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Organizing by projects: drawing conclusions from Italian experiences in management of urban projects.

Guido Codecasa

Politecnico di Milano, Department of Planning and Architecture Piazza Leonardo Da Vinci 32, 20133, Milan, Italy

Email: guido.codecasa@polimi.it, Phone +39 02 2399 2603 1. Challenging issues for management within the public sector There is a current trend in public management literature on reconsidering the public sector, its role and the challenges it has to face. The contemporary context the public sector has to deal with has recently been assimilated to the concept of network society (Kickert et al., 1997). As a consequence, problems can be likely considered as complex social constructs, affected by the conflict and interaction of different organizations bearing their own interests, and not clearly interpretable. Enhancing interdependencies among organizations is considered then as a crucial factor to success, and public management has to develop new tools and perspectives to handle these problems (McGuire, 2002). Despite this growing demand for integration (or connection), the public sector still remains a fragmented one. According to Klijn and Teisman (2000) the public sector can follow two possible ways in order to change and adapt to new operational conditions: contracting out and partnership. The former “is an attempt to hand over activities to the private sector in order to improve efficiency” and a substantial replacement of public with society. The latter “is in essence a joint venture aimed at innovation and improvement of quality.” It assumes the need for a steering function from the part of the public sector, in order to enrich the contents and improve appropriateness of decisions within society. Regardless to which has to become the preferred alternative, Klijn and Teisman stress their importance since

“The introduction of these two types of management probably means that governments have to redesign their organizational structure and procedures in order to respond adequately to external interdependency [and they have] to establish a kind of project organization in order to deal with the challenges of process management. Process managers will be appointed by the partners and held responsible for generating quality projects and achieving detailed sets of solutions, including commitment to partners.” (Klijn, Teisman, 2000)

If a steering public function is still required in contemporary network society (and if we assume it as the current field of operations), it necessarily lays in the quality, in the contents and in the extent of inter-organizational coordination as a means to build more effective policies and interventions. There is not only a recognition of a new need from the part of the public bodies to build and improve relationships with society in order to interpret its emerging demands and its valuable resources. More practically it becomes important to know which are the conditions allowing a public organization to decide in time where to be engaged or promptly disengage from. As a consequence timing and staging of initiatives become decisive (Bryson, 2004). In a context where public action has then to be built onto inter-organizational relationships (as much as their timing and their contents), public organizations have to address their efforts and resources on dedicated temporary arrangements. In more than one case inter-organizational coordination implies the need to continuously reshape alliances and dependencies over projects. At this regard, Mandell and Steelman (2003), through the concept of inter-organizational innovation, have shown how the specific need to bind more than one organization around a collaboration project or initiative is also corresponding to intra-organizational innovations, within the very organizations which are involved in a collaborative effort or in a complex confrontation. Inter-organizational coordination then happens on the basis of projects and not necessarily on the basis of spontaneous and functional interdependencies (since they are a condition and not a motivation for collaboration). In fact inter-organizational coordination implies a dedicated effort for gathering resources and structuring decisions and consensus around given projects (O’Toole Jr. et. al. 1997) that may be discontinued in many ways, for many reasons. Collaboration is often circumscribed to a given period or task: it can easily be a reversible choice since partners (Davies, 2004) are generally allowed to get back to their former positions, after an agreed period of cooperation. Moreover contextual factors which have formerly encouraged cooperation, may unexpectedly change or disappear. Actually then, there is a broad consensus on which are the new challenges for the public sector, and which must be the distinctive requirements for an effective public actor profile enacting a so ‘called public realm’. Inter-organizational coordination, public steering and temporary arrangements may work as reference keywords. However there is a common tendency to consider these elements more facts rather than either goals or directions for public sector change. Moreover these emerging demands for change have been mainly interpreted as a need for new management instruments, or on the consideration of new dimensions for decision making (from the stakeholder analysis, network management or to new formulas of management of uncertainty). These attempts have not been exempted from criticisms (see for example Mintzberg, 1994, 1996). Even if techniques play their role in public management education, little is known about what and how is actually done in practice –for example by local authorities. Empirical surveys also

