TOWARDS
AN INTEGRATED SCRIPT FOR RISK AND VALUE MANAGEMENT
S.
D. GREEN
Department of Construction Management & Engineering,
The University of Reading, UK.
ABSTRACT
It
is contended that the current conceptual distinction between risk management
and value management is unsustainable.
The origins of the two traditions are reviewed and critiqued from a
postmodernist perspective. It is
concluded that they differ primarily in terms of their rhetoric, rather than
their substantive content. Insights
into the current practice of risk and value management are provided by
considering their enactment in terms of ‘performance’. The scripts for such
performances are seen to be provided by the accepted methodologies which
determine the language to be used and the roles to be acted out. A coherent
integrated script for risk and value management can be provided by the
methodology known as strategic choice, which replaces the language of ‘risk’
and ‘value’ with that of ‘uncertainty’. The benefits of adopting this alternative
script are illustrated through six case studies.
Keywords:
risk management, value management, postmodernism, dramaturgical metaphor,
rhetoric, strategic choice.
INTRODUCTION
Risk
management and value management are both widely recognised to be an essential
part of best practice [1] [2]. Although
significant attention has been directed to the two topics in isolation, there
has as yet been little progress in the development of an integrated approach. The separation of the two disciplines is
well illustrated by the way in which the Construction Industry Research and
Information Association (CIRIA) and HM Treasury have both published separate
guides to risk management [3] [4] and value management [5] [6]. In developing the argument in support of the
need for an integrated process, it is initially necessary to establish the
intellectual origins of the two disciplines.
The case will be made that the two disciplines only really differ in
terms of the rhetoric in which they are presented. It will then be suggested
that an alternative script for integrated risk and value management can be
provided by the strategic choice approach. The benefits of this approach will
be illustrated through a summary of six case studies. The case will also be
made for a continuous process of intellectual deconstruction of established
concepts as an essentially requirement for an innovative and reflexive
construction industry.
VALUE MANAGEMENT
Two
schools of thought can be identified in the value management literature. The first follows the tradition of systems
engineering and seeks to achieve given identified functions at minimum cost [7]
[8] [9]. This approach tends to be
implemented by an external team in response to a projected cost overspend and
is usefully labelled ‘value engineering’ [10].
It is essentially a technical activity that seeks efficient means of
achieving known ends.
The second school of thought focuses
on the strategic interface between client organisations and construction
projects [11] [12]. From this point of
view, the primary purpose of value management is to resolve ambiguity and
establish a shared commitment to a common set of design objectives [5]. The emphasis no longer lies on the technical
evaluation of design alternatives, but on a process
of communication and consensus building with the active participation of the
project stakeholders. Within this school of thought, value management is
primarily perceived as an aid to the briefing process rather than a technique
of cost reduction. Whereas value engineering is characterised by an underlying
positivism, the emerging ‘second generation’ of value management owes its
allegiance to an underlying epistemology
of social constructivism [13]. Sources
such as Barton [11] are especially notable in emphasising the role of the
facilitator rather than the application of mechanistic techniques.
It is useful to classify the above
two approaches to value management as ‘hard’ and ‘soft’. Similar distinctions have been made within
the more established fields of operational research [14] and systems theory
[15]. The same two alternative ‘hard’
and ‘soft’ approaches are also evident within the construction risk management
literature.
RISK MANAGEMENT
The
hard paradigm
The
established techniques of risk management are well described in Chapman and
Ward [16], Flanagan and Norman [17] and Raftery [18]. Such sources directly reflect the ‘hard’ paradigm of value
engineering in that they are primarily concerned with quantitative
techniques. The emphasis given by
Raftery [18] to the role of external ‘experts’ in the risk management process
is especially notable. The intellectual origins of these approaches can be
traced back to probability theory and the concept of ‘risky utility’ [19]. It
is the concept of risky utility that underpins the frequently described
techniques of expected monetary value (EMV) and expected net present value
(ENPV). The dominant assumption behind
these approaches is that risk relates to the uncertainty of future
outcomes. It is further assumed that
the stakeholders can agree on a common interpretation on the likelihood of
their occurrence. In many respects,
previous critiques of ‘hard’ value engineering are also directly relevant to
the corresponding paradigm of risk management. Both approaches are limited to
problem contexts that are technical, static and well-defined. It is invariably assumed that the definition
of the ‘problem’ is in itself unproblematic. Traditional risk management is too
often limited to 'technical' issues. The definition of 'technical' frequently
embraces financial issues and hazardous operations. Nevertheless, the 'soft'
factors relating to the ways in which stakeholders think, behave and interact
are at best under-emphasised, and at worst ignored.
