The Infrastructure Development Research Group aims to further management scholarship
and social science in relevant ways to tackle the grand societal challenges of our times
–seemingly intractable problems that cannot be resolved without coordinated and sustained
effort from multiple autonomous actors such as climate change, poverty, inequality and
population growth. We pursue this goal with a focus on how to tackle pressing gaps between
infrastructure demand and supply.
We 'see' infrastructure as a vast class of long-lived, capital-intensive technologies that
input into a wide range of productive processes that generate positive externalities and
social surplus. Whether it be transportation systems – airports, roads and railways; utility
systems – power, water, sanitation and telecom; or social assets – schools, hospitals and
prisons, infrastructures are resources shared by multiple people, institutions and organizations.
The case for capital investment in infrastructure is frequently robust. In advanced economies,
the need is often rooted in decades of neglect. In the developing world, the need is rooted
in rapid population growth and urbanization. Equipping the world for climate change is yet
another strong reason for investment in infrastructure technology.
At the very essence of new infrastructure development is the production of large-scale
technology to share in use – the design attribute that makes infrastructure such a powerful
source of broad value creation. But this very same fundamental attribute – shared use - is a
major source of management and societal complexity for governments, political leaders, and
private actors. In the Infrastructure Development Research Group, we deploy a number of
theoretical lens and conceptual frameworks to search new ways to tackle this grand societal
challenge. Our core strengths lie in the domains of organizational design, finance, design
and projects. Our research leads us to ask:
• Which forms of organizing enable coordinated collective action towards shared use?
• How can these organizations handle critical interdependences with environmental stakeholders?
• How can rigorous research and analysis challenge powerful economic and political theories,
such as the presumed rationality of market forces, and contribute to public policy developments?
• How can participants resolve the fundamental problems of coordination and cooperation
necessary to integrate effort across organizational boundaries, and enable resource exchanges?
• How can system decomposability attenuate the complexity of collective action towards sharing?
• And how does the shortfall of formal developed institutions in developing countries affect
these fundamental problems of organizing and financing and the search for effective solutions?
In sum we aim to spearhead rigorous empirical and theoretical research on coordinated collective
action towards sharing. We apply new ideas from organisational design through finance and accountability
to provide global thought leadership. And we create scope for debate with practitioners and
policymakers through roundtables, collaborative research, policy interpretation and training.
Our focus is on new infrastructure development. Our commitment is to increase the relevance of
management scholarship and social science to today’s grand societal challenges.