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reveal surprises, as real practices may not necessarily match with expectations and provide no ground for advanced management techniques. The same Klijn and Teisman for example (Teisman and Klijn, 2002; Klijn and Teisman, 2003) while trying to interpret the actual state of partnership formation in Netherlands as an innovation in public policies, reported how experiences have been far more modest if compared with an originally too sophisticated ideal. 2. Project management experiences in public sector underestimated: why should they matter? In this article we propose then to reverse one common debated question. Instead of asking which are the likely changes that have to occur in the public domain in response to new ideal challenges, we ask: which issues are public organizations currently able to face and handle? Are changes in public organizations reflecting some new additions to the traditional public sector functions and activities? Which conditions or constraints affect the process of change into public sector? This question is aimed at the operational field. In fact we suggest to pay more attention on the limits to (or on the conditions that can trigger) public sector action, than on its potentials. Assuming this perspective, there is the need to consider when and how public organizations are able to get effectively involved in projects, and to fully develop new initiatives aimed at confronting with their demanding contexts. Responsiveness in public organizations over their changing environments mostly pertains then on how new initiatives responding to new and emerging demands can find place in an organization, which is by definition being occupied in doing something else. Put in other words, how does a public organization change when it is involved in a project? Are public organizations reacting all at the same way? From the previous discussion we also suggest that knowledge on how temporary arrangements (which will be also referred to as project structures) are set up within public organizations is a key element to improve our understanding of the actual ability of a public organizations to promote more effective policies and interventions, to sustain inter-organizational coordination, and to provide a steering function. Knowledge of this kind of experiences has been rarely developed or considered in comparative research. In a conference in 1980 Graham Allison remarked how “there exists no ready data on what public managers do. Instead, the academic literature, such as it is, mostly consists of speculation mostly tied to bits and pieces of the proverbial elephant” (Allison, 1980) Much more recently Mandell and Steelman (2003), in their attempt to discuss and provide a classification of inter-organizational arrangements, recognize a general lack of interest in the comparison of solutions and arrangements, especially in public administration. We assume in this paper that the measure for renovation in public administration lays in the quality and extent of its temporary arrangements, that is project structures. The next section will try to evaluate the importance of how, when and why project structures are shaped and formed in public organizations; it aims at illustrating the fine grain detail of some project structures developed in an autonomous and independent way by they own organizations. Due to the lack of references this contribution has to be considered as a tentative one. Its main objective is to effectively render a variety of solutions, which can be observed in different organizational contexts, even if on similar premises (at this regard see also Hans, Ridder, Spier 2005). On this basis we are dedicating a final section for recognizing common issues and comparisons in order to enhance further discussion.

Figure 1: projects are represented as a set of problems

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What is a project structure meant for? Before starting with an exploration and presentation of cases, we consider useful to provide a common ground of reference. In the previous sections we stressed how temporary arrangements have necessarily to be set up by organizations in a changing context. The word ‘project’ is linked to different concepts which go from task definition, to process management and external commitment (Lanzara; 1985) Figure 1 tries to depict the main features of a project from the point of view of a single organization. This is not a description of what actually happens in practice, but more a collection of the main problems affecting an organization’s attempt to build up contingent responses to its surroundings. Task is simply what we intend to do in response of given circumstances. Process management specifically refers on how a project can be identified as a stream of resources (owned by an organization, more or less directly) over time, subjected to some kind of direction. Generally these resources are there originally for a different purpose from the task we are trying to achieve, and they have to be subtracted from their original destinations. External commitment stresses the importance on how a project is also the centre or node of relations between an organization (or a part of it) and its environment, which simply is other organizations at stake with the initiative under way. In this perspective a project can be considered both as a node or subject over which relations and transactions are developed, and a task which requires a convergence of resources over that precise subject . Projects entail then a specific desired action (1), relationships (2), internal movement and engagement of resources (3) . In this respect the concept of ‘project structure’ is more limited in scope, as it refers to which is the embodied schemes which are arranged by a single organization, in order to redirect its own resources towards new and emerging issues. 3. Management of urban projects and urban policies: a training field for innovating public administration For developing this question we have chosen a specific field of experiences which particularly involves local authorities: urban projects and policies. This kind of efforts has been analyzed in detail since the seventies (see for example Friend, Power, Yewlett, 1974) and resulted in a renewed understanding of the connective nature of urban planning. More simply, urban projects and urban policies at the local level have long been a training field for inter-organizational coordination for the public sector. Many urban renewal programmes are increasingly requiring additional financing from different agencies and a form of connection among the programming and budgeting activities of public authorities at central, regional and local level, (even the European one). The financing and design of major site development projects, strategic spatial plans are requesting a growing effort of coordination and negotiation with representatives from society, and business private sector (see also LeGalès, 2001). Private developers for example are more and more held responsible in the provision of new services at local scale and in the provision of new utilities and infrastructures connected to real estate improvements. Many site development programmes require not only additional financing from external founders, but are also needing tight integration between sectoral policies and internal coordination (Tosics, Dukes, 2005). This is especially typical of those initiatives aimed at the revitalisation of dismissed industrial sites, or overstressed areas and neighbourhoods which require a set of environmental measures, social care programmes as well as real estate or assets improvements. Urban programs therefore are often a field of contact between different organizations, they can also be the field for the formation of new ones, such as promotion agencies for local development or public real estate agencies acting in the name of a local authority. In this context municipalities around Europe play the role of the main character, since they are legally entitled to steer and promote the majority of initiatives which have been located in their territory, and they are often asked to verify projects in their quality and their consistency with the local community interests. Regardless to their legal framework, every municipality has been developing its own approach to foster urban transformations. In this article we restrict the focus of our attention to a set of Italian experiences developed at the municipal level. In their specific case Italian municipalities are financially and legally the peripheral level of Italian administration (which also comprises central ministries, regions and provinces), however they are the main responsible for developing the urban policies and guiding the core urban and territorial changes around the country. The key evidence is that at least in the last fifteen years every municipality has conceived an urban policy in an original way by using a distinctive combination of new and old planning tools and instruments (Palermo, 2001, 2005). For these purposes we will refer here to some major Italian municipalities - Genoa, Venice, Milan, Turin, Rome, Trento, Naples, Verona, Pesaro - confronting with the themes of metropolitan scale development. Our discussion is drawn upon a series of meetings and interviews with selected managers responsible for having attended the preparation, and the implementation of the key programs and interventions within municipalities. On that basis, and with the integration of written documents we reconstructed how those leading initiatives for each municipality’s urban policy gained a place in their respective organizations and agendas. As a consequence we collected over time relevant information about the moves Italian municipalities make in order to give space to new types of action and intervention, in particular for shaping and making an urban policy work. Regardless the specificity of each case, some general trends can be noticed.