An
emerging alternative paradigm
The
established texts on risk management [16] [17] [18] are further notable in the
way that they tend to be prescriptive
rather than descriptive. The included case studies tend be to highly
idealised and divorced from the organisational context from which they were
derived. Those few sources which set out to describe
current practice are notably at odds with the prescriptive literature, e.g.
[20] [21]. However, there is evidence
that a tentative ‘soft’ paradigm of risk management is gaining ground. Sources
such as Godfrey [3] place much less emphasis on the use of quantitative
techniques, stressing the team nature of risk management and the corresponding
importance of an independent facilitator. The risk management process is no
longer conceptualised in terms of ‘decision-making’, but as a means of
continuous learning. In this respect,
Godfrey’s approach to risk management echoes many of the characteristics of
‘soft’ value management. Indeed, it is
notable that both are advocated primarily as a means of resolving conflict
within the project team.
The
epistemology of risk management
On
the basis of the available literature, it would seem that the emerging soft
paradigm of risk management remains less conceptually developed than its equivalent
within value management. Certainly
within the domain of construction management, there is a notable absence of any
risk management approaches laying claim to a guiding epistemology of social constructivism. This is not to say that
the hard paradigm is without its critics. Mak [22] has challenged the paradigm
of quantitative risk management and the validity of its underlying reliance on
normative Bayesian statistics.
Nevertheless, the articulated alternative falls some way short of social
constructivism. Mak emphasises the use
of heuristics in searching out solutions that are ‘good enough’. The approach
therefore follows Simon’s [23] concept of satisficing and as such is based on a
post-positivist position. The
ontological position of naive realism is seemingly weakened to one of critical
realism, see [24]. Whilst Mak seems to
accept that optimal solutions cannot be identified due to the limitations of
human perception, he still seems to believe that they exist at least in
theory.
The
need for a broader framework
Much
of the uncertainty which occurs during construction cannot be construed as
‘technical’. This is especially true
for the earlier stages of the project life-cycle, where decisions need to span
the boundary between the construction project and the broader environment. The
context for many construction projects is provided by multi-faceted client
organisations that comprise several different interest groups whose objectives
often differ [25]. Within this context, risk management can no longer be
considered to be a narrow activity that is applied to ‘technical’ issues in
isolation of other factors. The process
of risk management therefore only becomes meaningful through the active
participation of the client’s project stakeholders. Effective risk management
of this nature depends less upon probabilistic forecasting and more upon the
need to maintain a viable political consistency within the client
organisation. It is notable that there
is as yet no recognised framework that embraces both the notion of technical
risk with the less tangible uncertainties that characterise the strategic
interface between construction projects and client organisations.
THE CASE FOR INTEGRATION
The
continued acceptance of risk and value management as two discreet disciplines
can be traced back to neo-classical economics and decision theory. Once stripped of its popularist rhetoric,
the guiding intellectual framework for value management can be seen to be
provided by the ‘theory of riskless choice’, otherwise labelled the
‘fundamental theorem of utility’ [26].
It is the notion of ‘riskless utility’ which provides the basis for
multi-attribute utility theory (MAUT) and the associated weighted preference
methods which are so popular within the value management literature, e.g. [5]
[6] [27].
In contrast, the guiding
intellectual framework for risk management stems from the ‘theory of risky
choice’. This was originally developed from von Neumann and Morgenstern’s
(1947) concept of ‘risky utility’, as defined within the context of
hypothetical gambles. At the time, the
supposed discovery of measurable utility caused considerable furore within the
economics community. Subsequent contributions
by Ellsberg [28] and Edwards [29] served to classify the two types of utility
into entirely different concepts. Hence
the distinction between the ‘theory of risky choice’ and the ‘theory of
riskless choice’ as initially labelled by Edwards [29]. Modern writers on decision theory perpetuate
this distinction by referring to value
functions when utility is used in the neo-classical sense (i.e. in the
absence of uncertainty) and utility
functions when used in the risky sense.
