U.S. response to an Oil Import Disruption Role of the Federal Government in Light Duty Vehicle Transportation

This report analyzes technological and policy options for the U.S. federal government response within the light duty vehicle (LDV) sector in the event of a 5 year sustained U.S. oil import curtailment of 5 MMB/D and a global supply disruption of roughly 18 MMB/D. The cause of the oil disruption is damage to the oil production infrastructure in the Middle East; therefore, it is public knowledge that the disruption will be sustained

Mutual Accountability and Its Influence on Team Performance

Many teams, especially in dynamic knowledge-intensive environments, face interdependent tasks with unscripted responsibilities. The centrality of this challenge to the team process notwithstanding, theories of how team members hold one another accountable for accomplishing interdependent work are underdeveloped. I integrate theory and research on accountability and teams to advance the construct of team mutual accountability – a reciprocally authorized behavior among team members of evaluating one another’s progress on the team’s task. Unlike performance pressure, which is externally enforced accountability on a team, mutual accountability is internal to a team. I theorize the effects of team mutual accountability and performance pressure on team performance and develop a model of team mutual accountability, proposing its antecedents and outcomes. I test this model in a multi-organization multi-method field study. Findings from qualitative research on five teams in two knowledge-based organizations show that team mutual accountability varies across teams, verify that the theoretical construct of team mutual accountability can be operationalized in organizations, and help develop survey items for measuring team mutual accountability. Results of survey research on 45 teams in five knowledge-based organizations show that team mutual accountability is positively associated with team performance, controlling for performance pressure. Both team structures and shared beliefs facilitate team mutual accountability. Overall, this dissertation illuminates the phenomenon of team mutual accountability and demonstrates its link to team performance. Teams with mutual accountability are likely to make timely performance adjustments because team members, by virtue of their intimate understanding of the team’s work and impromptu conversations, can actively evaluate team progress and adjust ongoing performance issues. As teamwork becomes more dynamic and interdependent in organizations, the “right” processes and task divisions become difficult to predict in advance. This renders external team accountability insufficient and mutual accountability among team members critical for timely performance adjustments. This research contributes to the literatures on teams and accountability and offers practical insights for enhancing team performance, especially in dynamic knowledge-intensive environments

Organizational and political challenges of ESE : a survey of senior systems engineers

Thesis (S.M. in Technology and Policy)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, 2008.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 89-92).Systems engineering efforts are becoming increasingly complex, novel and interdependent, making traditional systems engineering approaches only partially applicable to such efforts. Consequently, a new discipline is emerging called Enterprise Systems Engineering (ESE), where enterprise is defined as a collection of interdependent systems, including people, processes, and technology that can refer to a supply chain, a corporation, a program, or other large-scale, complex adaptive entities. Enterprises are comprised of multiple powerful stakeholders (suppliers, sponsors, customers, users) with competing interests who have to coordinate and collaborate. Lacking a stable, single control authority, enterprises often have contestable decision-making and governance domains. Therefore, ESE projects frequently evolve in somewhat unpredictable ways due, in part, to their multiple end users and multiple stakeholder organizations. These drivers of unpredictability define the 'social contexts' of ESE, and include organizational and political challenges that are usually very difficult to overcome. Currently, practitioners are concerned because there is neither a theory nor a set of best practices to better manage the social contexts of ESE. Fundamental questions remain about the nature and impact of social context challenges. To address these questions, a survey questionnaire was fielded to senior systems engineers, with depth and breadth of experience leading enterprise scale initiatives. The results show that social context challenges significantly impact ESE success with a large majority of the respondents assessing these challenges to be equally or more important than technical challenges in ESE. The critical social context challenges are building relationships, achieving consensus, communicating and listening, managing uncertainty and change, and dealing with organizational and process factors. Effectively managing these challenges requires individual skills, a certain mindset, and an enabling environment. The results of this study can help focus future research, provide a basis for development programs for ESE, inform systems engineering curricula in academic institutes, and help build organizational mechanisms conducive to effective management of social context challenges in ESE.by Faaiza Rashid.S.M.in Technology and Polic