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Until now these municipalities tend to focus their efforts in constructing special purpose task units mainly in the field of urban planning and site development. Other experiences in other sectoral policies are not infrequent (social policies, shareholdings strategies), but they do not play an important role yet, as they are mainly limited to the experimentation of new simplified procedures or are easily subjected to discontinuation. Task units represent the most frequent addition to the ordinary competencies within local authorities, and their activation often depends on a strong political commitment (Council Members, or the Mayor), and the presence of a charismatic general manager acting as an arbiter within internal conflicts developing around administrative components. The most striking aspect is that, additional competencies present a very limited set of specializations (or configuration of activities). We briefly present them.

1- Evaluation and negotiation in private real estate investments happen whenever a municipality considers the necessity to pay a dedicated effort in verifying the quality and the impacts at the urban scale of the major real estate projects. Particular attention is given to large development sites such as brownfields or regeneration areas. In many Italian cities major transformations are municipality-driven. Real estate investments can be encouraged by a local authority (such as in Naples or Genoa, or Rome) promoting location on a given site, or acting as a host of ministerial and regional additional funds. Otherwise when real estate market is interpreted as independent and dynamic, a municipality (such as Turin, Milan, Venice) provides one or more special interface units with developers, in order to select the most preferable private real estate investment proposals, or change the balance between the financial return to the private and the provision of utilities, services and infrastructures, to the public. In some cases they operate in order to enrich the contents of proposals. 2 -Development and social regeneration of overstressed neighbourhoods. Public housing neighbourhoods, or urban deprived areas require articulated interventions mixing social care and job education programmes with physical building rehabilitation, and townscape design projects. These programmes are mainly financed by a wide set of public institutions, or are the focus for a partnership between municipality, third sector agencies, representatives from local communities. Participation is often promoted through boards, workshops and local agencies (like in Turin), eventually influencing the contents of the choices within the very municipalities, alternatively being incorporated in decentralized offices (like in Rome). 3- The monitoring, briefing and coordination for European initiatives and programmes. Since the late nineties, the European Union started a set of self-financed initiatives, aimed at providing money for innovative multi-sectoral programmes (such as Urban) at local and regional level and improving the quality of life within hot spots of urban and rural areas around Europe. After a first generation of experiences which were mainly directed to the realization of themed-programmes, several municipalities considered European Union as a valuable source for founding their urban policies, especially on the side of social and economic promotion measures (Venice, Pesaro, Verona, Turin), installing dedicated groups for monitoring the Union Initiatives (especially in Venice and Verona), building relations with European offices, providing timely linkage between initiatives from the municipality, and potential admission to European funding, by involving all responsible offices. In these cases European contribution becomes instrumental (or additional) to the projects of the municipality. 4- Strategic plans formulation (or territorial marketing). Be it a spatial overview of the city and its expansion, or an attempt to link internal programming and budgeting functions with local community participation for setting a comprehensive agenda, ‘strategic planning’ is commonly used as a label for all those attempts of formulating a prospective scenario of reference for a municipality, its community and its territory, and then select consensus-provided interventions for all relevant policy fields. This kind of Strategic plans, has been spreading around Italy over the last five years, and almost every major municipality has tried to develop its own (Milan makes an exception).