It is their respective allegiance to these two different traditions that
primarily distinguishes value management from risk management. However, even within the context of decision
theory, an increasing number of commentators have questioned the extent to
which this distinction is meaningful.
Fishburn [26] suggests that the phrase ‘decision making under certainty’
is simply an abbreviation of ‘decision making in which uncertainty, whatever
form it may take, is suppressed and not given explicit recognition’. Von
Winterfeldt and Edwards [30] have also expressed doubts whether the distinction
between ‘utility’ and ‘value’ is valid:
‘In our opinion, the distinction between
value and utility is spurious because....there are no sure things, and
therefore values that are attached to presumably riskless outcomes are in fact
attached to gambles.’
In
the light of the above, it is valid to question whether the continued
distinction between value management and risk management is meaningful. The CIRIA report on risk management suggests
that ‘the techniques of risk management are similar to those used in the management
process known as value management, outputs from each being closely linked and
inter dependent’ [3]. If the techniques
really are similar, and there is no such thing as a ‘riskless decision’, there
would seem to be little logic in defining value management and risk management
as separate services.
A POSTMODERNIST INTERPRETATION
Reality
construction through language
A
postmodernist perspective provides an alternative reading of the current
practices of risk and value management. The advocates of postmodernism contend
that the world is constituted by shared language and can only be understood
through particular forms of discourse [31] [32]. In other words, humans
experience the world through a given set of words and concepts [33]. This is in
direct opposition to the modernist view that language describes something which
already exists ‘out there’. From a
postmodernist perspective, the expressions ‘risk’ and ‘value’ do not relate to
any sort of external reality, but provide the language through which managers
construct their own reality. The contention
is that neither value management nor risk management possess any
substantive content other than the language within which there are presented. They are only implemented as discrete activities because
there is an expectation that ‘risk’ and ‘value’ should be managed separately.
This expectation is created by the literature that has fabricated the nonsense
that value management and risk management exist independently. Note that
neither of these actually ‘exist’ at all, they have merely been constructed as separate entities. A
postmodernist interpretation also serves to challenge the grandiose claims
often made in favour of 'methodology'. A methodology becomes a 'script' that
uses particular forms of rhetoric to be persuasive. Such an interpretation
would question the argument that different methodologies are characterised by
different assumptions. The notion that 'soft' and 'hard' approaches are
characterised by different epistemological positions would seem to be somewhat
contrived. A more defendable position is that different methodologies are
characterised by different forms of rhetoric.
Motivations
and benefits
It
is interesting to consider the motivations that drive practitioners to adopt
initiatives such as risk management and value management. A common motivation will be a desire to
demonstrate to clients and colleagues that they are efficient and up-to-date in
the latest management techniques. Apart
from issues of image, an organisation could realistically benefit through a
more participative and reflective means of decision-making. However, both of these potential benefits
are extremely fragile. The arena for the desired participation is too often
limited to the risk (or value) management workshop. The decision to implement a ‘participatory’ approach is invariably
made unilaterally by top management.
The outputs of any such exercise are therefore constrained to those that
are acceptable to top management. Hence
the nature of the ‘participation’ and the outputs are both highly
controlled. This may lead many
‘participants’ to suspect that the real agenda is one of manipulation rather
than genuine participation. The second
potential benefit of providing a more reflective means of decision-making will
also rapidly disperse should the same approach be implemented time over
again. Once the structure of the
exercise is allowed to become predictable, it will provide no more benefit than
any other mechanistic ‘box-ticking’ exercise.
Unrealistic expectations
Some of the claims commonly made in support of risk and
value management serve to create unrealistic expectations. The following quote
from Don Ward, Chief Executive of the UK Construction Industry Board, is by no
means unusual:
“Techniques such as value management ensure
better definition of needs and lead to fewer changes during the project. The
result? A better product, typically, delivered ahead of programme (which in
turn can mean earlier business income, for example, to a retail client), with improved
cost certainty and lower whole-life costs.” [34]
Unfortunately, the techniques of value management are
not capable of ‘ensuring’ anything.
