How a project design becomes a macro-actor: laboratory simulations in trials of strength between competing bridge designs, project budgets and sustainability
Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management
ISSN: 1746-5648
Article publication date: 17 May 2024
Abstract
Purpose
This paper shows how Bruno Latour’s novel work and methodological approach can enrich management and organization studies, accounting and science and technology studies on what it takes to redesign sustainable societal infrastructures. Latour’s notions of trials of strength, macro-actor and design as redesign are used in a case study to describe and analyse how the laboratory becomes decisive in negotiating the bridge design and project budget to the benefit of a more sustainable transport infrastructure.
Design/methodology/approach
Latour’s notion of the detective-author is used to research and write a longitudinal qualitative case study that reconstructs the project processes and chain of related events by following the actors/actants.
Findings
The case analysis shows how a project design becomes an emerging powerful macro-actor through the mobilization of laboratory simulations and calculations. The role of the project budget changes; from a strong supporting role as input to a decision option in favour of a cheaper stayed bridge to a weak role as an output from a process of redesign supporting a much larger, costlier and more sustainable suspension bridge.
Originality/value
We use Latour’s methodological approach to engage primarily in detailed process descriptions to go beyond the often-pointless call for further theory development and to rather account for what is at work in specific situations. Latour’s notions of redesign as an outcome from trials of strength, we consider a useful approach to further our understanding since it also takes account of the distributed knowledge production that is integral to the actors’ cognitions and recognitions. Relatedly, the specific Latourian notion of redesign opens up new avenues for researching the more or less powerful role accounting devices such as a project budget can play in valuing, supporting and/or undermining the design of sustainable societal infrastructures.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
In memory and honour of Barbara Czarniawska. We feel honoured and grateful that Barbara until the very end of her life dedicated time and effort to advise and comment on our own article in this special issue. We also thank the two other Editors Hervé Corvellec and Frank Cochoy, and the reviewers for useful comments and advises. Our particular thanks to Thorkild Høy for access to his archive and to interviewees for their memories of the design process. We also thank Kirstin Becker for her comments. Finally, we acknowledge valuable comments received from participants at the NTNU-Business School Accounting Conference in Trondheim 2023 and the Nordic Accounting Conference in Copenhagen in 2023.
Citation
Skærbæk, P., Themsen, T.N. and Tryggestad, K. (2024), "How a project design becomes a macro-actor: laboratory simulations in trials of strength between competing bridge designs, project budgets and sustainability", Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/QROM-09-2023-2594
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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