These new fields of activities are sometimes combined. In Genoa a project finding function is the result of merging a strategic planning (1) with promotion and approval of major real estate projects (4). In Turin and Milan the main programmes for rehabilitation of overstressed neighbourhood (2) are primarily financed through the European Union (3). In Pesaro participation to programmes from European Union and other institutions (3) is the keystone for the implementation of strategic and marketing plans (4). The above discussion provides basic information on which novelties can be found around Italian municipalities especially in the field of the management of urban projects and policies. It is not our concern whether these fields of activity have met success or affirmation. Instead we will focus on how they have been successfully initiated, and inserted in their organizational contexts. In their respects, negotiation on real estate investment, strategic planning, neighbourhood revitalization, EU financing finding, enrich the traditional profile of intervention of Italian municipalities in the field of urban policies - which was formerly confined to the implementation of land use plans, zoning permissions and the financing of public works. In turn these new fields of activity represent an embodiment of the three issues – inter-organizational coordination, public steering, temporary arrangement, which have been discussed

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in the first section of this paper. These innovative experiences of urban management are actually contributing to changing the face of Italian municipalities their role and their action profile, at least in the field of urban policies. Also they provide a valuable opportunity to observe and understand what is actually done in order to engage an organization into new or unpractised paths. 4. Grounding administrative change. On the variety of experiences and concepts of project structures When we are willing to introduce a new experimental activity into a municipality, or we want to commit some people within its organization on an emerging issue or task, we do not necessarily know anything about its advantages and its costs. The weight of uncertainties is such that there is no way to convince people on the adequacy of a proposed intervention (Klijn, Koppenjan 2004). This is particularly true when we want to start doing something that has never been done before in the place we have been working for. However people should be moved in some way though. We will consider here two practical situations.

(1) For example the appointed executive to the strategic planning in Venice, is asked to start consultations for a strategic plan formulation, and he has to build an agenda with the representatives from local community in order to identify the agreed measures for promoting local development in the Venice area. In this case there is a common understanding, among the Mayor, two elected officers, the general manager, the appointed chief executive, and an external advisor on how a strategic plan should look like, and what a process of partnership formation should work out. However there is no idea on what should be done in order to engage the municipality resources. A failure would be a waste of precious time, or even worse, an overload to the ordinary structure of the municipality. They cannot be sure if the produced effort will generate external recognition of this new activity, and a demand for it. (2) A similar problem raised in a municipality like Milan when the administration faced the problem of how to introduce a new kind of programme aimed at urban regeneration. The programme is a recent addition to statutory planning tools created with a formal planning act by the Lombardy Region in 1999. It is clearly defined in its requirements and contents. However would developers be interested in getting involved in these new programmes instead of the old zoning permissions? How the municipality should use these tools with respect with its own policies? The main key decisors in the municipality of Milan have interpreted this need as an opportunity to activate an effective negotiating function for enriched real estate and mixed housing projects in the area of Milan. However, even if people inside the municipality was perceiving the opportunities offered by this new kind of programmes, they had no clear evidence of success, neither they had any idea of the possible response from the part of the real estate investors affected by this choice.

Who will do that, where we do that? The basic assumption is that initiating something new in an organisation starts as an opportunity for rallying people and other resources around a “flag”. The above examples show that two elements are fixed, a definition of what should be done, and a definition of what may represent a resource from the point of view of public managers, at that time. And that the right people is willing to do it. But experience of urban management in Italian municipalities also shows us that there is something else: the distinctive ways municipalities are directing resources toward the “flag”. From this point onward we will focus on this aspect. The need of building a task group has often been (mis)interpreted as the need to create a new box in addition to the existing organizational chart of a municipality. This additive approach is mainly based on the idea that people and resources might be easily acquired, from inside and outside the inventory of an organization. Wealthy municipalities (like Rome) can allow themselves to enlarge their own size by hiring more personnel or opening new brand offices. In some cases the burden of a new innovative task is transferred to a new independent constituency (an agency or a special purpose vehicle). External bodies and new offices have one common feature for sure: they have little or no impacts onto the existing structures and activities of a public administration, their action being bounded to a formal set of competencies and responsibilities. These cases make an exception in practice. Most municipalities are currently facing internal cutbacks. Especially in the Italian context, resources in the short term are as given. Solutions then have to be worked out with what is at hand. As a consequence projects are mostly a result or a process of a redistribution of roles tasks and rights within the organization, than a simple addition to what already exists. Projects are often referred by Italian public managers as “extra-ordinary activities”. Public managers interviewed on the subject report how there is a strong contrast between the ordinary activities and the so called “extra-ordinary” ones. Ordinary activities do not imply constructive relations among offices: only timely communication about their achievements. Extra-ordinary activities imply dedicated relations and exchange of proposals and services between them, and require internal coordination in order to design and implement effective solutions. Since extra ordinary activities play in the management of urban projects and policies a prominent role, urban management within municipalities is confronted with a specific problem: how to generate a new layer of roles and connections over structures which are generally defined on the basis of sectoral competencies.