Techniques do not have any meaning in isolation of the way in which they
are enacted, and people enact value management in different ways. There is no established causal link between
the use of value management and a resulting better product. So-called improvement techniques such as
value management can only meaningfully be evaluated in terms of whether or not
the participants found the process to
be useful. Much clearly depends upon
the rhetoric used initially to justify the use of value management and the
subsequent degree of post hoc
rationalisation. Furthermore, there is
no consensus on which techniques constitute value management. It would seem that Ward [34], the
Construction Industry Board [1], and others, have fallen victim to the
propaganda of those who wish to propagate value management for their own
purposes.
Ward’s
[34] naive faith in value management is perhaps indicative of the Western
world’s general weakness for management panaceas. Managers everywhere feel overwhelmed by uncertainty and struggle
to exert control over their day-to-day environment. They are therefore desperate for any promise of a ‘quick
fix’. The result is that the
construction industry becomes ever more desperate as it lurches from one
improvement technique to another. Total
quality management, business process re-engineering, value management, risk
management and lean thinking are all held up in turn to be the saviour of the
construction industry. All are
notoriously amorphous constructs that are strong on rhetoric and weak on
coherence. Managers seem to have an
in-built weakness for the rhetoric of reductionalist management improvement
recipes. The construction industry
would surely be better served by more thoughtful managers who recognise that
uncertainty cannot be ‘managed away’ by a programmed technique.
THE
DRAMATURGICAL METAPHOR
The concept of gaining insights into managerial practice
through the use of metaphors was popularised by Morgan [35]. Although the roots
of the dramaturgical metaphor can be traced back as far as Goffman [36], the
notion that ‘management’ can usefully be perceived as a performing art owes
much to Mangham [37]. Clark and Salaman [38] have since examined management
consultancy from a dramaturgical perspective, that is, they argue that insights
can be gained by thinking in terms of the consultant’s performance in front of a client. The way in which value
management, and increasingly risk management, evolve around participative
workshops makes the dramaturgical metaphor especially powerful. The conceptualisation is that the
facilitators attempt to create a reality for their audience (i.e. the client)
which captures their imagination and commitment. All participants are assigned
roles that are acted out in accordance with a previously agreed script. The
success of the facilitator is primarily judged in terms of her performance.
The
performance is initially commissioned by the client in accordance with the
accepted scripts on how ‘best practice’ clients should behave, e.g. [1]. The
decision to implement risk/value management is therefore the outcome of a
previous ‘act’ in the drama of management. The client’s representative would be
required to act out the expected role of a project manager. As an effective
project manager, she would be expected to instigate the latest management
ideas, including risk management and value management. Given that these are
conceptualised in the literature entirely separately, the expectation would be
that they should be performed separately.
The drama of value management
If the client’s representative decided initially to act
out value management, she would read some of the readily available publications
before approaching a number of consultants.
The consultants would act out the role of appearing authoritative and
would confidently describe the services that they have to offer. Note that the consultant would ‘tell a
different story’ depending on which school of thought they subscribed to. Advocates of Barton [11] would use a
different language from the advocates of SAVE International [9]. The language
would be different because they would be talking from different scripts. Once commissioned, there would be an
expectation that the consultant would perform in accordance with the agreed
script. If she had emphasised the use
of ‘function analysis’ in her initial interview, she would be expected to perform ‘function analysis’ in the
workshop. Briefing notes would be sent
to the intended participants emphasising what their roles in the drama would
be. On the day of the workshop, the drama
would be enacted. The facilitator would
arrive with the necessary ‘props’: coloured pens, bluetac and flipcharts. All
parties would then act out roles in accordance with the script, hopefully
leaving some scope for improvisation.
The facilitator would be highly animated, usually waving her arms about
a good deal. She would steer the
workshop through the various stages of the script. The closing act would invariably be the formulation of an ‘action
list’.
The drama of risk management
Given the previous contention that there is no
substantive difference between risk management and value management, it would
be reasonable to suppose that the enactment of a risk management workshop would
be broadly similar to that described above. The main difference would lie in
the language dictated by the
alternative script. Whereas a value
management facilitator would say the words ‘value’ and ‘function’ often and
loudly, a risk management facilitator would rely on phrases such as ‘risk
identification’ and ‘risk response’.
Both would share the same practical reliance on coloured pens, bluetac
and flipcharts. The ‘outputs’ of each workshop would be shaped by the language
of their respective scripts. These
would in turn shape the expectations for some subsequent ‘act’ in the on-going
management drama.
