue globally. Using a framework developed by Turton, and a common set of characteristics describing key stages of water demand, we examine the effectiveness of isolated technical (e.g. irrigation upgrades) and allocative (e.g. buyback) efficiency for reducing water demand to sustainable levels. We base our analysis on Australia's water reform context which offers an advanced example of applying these levers to achieve allocative and technical efficiency. The study is motivated by appreciation of the benefits from increased policy flexibility and adaptability in response to: potential transformations toward inflexible production systems; uncertainty associated with impacts of climate change on future water reliability; and the need for increased possible future equity between uses/users (productive/consumptive, environmental, cultural). Our results highlight risk issues that rarely feature in current policy assurance reviews or performance assessments, and enables a clearer representation of uncertainty in future policy choices in many global settings with respect to water demand reduction.A. Loch, D. Adamson, N.P. Dumbrel