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Figure 2: Italian Municipalities feature three main components: (1) a political-administrative edge, which encompasses the Mayor (Sindaco), and the Council members (Assessori) acting in stance of the mayor for selected policies or matters. It provides goals and orientations to policies. Often a General Manager or a Secretary integrate connection functions between the political edge and the rest of the administraton, and they promote measures in order to improve the accountability of the structures. (2) the executive group (dirigenza), provides general process and human resources management. Appointed executives are also the responsible for agreements which engage the municipality with external organizations, they also provide technical direction to complex tasks and participate in their contents definition (3) Ordinary

staff attends the achievement of core activities. Policies represent a reference criterion for partitioning these three bodies around traditional lines of service provision, or into departments. Between contiguous groups there is a need to formalize connection, which often results in added connective figures or responsibility roles. The shape of these second layer structures is strongly affected by the first layer structures. In Italian municipalities there are components that can be moved, others that cannot be at all. The fact that something is moveable from one place to another (e.g. staff personnel from a responsible to another, a whole office with his head from a department to another, an appointed executive to a set of offices to another, an assigned objective to a department to another) makes it a resource for public management. In turn what cannot be moved is being considered as an operational condition. The most striking aspect in Italian municipalities is that the same component in an organization can be moved in one municipality, and not in another one. By recognizing the recurrency of certain elements used in the formation of project structures we are able to graphically represent these structures by using a common symbology, which is also useful for a meaningful comparison. During our survey we have been able to identify at least seven discrete solutions. They are represented and described here in detail. (1) A Multiple Conference stream model In those municipaltites where departments are strongly committed to elected officers, complex projects requiring inter-sectoral coordination, face a difficult managerial context. Departemental divisions cannot be easily overcome, especially in the case where departments respond only to a member of the Council and are strongly influenced by their orientation. Cooperation outside the boundaries of single departments happens only under political mandates, or under an agreement among heads of departments. When a municipality like Rome, has to design a complex intervention such as is the location of a new expo and congress center, encompassing brownfield restoration, road and subway connection, marketing measures, new zoning permissions. Every single department cannot manage on its own this task, but only a part of it. Convergence and timely decisions by several offices from different departments, is then strongly required. A process of cooperation around that task is produced over time. It generally starts with the formation of a steering committee, which is more an initiator than a monitor. It encompasses all council members at stake and their respective heads of department. It produces a basic agreement in order to let an appointed executive from one department or office (generally the one who is most involved in the general scope of the project), defined as leader or coordinator, to activate a series of meetings. In accordance to the starting agreement, the leader or coordinator, gathers the appointed executives of those offices at stake with the project and determine step by step what every single office could do form its part in order to let this project progress. Deadlines are fixed, a complex task is then exploded in several sub-tasks with respect to the field of responsibility of each office. In the following meetings, activities are informally monitored, and additional objectives are incrementally set. In case conflict arises among participants the coordinator activates again the steering group in order to set divergencies.

Figure 3: Multiple Conference Stream Model

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This process also takes place at a smaller scale. In the case of Milan there is a problem of connecting the activities between two departments sharing many interdependencies (one for urban planning, one for environment and transportation) The steering function is mainly covered by appointed executives, at a technical level with little participation of the Council members or political representatives. Especially in the urban planning department, the need to foster cooperation inside and outside the boundaries of the department itself with its counterpart is so strong that those offices responsibel for the management of urban regeneration projects develop a true competency in coordinating and directing such processes in the form a stream of conferences and meetings.

(2) Manager mobilization model (Venice) There have been successful attempts to disconnect both the executive and the Council members from direct control of the offices, in order to create a more flexible system, like in Venice, between 1999 and 2004. Still, traditional specifications of sectoral policies of a municipality justify the persistence of departments. However such structures (which have been labeled as central directorates in Venice) cover only staffing functions (accountability, human resources, monitoring, programming). Projects are nailed down in the leadership of a project manager. A member of the executive is in principle considered as the staff of the general manager and she receives letter of assigment by the general manager of achieving a specific task. Tasks goes from the activation or experimentation of a strategic planning process and the selection of prospective partners, to the management of a set

of urban regeneration programmes which are concentrated in a particularly sensitive area. Since that moment, the project manager refers mainly to its own council member with regards to the contents of the decisions to be taken. On the basis of the assigment the project manager is temporary dislocated into one deparment (then under the monitoring and responsibility of its respective head-department), and a number of offices are allowed to his direction. Depending on the case, task is concluded and project manager is engaged in a new different matter. In alternative she is dislocated again to another department possessing the necessary competencies in order to successfully handle new phases of the project. (3) Agency medium model (Turin, Venice, Genoa, Naples)

The management of complex projects, entailing negotiation with private investors such as the location of a new productive district, or a neighbourhood regeneration project based on consensus building, often represent an overload to the activities of an ordinary sector. A sector alone usually features enough weight and representiveness when decisions are made in its own organization, to drive attention on a project, or at least it can exercise this influence in specific situations. Unfortunately it is quite difficult for this sector to continuously represent external issues and demands to the rest of its own organization, design proposals, and in addition, simultaneously manage contacts and negotiations with external referees. In Turin the management of neighbourhood revival programmes is activated through participated processes, and start with a long and intensive process of

confrontation between a special unit. At the same time, this internal unit has to find financing solutions, even with the contribution from European Union. Moreover this unit must formally design solutions and activate other sectors, in order to enact other sectoral intervention. In Genoa even special task units with strong programming powers and political committment have not enough time, neither persons, in order to attend on twenty complex regeneration projects at the same moment (Genoa). Also, there are times where public real estate property might be used to enhance processes of urban regeneration (Venice), especially in public private partnership projects; however it is difficult for a municipality to achieve such a result by simply engaging a single office having no financial authonomy.