The
preceding interpretation is admittedly more reflective of the ‘soft’ approaches
to risk management which are enacted through participative workshops. Nevertheless, the ‘hard’ quantitative
approach can also be conceived in terms of a performance, albeit to a different
script. For example, a practitioner who
followed the script provided by Chapman and Ward [16] would be expected to play
the role of ‘rational calculator’. Key
props would include a laptop computer and risk analysis software. The initial consultations would contain
their own elements of drama, before the consultant withdraws to complete the
‘analysis’ (also a necessary part of the drama). A further act of drama would follow when the consultant presents
the ‘findings’ to the client. The action taken would be primarily dependent on
the persuasiveness of the
consultant’s rhetoric. Note that no
risk assessment exercise can ever be ‘complete’. Constraints are always imposed by the resources available to
conduct the analysis and the unavoidable limitations of bounded rationality. The
rigour of any risk assessment exercise is therefore ultimately judged in terms of the currently
accepted standard. In other words, it
is the standard that provides the script for the justification. Note also that
such standards are themselves socially negotiated and that the requirements of
rigour change over time. For example,
in the nuclear industry there have been numerous examples of risk assessment
exercises which, whilst persuasive at the time, have seemed much less than
persuasive in retrospect.
TOWARDS
AN INTEGRATED SCRIPT
The
language of uncertainty
The
first step towards an integrated script for risk and value management is to
reject the language of ‘risk’ and ‘value’ in favour of the language of uncertainty. Value management is primarily concerned with resolving
uncertainty regarding project objectives.
In contrast, risk management addresses uncertainty regarding
outcomes. When expressed in these
terms, the inter-dependence between risk and value management is readily
apparent. The effect of unknown
outcomes cannot be assessed until the objectives are clear. At the same time, the project objectives may
well depend upon the identified areas of uncertainty. A feasible script that addresses both types of uncertainty is
provided by the group decision support methodology known as ‘strategic choice’.
Strategic
choice
Strategic choice is rooted in the socio-technical
approach pioneered by the Tavistock Institute during the 1970s. The approach is
facilitator-driven with no specific constraints regarding the number or length
of workshops. The description that follows is primarily derived from Friend and
Hickling [39] and Friend [40].
The basic
premise of strategic choice is that managerial decisions are made in conditions
of uncertainty. It seeks to aid the
decision-making process by conceptualising three different types of
uncertainty, the first of which relates to the clarity of ‘guiding
values’. This type of uncertainty,
labelled UV, is primarily caused by
ambiguous objectives. A decision-making
group’s response to UV may be to
seek policy guidance from a higher authority, or to commission a
consensus-building exercise such as a value management exercise. The second type of uncertainty pertains to
the broader environment and is labelled UE. This is the kind of uncertainty which is
normally dealt with through risk management
techniques. Responses to UE are usually of a technical nature,
comprising surveys, forecasting exercises or cost estimations [40]. The third kind of uncertainty concerns
‘related decision fields’. This is
labelled UR and relates to the
‘inter-connectiveness’ between decision areas.
In other words, uncertainty concerning the wider implications of an
individual decision. The response here may be to re-frame the decision area or
to consult with others beyond the immediate constituency of the
problem-owners.
The
conceptualisation of three different kinds of uncertainty is useful in that it
provides a framework that subsumes not only the current practice of value management,
but also that of risk management. However, neither of these two existing
scripts gives explicit recognition to UR
as a distinct area of uncertainty. Strategic choice makes explicit all three
types of uncertainty and deals with them through an iterative decision-making
process. Implementation is framed around four complementary modes of
decision-making activity.
The
first mode, described as the shaping
mode, is concerned with problem formulation. Key techniques include the
graphical identification of, and linkage between, decision areas. This enables
the decision-makers to identify the most urgent problems and agree upon an
initial problem shape. The second mode
is labelled the designing mode during
which the facilitator steers the participants towards the identification of
different options. Of particular importance is the grouping of different
combinations of options into discreet decision schemes. It is recognised that
whilst some options would be compatible, others would be mutually exclusive.
