Knowledgement Management

Managing human capital in the federal workforce is a challenge that has plagued presidential administrations and Congress for the past three decades. Significant issues such as homeland security threats, fiscal imbalances, generational differences, and disruptive technologies have caused senior leaders to rethink the traditional management approaches in use since the industrial age.
In addition to these human capital issues, reports by the Partnership for Public Service indicate that nearly half the federal workforce is eligible for retirement in 2016. Experts have described these impending retirements as “the perfect storm,” a “workforce tsunami,” and a “brain drain” to name a few. Benjamin Franklin said it best when he stated, “by failing to prepare, you are
preparing to fail.” By tapping into knowledge management and understanding the distinctions among generation cohorts, managers can connect the dots between succession planning, human capital management, strategic planning, and fiscal responsibility. Succession planning is about having the right people in the right jobs at the right time, and having successors in place with the ability to lead and develop competence. Management consultant William J. Rothwell suggests that the discipline is “a deliberate and systematic effort by an organization to ensure leadership continuity in key positions, [while] retain[ing] and develop[ing] intellectual and knowledge capture for the future, and encourag[ing] individual advancement.”

Megaproject Planning and Management: Essential Readings contains the seminal articles from the growing body of research on megaproject planning and management along with an original introduction by the editor, Bent Flyvbjerg. The leading and most cited authority in the field, Flyvbjerg has used crowdsourcing and 25 years of experience to cherry-pick from several hundred articles and books the writings that define the field. This volume will be an indispensable source for those wishing to speak with authority about how megaprojects are prepared, delivered, and fought over. The target audience is students, academics, practitioners, and media pundits alike, as well as communities affected by megaprojects.

For over fifty years, successive waves of critique have underscored that the apolitical character of much of Political Science research betrays the founding mission of the discipline to have science serve democracy. The Caucus for a New Political Science was originally based on such a critique, and the Perestroika movement in the discipline included a call for more problem-driven as opposed to theory- or method-driven work that would better connect Political Science research to ongoing political struggles. In recent years, movements for a public Sociology and public Anthropology as well as dissonant movements in Economics and related fields have added to the insistence that social science research was too often disconnected from the real world. Phronetic Social Science has emerged out of the ferment for change in the social sciences, starting with the much-debated book by Bent Flyvbjerg, Making Social Science Matter (Cambridge 2001). Flyvbjerg critiqued the social sciences for mimicking the natural sciences while proposing an alternative approach that focuses research on helping people address the problems they are facing in the context they are facing them. Today, Phronetic Social Science goes beyond the call for an alternative approach to social inquiry and its growing adherents are providing evidence that this alternative approach to doing research can enrich the social sciences by more effectively connecting research to efforts to address real world problems as people experience them. This essay provides a genealogy of efforts to connect Political Science to politics, a review of the major critiques of mainstream research, an explication of the rationale for more problem-driven, mixed methods research, a specification of the key principles of the phronetic approach, and examples of its application in the public realm. The essay concludes with implications for realizing a more political Political Science by way of taking a phronetic approach.

Preface 
This is a work book for public sector workers, managers and politicians who have decided to renew their work practices, services and organizations. The source of inspiration of this booklet is Professor Arcot Desai Narasimhalu’s previously published work book for entrepreneurs entitled Innovative Entrepreneur’s Work Book (See Narasimhalu 2010b). Aspiring entrepreneurs were encouraged to use the book page by page in order to start from an idea and end with the blueprint for building a company that has a reasonable chance of making a difference to this world. The very same inspiration characterizes this work book, even though the target audience and the context are different.
A need for innovativeness has increased dramatically in public organizations and this trend is likely to continue in the coming years. This is why we agreed to start a project in which we look at innovation management from the point of view of public managers, yet drawing from the experiences and models developed in the business world. This is partly because both theory and practice of public sector innovation is still in its infancy. Thus, in this booklet we apply Narasimhalu’s earlier work to a new terrain. Applying business models serves as an inspiration and heuristics to approach innovation issues from a practical and goal-oriented point of view. There is also need to remind that many public organizations are actually business-like organizations or public enterprises with considerable degree of autonomy, why ideas from business sector work well in guiding their innovation processes. At the same time it is important to keep in mind that anyone using this work book should be selective, for the innovation processes in the public sector can be anything  from standard administrative procedures or services provided by public utilities or contracted service providers to democratic processes of governments.
Our paradigmatic setting is innovation in public services, in which most of the business models work fairly well. Innovation processes can be full of surprises. Thus, rather than using this work book as a guide, it is better to see it as a companion in a creative journey, which goes beyond one-dimensional rationality and narrow-minded management approach. Public sector is a part of a wider societal context, and its innovation processes are best to see as interactive processes that are open and goal-oriented. Innovations matter, for ultimately they help us to create preconditions for better life for us all.
In Tampere and Singapore, February 2013
Ari-Veikko Anttiroiko and Arcot Desai Narasimhalu

With a point of departure in the concept "uncomfortable knowledge," this article presents a case study of how the American Planning Association (APA) deals with such knowledge. APA was found to actively suppress publicity of malpractice concerns and bad planning in order to sustain a boosterish image of planning. In the process, APA appeared to disregard and violate APA's own Code of Ethics. APA justified its actions with a need to protect APA members' interests, seen as preventing planning and planners from being presented in public in a bad light. The current article argues that it is in members' interest to have malpractice critiqued and reduced, and that this best happens by exposing malpractice, not by denying or diverting attention from it as APA did in this case. Professions, organizations, and societies that stifle critique tend to degenerate and become socially and politically irrelevant "zombie institutions." The article asks whether such degeneration has set in for APA and planning. Finally, it is concluded that more debate about APA's ethics and actions is needed for improving planning practice. Nine key questions are presented to constructively stimulate such debate.

Phronetic organizational research is an approach to the study of management and organizations focusing on ethics and power. It is based on a contemporary interpretation of the Aristotelian concept phronesis, usually as ‘prudence’. Phronesis is the ability to think and act in relation to values, to deliberate about ‘things that are good or bad for humans’ in the words of Aristotle (1976:1140a24–b12). Phronetic organizational research effectively provides answers to the following four value-rational questions, for specific problematics in management and organization studies: 1. Where are we going with this specific management problematic? 2. Who gains and who loses, and by which mechanisms of power? 3. Is this development desirable? 4. What, if anything, should we do about it?

This paper focuses on problems and their causes and cures in policy and planning for large infrastructure projects. First, it identifies as the main problem in major infrastructure development pervasive misinformation about the costs, benefits, and risks involved. A consequence of misinformation is massive cost overruns, benefit shortfalls, and waste. Second, the paper explores the causes of misinformation and finds that political-economic explanations best account for the available evidence: planners and promoters deliberately misrepresent costs, benefits, and risks in order to increase the likelihood that it is their projects, and not the competition's, that gain approval and funding. This results in the "survival of the unfittest," where often it is not the best projects that are built, but the most misrepresented ones. Finally, the paper presents measures for reforming policy and planning for large infrastructure projects, with a focus on better planning methods and changed governance structures, the latter being more important.