Figure 5: Agency Medium Model

Figure 4: Manager Mobilization Model

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In such cases the need to manage the contacts, the content and finance of a programme leads a municipality to devolve key functions to external constituencies for the achievement of that programme. Generally these activities mosty pertain contact management and negotiation on what external stakeholders want, or the promotion of partnership investments, setting all needed conditions for their achievement. These external bodies then provide bridging between sectors within the municipality and other organizations, but most of all they simplify the municipality’s job by selecting only the core processes where the municipality’s contribution results crucial. Local partnership agencies, site development promotion agencies, participated societies acting as public real estate portfolio managers, strategic planning associations are possible configurations. The interface between the municipalty and these external constituencies, is resolved by an internal sector –which is also responsible for having promoted the agency formation and its internal design. The referred sector, under sollicitation of the external constituency, provides the design and formulation of inter-sectoral programmes, and coordinates intervention, by activating all responsible centers –with some political aid. In turn it participates in negotiation processes whenever it is required its intervention, but only on purposes stated by the agency.

(4) (5) (4) Staff Mobilization Model(Naples) Urban planning departments (such as in Naples) can experience competing issues. The promotion of new processes (linked to real estate programmes and land use plans), is confronted with a scarcity of resources, personnel and competencies. Italian law states executives are the only ones in public administration which are enabled in formulating and signing in all contracts, bill and agreements. When a small department acts as a collector of contracts – each contract being a partnership project, executives need to pool or divide their resources among them. In this framework the Head of department provides a nexus between political orientations and practical contingencies. As ‘contractors’ with external organizations (such as real estate developers or regional institutions, or a port authority), they have to confront on goal and priority setting, in order to determine which position the department has to take in response to an external negotiation. As ‘officers’, executives are appointed with a set of persons and resources in order to achieve their objectives. Every executive namely is directing a staff unit, but in practice its temporary composition, its competencies, and its assets define a special purpose unit. New initiatives are inserted then in a context of exchange between contracting agents (the executives). In such cases new tasks and initiatives do not depend on new figures or structures. Instead they can take place thanks to a staff mobilization process which happens on rounds within the boundaries of single departments. When this happens, staff units work as empty boxes. On the basis of the contingency they serve for, these boxes are filled with one single ideal tank containing all departmental resources. (5) Part time personnel involvement model (Milan, Verona) The promotion of new experimental procedures (such as the introduction of a new kind of land use planning instruments), or the activation of intersectoral initiatives, such as the evaluation and approval of mixed real estate projects in brownfields, require a pool of different competencies (financial evaluation, public works, environmental assessment, land use evaluation). With this purpose task units are conceived mainly as the joint contribution from several sectors with sensitive areas of specialization. The traditional partitioning of a municipality into departments (which are labeled as central directorates in Verona and Milan) often sets the limits to the extent of this kind of exchange. Since individuals carrying the needed competencies are few, they are often contended by their sectors, and they cannot be easily displaced from their original position. Municipalities like Milan and Verona, have conceived then special tasks and experimental activities as the main focus of a part-time involvment of internal staff. This way of

Figure 6: Staff Mobilization Model

Figure 7: Part-time involvement model

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activating people around contingent actions is intended to be a way of reducing conflict among ordinary units and special units generated by political mandate. They start after a Council Member or a General Manager provides an appointed executive with a set of objectives. This appointed executive is already the head of its own sector. His activity then is splitted between former or ordinary responsibilities and part time involvment as a project manager in an experimental activity, generally under strong political committment. The experimental activity also involves selected staff from different sectors: these people become formally part of the project task unit. In practice they are asked to participate to the project work schedule set by the project manager. Once their part-time activity is concluded, they can get back to their former sectors and attend to their respective responsibilties. Project task units are generally backed up by the political edge and the general manger of a municipality setting favourable conditions for financial resource assignment. Staff members participating to task units also provide a bridging function between the processes of the task units and the activation ot related ordinary procedures within the sectors they come from.