The third mode is the comparing mode
and consists of a sequence of techniques that seek to compare the benefits of
alternative decision schemes. These
techniques differ from those of decision analysis in that they allow for a
combination of quantitative and qualitative comparison. The final stage of
strategic choice is described as the choosing
mode and is concerned both with making immediate decisions and with
devising a strategy for managing those decisions which are best made in the
light of further information. The outcome of any particular meeting would
therefore always include immediate commitments to action and also strategies
for resolving identified areas of uncertainty to aid future decisions. The
latter aspect has some commonality with the established practice of maintaining
risk registers.
In
advocating the 'use' of strategic choice it is important not to repeat the
grandiose claims made in support of more prescriptive methodologies. Friend and
Hickling [39] recognise that the established decision-making norms of linearity, objectivity, certainty
and comprehensiveness inevitably
break down when faced with real-world problems. The strategic choice approach
is characterised by less simple prescriptions [39]:
·
Don't aim for linearity - learn to work with cyclicity.
·
Don't aim for objectivity - learn to work with subjectivity.
·
Don't aim for certainty - learn to work with uncertainty.
·
Don't aim for comprehensiveness - learn to work with selectivity.
The prime issue of importance is the way in which the
embedded language of the strategic choice approach provides a different script
for facilitated interventions. The language of uncertainty can serve to combine
the separate story lines of risk and value management. The intervention can be
justified in terms of the language of uncertainty. The workshop can be enacted
and the outcomes justified in the same language. Whilst the strategic choice
approach has appropriated numerous techniques associated with the four
specified modes of decision making, it must be recognised that these techniques
are inseparable from their embedded language. From a postmodernist perspective,
a new technique is only useful in helping participants think differently
because the language and imagery are unfamiliar. Once the techniques become
familiar, they cease to stimulate different ways of thinking and therefore too
easily regress to mechanistic exercises of dubious value. The metaphor of a
facilitated workshop as an act of drama remains important. Given that so many
risk (and value) workshops result in few tangible outcomes, it is important
that the 'drama' engages project stakeholders as active participants rather
than members of a passive audience. The intention must be to ensure that the
process is 'on-line'. Too many existing value management exercises take place
'off-line' with little impact on day-to-day project management. This is probably even more true in the case
of risk management.
CASE
STUDIES
The author has to date used the ‘uncertainty script’ of
strategic choice on six separate occasions in a variety of different project
contexts. Within the confines of this paper it is not possible to describe each
occasion in detail. Nevertheless, it is possible to communicate the essence of
what took place. Each project comprised an action-research intervention that
sought to help with real-world projects. The six projects can be summarised as
follows:
·
PFI submission for
a Schools project;
·
Master planning
exercise for the re-development of a major university campus;
·
£100M mixed retail
and residential development in central London;
·
New supermarket
development;
·
Major highways
scheme.
·
A national
programme of high street shop conversions.
Three of the above were billed as 'value management' and
three were billed as 'risk management'. Each intervention consisted of a series
of briefing meetings followed by a one-day facilitated workshop. The same
approach was adopted irrespective of how the workshop was billed. The workshops
were deliberately light on formal methodology whilst being loosely informed by
the strategic choice framework. The sessions were facilitated in a positive
manner whilst avoiding any tendency to impose solutions. Indeed, the
facilitator avoided any temptation even to suggest courses of action. Each
workshop involved a broad cross-section of stakeholders; numbers varied from
twelve to twenty-seven. The workshops
would typically begin by asking the participants to state their four key issues
of concern. These were written onto a post-it note that was then attached to a
display board. The post-it stickers were then grouped into 'problem areas' that
provided the agenda for the rest of the day. In broad terms, the groups were
then sub-divided into three smaller groups on a forty-five minute cycle.
Initially the groups were tasked to diagnose why the identified 'problem area'
was problematic. Each group appointed their own facilitator who subsequently
acted a spokesperson. The groups were asked to ensure that everything that they
considered important was written down on their flipchart. After forty-five
minutes (or so) the main workshop reconvened and the three presentations were
made in turn. After the resultant discussion, the agenda for the next cycle was
agreed and the workshop was again sub-divided into separate groups. Sometimes
the groups were the same as previously, sometimes they were re-constituted.
