CEE Undergraduate Research Program

Research Projects Available via the Collaboratory for Research on Global Projects (CRGP) OVERVIEW

Faculty: Ray Levitt, Civil & Environmental Engineering; Jenna Davis, Civil & Environmental Engineering; Dick Scott, Sociology; Doug McAdam, Sociology; Tom Heller, Law School

Email: ray.levitt@stanford.edu; rjorr@stanford.edu

Summer Research Topic: Large Infrastructure Projects in Developing Countries

Summer Research Experience: CRGP has several ongoing research projects related to large, complex, capital-intensive infrastructure projects in developing countries. The research experience will vary tremendously, depending on the interests of each individual student, and may involve activities ranging from ethnographic interviews with managers and executives, to archival analysis of global project case study materials, to statistical analysis of large empirical data sets, to computational modeling of project organizations, to publication of findings in conference papers or journal articles.

DETAILS OF VARIOUS PROJECTS

1. Analyzing Case Studies of Global Power and Water Projects

This is a 3 year study that has been funded by the Stanford Institute for International Studies. The goal of this project is to begin to identify the factors (e.g. weak national governments, sectoral differences) and processes (e.g. institutional conflict between formal project participants, emergent mobilization by NGOs or local grass roots movements) that help predict variation in a range of project outcome measures. One component of the research will involve content coding of detailed case materials on some 30 large infrastructure projects. Undergraduates would be involved in all aspects of this work, but with a principal focus on the reading and coding of case materials.

2. Archival Analysis of Transnational Treaties

The objective of this exploratory research is to identify, sort, and analyze transnational treaties and compacts that may be activated by global projects. These may vary by geographic location, sector, and area of concern (e.g., labor, indigenous people, and environment). Such frameworks are in place and may or may not be the product of/stimulus for NGO action, but can still have effects.

3. Comparing Perspectives of Stakeholders

The objective of this research is to assess and compare the perspectives of the formal participants and informal stakeholders on a major infrastructure project -- the lender, investor, builder, permitting agency, government sponsor, transnational NGO, local community interest group, etc. The final result might take the form of a comparative chart, summarizing each party's logics (i.e. interests, values, objectives), definitions of success, and a checklist of go/no-go criteria.

4. Identifying the "New Players" in Private Infrastructure Investment

The objective of this research is to identify and better understand the new sponsors and lenders that are investing in infrastructure -- i.e. water, power, roads, etc. -- in emerging markets. At CRGP's recent General Counsels' Roundtable, a number of senior executives at firms like the World Bank, Ex-Im Bank, Bechtel, Fluor, and USAID expressed the view that there is a new set of Chinese, Malaysian, Saudi Arabian and other developing world investors who are beginning to invest in infrastructure in emerging markets in a serious way, and who may have major advantages over Western firms for three reasons: (1) they have a different "risk-return" calculus in how they assess political risks, (2) they do not attract opposition from Western NGOs, and (3) they often have lower costs of capital due to government subsidies. For more information about the Roundtable: http://crgp.stanford.edu/membership/roundtable.html

5. Compiling a Local Knowledge Checklist

The objective of this study is to compile a "Local Knowledge Checklist" -- a framework that a contractor, bank, or other global project participant can use to guide their local intelligence gathering activities upon entry into a new market -- as well as a list of available information products that can be used as sources of intelligence information to meet the requirements of the checklist. For example, when a contractor like Bechtel goes to Afghanistan, they need to understand levels of corruption, quality of healthcare, and political dynamics. Transparency International publishes a Corruption Index, the UN publishes their World Health Report, and the CIA publishes projections of political stability within most countries. But these diverse information sources have not been aggregated in a meaningful way, to suit the needs of global project entrants. Thus, this study is designed to identify and match information requirements to information sources, and to prepare a publishable, punchy, practitioner-oriented synthesis.

6. Predicting and Mitigating National-Cultural Conflicts between Onboard Seamen in the NYK Fleet

The objective of this study is to predict which cross-cultural interfaces between onboard seamen in the worlds largest fleet of ocean going vessels leads to the most severe and frequent incidents of conflict, violence and fighting. Data potentially available for this study includes the "incident report" and "near miss" databases from NYK, a large shipping company in Japan. Japanese language skills and statistics are a plus.

7. Conducting Computational Modeling of Project Organizations

This research project is the most recent in 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.

Posted by rjorr at February 25, 2006 2:39 PM