(6) Trigger unit model (Trento) - On Figure 8 The need to activate an innovative function such a strategic programming one in Trento has been tackled with the formation of a trigger unit. The full insertion of this new experimental function is subordinated to the measure of its effectiveness and its capacity to enhance new relations and produce additive results to the administrative performance. Task units are conceived then as standard offices or departments, generated under political

committment and a high degree of representiveness. However they are activated for a fixed time, with a clearly stated starting point as well as an ending one. So, task units represent a temporary projection of the administration and they simulate its performance as it had to do something it has never done before. Task units are formed by picking up selected staff from different offices, which act as contributors. Since then, a countdown begins. Countdown, is generally set in relation with the electoral cycle of the municipality (five years). It functions as a trigger for a final evaluation on the impacts and the results of the project unit. At the end of this period the task unit is discontinued. In case of positive evaluation, its discontinuation can be delayed or, a new internal arrangement can be promoted in order to intriduce the activities of the task unit into the municipality ordinary field of activities. Trigger task units, are also suitable for the management of single programmes in order to promote timely conclusion of activities. (7) Special political-administrative interface model (Genoa, Pesaro). Municipalities like Genoa and Pesaro have developed a specific concern in separating extra-ordinary activities from the ordinary ones. As a result they concentrated all project management and task functions in permanent units which are responsible for formulating all contingent actions and initiatives, presenting some degree of technical difficuties. In this case these Project Units (labeled also as directorates) are responsible to externally represent municipalities on subjects over which external negotiation or confrontation is needed (urban policies, shareholdings strategies, traffic and intrastructures). As these units are mainly concerned with traslating all policies in discrete and well defined initiatives, they need enough representiveness to affect budgeting decisions and programming activities. For this purpose these units are tightly linked to the political edge and the general manager. As a consequence they have at their disposal enough representiveness to sign contracts and define their contents, they can also manage the portfolio of strategic initiatives over which the municipality is engaged. Project units are designed then as a group of project managers focused on a specific theme or field (policy for urban areas development, shareholding strategies, traffic and infrastructure, strategic

Figure 8: Trigger Unit Model

Figure 9: Political Administrative

Interface Model

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and insitutional relations). Members from project units are activated then around a given task, and they receive internal mandate (both political and technical) to set all operational conditions, sign agreements with partners, and activate sectors within the municipality in order to achieve the various steps in the process. Confrontation between project managers and political edge allows the municipality to establish a consistent set of measures, and monitor its engagement with external organizations. Whenever they require people and documentation from ordinary offices, project managers have the ability to request aid and support directly to these offices. In practice these requests result mandatory. Offices are expected to detach their own staff to a project manager, or to complete needed procedures on his/her demand. 5. A variety sharing issues: drawing conclusions from experiences. What are all project structures working for?The unfilled gap. We tried to provide empirical evidence on how those municipalities we have been discussing so far have developed their distinctive ways in introducing projects within their own agendas. We expect to have covered only a small array of possibilities. But it is a fact that even a very limited set of experiences, in a specific field of action, shows us how public organizations have at their disposal a wide set of solutions in order to insert new activities in their organizations. This variety should suggest also a variety of managerial problems. However this is not the case. Interviewed project managers tell us task units share in common two operational problems. (1) Double-side interface. In many cases urban policies entail relationships between a municipality and external

referees at stake. Project structures are then deliberately created with the clear purpose to generate an interface between the municipality they represent, and external referees which are involved in a given initiative. As a consequence project structures can be described as a part acting as the whole. As a part of their organizations task units have to sustain confrontation and coordination processes with all offices and centers at stake in the programme they take care. On the other side they have to provide in time external responses. And they have to build these responses to external referees from the collection and synthesis of internal instances and reactions. In turn once they receive external sollicitations from other organizations, units acting as interface have to redirect queries to other units able to develop competent answers. The difficulty of such a challange does not generally lies in the extent of internal and external relations, neither in their content. It’s the timing and pacing instead makes a big deal for public managers, managing constructive relation with external organizations.

(2) Strategic control function. The public realm is a fragmented one. There are divisions among sectors, departments, and, policies. If fragmentation is a condition, the way a public organization has to decide where to be engaged or not, ask for a continuous effort of adjusting and readjusting people’s ideas on what the same organization should do in the present and in the future. Project structures then daily face the problem of confronting different frameworks for action, which come from different offices. A task unit, for example faces the problem of confrontating with the other offices’ frameworks whenever they need a contribution from these offices. In many cases task units try to tentatively engage all related offices under a strategic control function: a selection of courses of action in order to reduce interferences. In many cases they have not enough strength to promote such a thing.

These problems have been represented in the two figures above. Experience reveals we are far from reaching a solution to these two problems. Political randomness, (Klijn, Koppenjan, 2000), ordinary issues prevailing to the extra-ordinary ones, the need to formalize policy specializations as criterion for connecting the executives with the political edge, often neutralize the work of project structures and generate a gap between what project structures would potentially do, and