More often than not the focus of the second cycle was directed towards the
production of recommendations. The facilitator endeavoured to be neutral at all
times and deliberately avoided introducing any unfamiliar language, although he
did often build on the discussion of the group. The three categories of UV, UE
and UR were occasionally used as prompts for different sub-groups to identify
different sources of uncertainly. On
each occasion the last session of the workshop was devoted to the derivation of
an 'action list' to which specific responsibilities were assigned.
The
staged outcomes of the workshops were recorded on flipcharts and summarised in
a brief written report. On all six occasions the scripts were accepted by the
audience and the resultant ‘performance’ was well received. Whilst the enactment of the workshops was
loosely structured around the strategic choice methodology, the adopted
approach was essentially pragmatic. However, the justification of the events depended upon the broader theoretical
conceptualisation that underpins strategic choice. This provides a practical
manifestation of the dramaturgical metaphor described previously. It was
noticeable that the different sub-groups frequently resorted to the language of
risk management, rarely did the terminology of value management provide the
basis for discussion. It should also be added that many of the workshops
participants were very experienced in the established approaches to risk
management. Without exception, such participants were warmly supportive of the
adopted approach. They were often especially complementary about the highly
participative style of the events and the way in which the detailed agenda was
formulated on the day. The relative absence of quantitative analysis was seen
to be a strength rather than a weakness. Effective risk management is of course
dependent upon quantitative assessments, but the view was accepted that such
assessments are best carried once the overall 'problem frame' has been
established.
Future
publications will described the workshops and resultant feedback in further
detail. For the present, suffice it to say that there is evidence that the
strategic choice approach can provide a feasible integrated script that embraces the story lines of both risk
management and value management. The
adoption of the dramaturgical metaphor however militates against any grandiose
claims on the behalf of ‘methodology’. The
intention must be to propagate a more thoughtful approach to the management of
uncertainty, rather than laying claim to yet another panacea.
CONCLUSION
This
paper has presented a new way of thinking about risk and value management. It
has been suggested that the current literature propagates a false distinction
between these two activities. An alternative integrated script based on the
strategic choice approach has been suggested. The legitimacy of this approach
has been established through six action-research interventions. However, it has
also been suggested that the relationship between a published ‘methodology’ and
what happens in practice is much weaker than is commonly supposed. From a postmodernist perspective, the prime
contribution of a methodology is the way in which the adopted discourse shapes
practice. The initial need for a
management-type intervention will be justified in terms of the rhetoric of the
favoured methodology. The text of the
methodology will then provide the script for the enactment of the ‘drama’. The rhetoric of the methodology will
subsequently be used for the post hoc
rationalisation of what took place. However, the dramaturgical metaphor cannot
provide a complete explanation of the way in which methodologies are
enacted. To make such a claim would be
contrary to the adopted postmodernist position. The insights achieved are inevitably incomplete and distorted by
the adopted metaphorical lens. In
contrast to popularist management gurus, academics must always be aware of the
limitations of their adopted standpoint.
It is notable that several authors readily concede the limitations of
‘mechanistic, checklist approaches to risk analysis’ and claim no monopoly on
the truth. Different insights are
gained from different perspectives.
Each way of seeing is also a way of not seeing. Perhaps the most important aspect of
thinking in terms of metaphor is the way in which any one chosen metaphor
exposes the limitations of others. This
awareness of the incompleteness of metaphor therefore fosters a healthy
cynicism of all metaphorical approaches, be they implicit or explicit. A
postmodernist position requires a continual process of reality deconstruction
and reconstruction [35]. The benefits of
this process have been demonstrated in the case of risk and value management.
However, there is a danger that the strategic choice approach might be
routinised through regular use. A continuous process of deconstruction and
reconstruction is necessary to guard against this possibility. Indeed, it is
contended that this cycle of intellectual activity is vital to continued
innovation. It is also possible to make the argument that a greater
understanding of metaphor and postmodernism amongst managers in the
construction industry would serve to make them more creative and less
susceptible to the mindless ideology of management panaceas. To promote a more
thoughtful industry must surely be the prime responsibility of construction
academics.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The research described was supported by the UK's
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (GR/M42657).
The fieldwork and empirical analysis was conducted with the assistance of Ian
Compson. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1999 CIB W-55
and W-65 Joint Triennial Symposium in Cape Town, South Africa. The author is
grateful for the subsequent feedback from conference participants.
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