Abstract:
Objective: Public projects are used to delivery policy objectives. From a financial
perspective, the Major Projects Authority (MPA) estimated a whole life investment
of £488 billion for 199 major projects in 2014, only a small subset of the total
number of public projects. Given the financial exposure, the impact of endemic
public project failures could put the economic health of the nation at risk. This
thesis studies the challenges facing public projects. It applies an organisational
capabilities lens to investigate projectification, when organisations shift away from
functional-based organising (FBO) toward project-based organising (PBO).
Research Design: This study adopts an interpretivist research paradigm, with a
constructionist epistemology and an idealist ontology, and employs an abductive
research strategy. Structurally, it follows the Cranfield Executive Doctorate in
Business Administration (DBA) methodology, with a linking document that
summarises three complementary research projects: a systematic literature
review (SLR) followed by two empirical studies that investigate the Department of
Health (DoH) during the early phases of the Next Stage Review Implementation
Programme (NSRIP). The findings are derived from over 250 academic literature
sources, 100 government publications and 41 semi-structured interviews. ...[cont.]