Figure 10: Double Side Interface Figure 11: Strategic Control Function

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what they actually can do. Making double-side interfaces, and providing strategic control are more the result of a daily effort by project managers than the simple identification of formal solutions. Path for innovation in public organizations is not a single one, neither a simple one. The next four points will try to say why. 1. Great variety but not a revolutionary one. The insertion of project structures in Italian municipalities, rarely, or never means a rethinking of their broad structure. Surely, there have been cases of rules revision, but in such situations these are limited to introducing incremental formal arrangements. On the basis of these cases project structures do not represent a paradigm shift in public organizations neither they represent an ideal clash between a traditional bureaucracy and a matrix organization ideal. More modestly, project structures formulation is more the product of a compromise between internal committment on a task, and the inheritance of past decisions and the organizational settings. As a consequence project structures have to be considered as a characteristic feature of public organizations. The only novelties are that when we want to pay attention to inter-organizational relations, this internal component is used more extensively with consequent internal new problems. And we need to learn how to better exploit them. 2. Not ever-lasting. As project structures are by definition newcomers in their organization, they are continuously subjected to internal and external threats. In many cases they do not always receive the aknowledgement they deserve, and they are easily discarded as a meaningless waste of time by a new general management for example, or a newly elected Councilmen which is more concerned in their future electoral programme than on the results of the past experimentations. Or even worse they end up with noiselessly fading out. Head of departments may simply bring vetoes on project managers activities. So, innovations depend on enduring a promoting role or voice inside the organization, hosted in the key decision nodes. We have kept an eye on the experiences we observed for one year: and we noticed how project management can be strongly affected by very small contextual changes (such the opening of a new office in competition, or the difficulty to hire an individual with needed expertise). Many times a project is stuck in a negotiation as she needs to operationally translate too lousy policy guidelines, or framework documents. All this does not affect only the duration of life for a single project structure. It is the very orientation of a municipality on developing projects and temporary arrangements which is under risk: many experiences of great interest have finally encountered a tragic ending. For instance, in Venice and Pesaro, harsh confrontation among council members about policy mandates, have let fall apart all interest for task units and the important role they have been playing. 3. The transient state of public sector innovation. Innovations are not acquired in principle A process of inserting a new activity even in four five years may be easily reversed. From this perspective the so called ‘public realm’ and its change is rather the sum of many small efforts at the micro scale management. Observed experiences show how this scale of intervention becomes decisive to change the profile of intervention of public organizations. As a consequence we do not see a legislative reform which determines the change of public sector in its general settings. As we have seen change may be promoted in several ways, and under risk of discontinuation. Project structures initiation and prosecution, is requiring a continuous effort. As a consequence the endurance of motivated figures throughout public administration is decisive. 4. Where added value lays. Not the way we are doing something, but what we produce. Project structures describe possible paths for introducing, promoting or anticipating a new set of activities for public sector. Project structures are essentially attempts to place a new activity in the agenda of a public administration. Their innovative contribution does not (only) lay in the way they do something with respect to the past. As we have discussed in the third section of this paper, they are mainly contributing in replacing a policy action set with another. Therefore public sector role in the future will depend on the perception of which kind of actions (and contents) will be needed or not. As it results from this paper, the way urban policies evolution worked with municipalities represent a promising area of survey: new kind of actions entail new management problems. However it is clear that new management solutions are a only transient and secondary issue if they have little or no impact in the current action set of a public administration. In fact it is what an organization does that defines its role towards its environment. Further Developments This paper has stressed the importance of how, when and why project structures are shaped and formed in public organizations; it aimed at illustrating the fine grain detail of some project structures developed in a autonomous and original way by different local authorities in Italy. The thesis illustrated in this paper is that the difficulties which project structures encounter in their formation and affirmation, can render the actual limits to public sector innovation, and its actual possibilities to change its own profile. Since these issues have not been developed in detail this paper has necessarily tried to provide some examples and, also has tried to show a way to look at them. By using this approach we have reported the existence of two key problems at the operational level for public organizations. They may not be easily solved, since public sector is affected by several issues limiting its action and its capacity to engage.

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Also, in the process we have noticed two aspects which can prospect a possible projection for this research. We briefly review them here. Why urban scale matters? Our incursion from the field of urban management to project management raises one question. Why urban policies are so sensitive to project management? The last generation urban planning programmes show us how integration is promoted through convergence of sectoral polices on target areas. By now the only clear evidence is that only geography works as a criterion to make converge sectoral programmes. Project structures inventory. On its uses and opportunities. The set of project structures lays open. On this regard we are convinced that a survey of this variety of solutions will extend our understanding on how public organizations engage themselves into new fields of activities. The problem is not evaluating which solutions are most promising ones (an easy temptation). More practically such a survey may be an aid to public managers for understanding which choices and problems they have been facing so far, while promoting the formation of a new activity into their own organization. In fact these project structures today are more a part of a tacit knowledge, than a subject of exchange between the ones who tentatively practice public administration change. We want to do something new within this organization. What shall we move in order to do it? How shall we move it? Public managers could do that if they take into account specific factors emerging from the history of their organizations. Project structures may be observed at least with two purposes. On one hand the difficulties encountered in project structure formation, may provide ground for a reconsideration of institutional design. On the other hand project structures may be observed in their use in order to build promote and sustain public-private partnerships. References Allison, G.T., Jr. (1980) ‘Public and Private Management: Are They Fundamentally Alike in All Unimportant Respects? ’

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