The research and development activities pursued under the CRGP program are grouped in five distinct and yet closely interrelated thrust areas:

Understanding Generalizable Challenges and Strategies of Global Projects

Research under this thrust area investigates the globalization of project organizations, the clashes in beliefs, values, norms and rule-systems at multiple-levels that result when projects unite formal and informal participants from multiple national origins, the coordination and transaction costs that are incurred as a result of these clashes. This research is important because it will lead to the development of strategies and approaches that firms and governments can employ to reduce the impacts of these so-called institutional clashes on project costs and outcomes.

• Sample Work Product - Understanding and Mitigating Institutional Costs on Global Projects, a doctoral thesis by Ashwin Mahalingam

Governance of Global Infrastructure Development Projects

Research under this area investigates the governance of complex, capital-intensive, global infrastructure development projects, at multiple levels - at the level of contracts between parties, at the level of the policy and regulatory regime of the host state, and at the level of the provisions of international institutions and multi-lateral and bi-lateral banks for human rights, environmental and social impact assessments, and dispute resolution procedures. This research is important because it will contribute to the equitable, sustainable and efficient provision of infrastructure throughout the developed and developing world.

• Sample Work Product - The General Counsels' Roundtable, an event hosted to assess the performance of the global-legal paradigm that underpins global infrastructure development

Predicting the Involvement of NGOs, Political Organizations and Interest Groups in Global Infrastructure Development Projects

The range of interests and concerns that must be addressed by the governance structures for global infrastructure projects have recently been made even more complex and uncertain by the emergence of a new group of "informal project participants"- civil society organizations at local, regional, national and transnational levels, including local political organizations and a proliferation of NGOs. Research under this thrust addresses the question: To what extent can we predict the activation and involvement of informal project participants in a given project, based on characteristics of the project, the region, and the various organizations that might become engaged? This research is important because it is necessary to predict emergent political opposition and institutional conflict, in order to then design suitable governance systems, to see these projects through successful construction, start-up and operation.

• Sample Work Product - Predicting Institutional and Interest Conflicts: Project Governance Structures for Global Infrastructure Development, a proposal by Raymond Levitt, Doug McAdam, Ryan Orr and W.Richard Scott, and funded by the Presidential Fund on Innovation in International Studies at Stanford University

Internationalization Strategies of Global Project Companies

Research under this thrust area aims to better understand the challenges, obstacles and difficulties that project-based companies face, as they internationalize their operations and enter unfamiliar markets, cultures and societal contexts. The main benefit of this research is to assist organizations that are new in the internationalization process develop successful strategies and approaches for internationalization without having to learn by trial and error the lessons that experienced firms use to enter foreign markets. CRGP will publish these findings in a format that can be readily taught and easily communicated, especially to non-experts in firms that are just beginning to work in overseas markets.

• Sample Work Product - Embeddedness, Emergent Uncertainty and Strategies to Succeed in Foreign Markets, a conference paper by Ryan Orr and Ray Levitt

Computational Simulation of Global Project Organizations

This thrust area represents a continuing stream of research that has been ongoing since 1988, to develop new theory, methods and tools that allow managers to design the organizations for their complex, fast-track projects in the same way that engineers have long designed bridges and buildings. Ongoing CRGP research in this area is formalizing and embedding new micro-behaviors related to the development of trust among computational agents from different institutional backgrounds that need to cooperate on global projects, and new micro-behaviors to model and simulate the flow of knowledge among agents from different institutional backgrounds. The importance of this research area is to get beyond the current practice of designing global project organizations based merely on prior experience, but to compare and assess the relative tradeoffs between different organizational and staffing alternatives using formal analysis tools.

• Sample Work Product - Modeling and Analyzing Cultural Influences on Project Team Performance, a journal paper by Tamaki Horii

Finally, it is important to note that the five thrust areas are closely interlinked. For example, to achieve the goals of better project governance, it is first necessary to understand how differences in institutions - i.e. beliefs, values, norms, conventions, rules, and formal legal, political, and economic systems - lead to the kinds of misjudgments, misunderstandings and conflicts between parties that contribute to the problems of governance; and to understand the mobilization and activation of informal project stakeholders. Moreover, research under all five thrust areas is complemented by, and integrated within, other ongoing CRGP activities in education and with the activities and interests of CRGP industry affiliate members.