The only real thing he studied in this comparison is rehearsal and timing.
The British death marched to an unrealistically optimistic date while the Chinese were finished and testing long before the ship date.
Socio-technical systems theory is interesting but he doesn't explain how the Chinese did this better. The Chinese aren't exactly known for empowering their workers.
Well, systems theory in general is more or less accepted as 'correct'. As in, you'd be a fool to design any large scale project without looking at systems theory.
It's true that the author didn't go very much into detail into the Chinese vs British thing. In fact, I believe that the whole thing just served more as a hook for the meat of the piece (systems theory).
But anyhow, strictly speaking, when dealing with complex systems, you don't -need- super empowered individual workers. You just need empowered sub-units (with the lowest level as possible), and in general the smaller the sub-unit (all the way down to the individual... sometimes) will make your system more robust (and possibly more efficient). So in theory, you're lowest empowered sub-unit could just have a single manager/leader who still holds all the authority, while all the remaining team members are 'merely' well rehearsed and trained.
So in the case of the Chinese, you could just have empowered managers leading smallish work teams who are 'just' technically sound. Which seems to fit the stereotype good enough I guess.
And on the side, one of the wondrous things about systems theory is that it applies as much to the thing you're building as well as the process to build it. You can have an end product that when finally done preform beautifully from a system's standpoint (robust, efficient, adaptable, etc etc), but development be an utter hellhole (and the reverse).
If the workers aren't empowered, the success of the project is up to the leaders. Apparently the Chinese manager was more competent than the British one.
Agree, he successfully pointed out that Heathrow management entirely ignored the objections from the people who would have to implement the policies, but doesn't compare how these worker/management interactions were handled in Beijing - my guess: the process probably sucked just as much, it was just enforced in the most authoritarian way possible.
The British death marched to an unrealistically optimistic date while the Chinese were finished and testing long before the ship date.
Socio-technical systems theory is interesting but he doesn't explain how the Chinese did this better. The Chinese aren't exactly known for empowering their workers.