Study on dissipative structure of mega railway infrastructure project management system

Purpose The mega railway infrastructure projects are faced with complex environments and multi-level management challenges. Thus, the mega railway infrastructure project management system not only needs to focus on its composition, but also needs to consider changes and impacts of internal and external environment. Design/methodology/approach This study attempts to introduce the concept of dissipative structure from the perspective of complexity theory and constructs a positive entropy and negentropy flow index system for mega railway infrastructure project management system in order to analyze the factors of management system more deeply. The Brusselator model is used to construct the structure of the mega railway infrastructure project management system, and the entropy method is used to calculate the positive entropy and negentropy values to verify whether the management system is a dissipative structure. Findings A plateau railway project in China was used as an example for an empirical study, not only its own characteristics are analyzed, but also the role of constraints and facilitation of the internal and external environment. Based on the research results, several effective suggestions are put forward to improve the stability and work efficiency of mega railway infrastructure project management system. Originality/value This study demonstrates that mega railway infrastructure project management system has the characteristics of dissipative structure. It can provide theoretical support for the development of mega railway infrastructure project management system from disorderly state to orderly state.