Guest editorial

Citation

Lannon, J., Aherne, D. and Burke, C. (2016), "Guest editorial", International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, Vol. 9 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJMPB-03-2016-0026

Guest editorial

Article Type: Guest editorial From: International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, Volume 9, Issue 3.

Project management in international development (ID)

Projects have always been part of the ID landscape and efforts to achieve social change. Since its inception in the 1950s, a good proportion of ID aid has been spent through projects funded by multilateral or bilateral agencies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). The 1960s saw the development of large scale industrial projects with significant funding going directly to governments, particularly in African countries. In the 1970s there was a shift to a poverty focus while the 1980s saw an increase in multilateral aid, with the World Bank and the IMF playing a more central role. The 1990s brought closer links between aid and democratic accountability, while in 2000 the world embarked on its largest ID project ever in the form of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). These time-bound and quantified targets for addressing extreme poverty were agreed at the largest gathering of world leaders in history, the United Nations Millennium Summit[1].

At the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit in September 2015, governments agreed a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, fight inequality and injustice, and tackle climate change by 2030. The SDGs are part of a broad sustainability agenda that went beyond the MDGs to addresses the root causes of poverty and the need for development that works for all people. As such, they are universally applicable, with relevance for communities well beyond those situated in what are called “developing” countries.

Sustainable development requires a holistic way of looking at the world, at communities and at human life. It requires a recognition that those involved including donors, NGOs, governments and local communities have different perceptions, values, philosophies, aims and ambitions (Blewitt, 2014). This presents challenges for the management of ID projects. For a start success may mean different things for different stakeholders (Diallo and Thuillier, 2005; Ika and Hodgson, 2014), even to the extent that a project can be deemed a failure by one stakeholder group and a success by another. Consequently it can be difficult for international NGOs to successfully initiate, manage and deliver in accordance with traditional approaches to project management. Stakeholders invariably have different priorities and as a result their views often collide. In particular if a project is perceived more as a donor project than a local project, as is often the case in ID (Ika, 2012), the challenges can be particularly acute.

ID projects cover a range of activities including infrastructure, utilities, agriculture, transportation, water, electricity, energy, sewage, health, nutrition, population and urban development, education, environment, social development, reform and governance (Diallo and Thuillier, 2005). They share characteristics with conventional projects in that they deliver goods and services; they are limited, temporary, unique and multidisciplinary; they face time, cost and quality constraints; and they require specific tools and techniques for their implementation (Ika, 2012). Nonetheless a primary emphasis on human development and on creating a better world for everyone in a society sets many ID initiatives apart from projects whose success is evident in more immediate and tangible ways.

In terms of project management there has been a shift away from the traditional approach that was adopted in the early days of ID (Ika and Hodgson, 2014). This was prescriptive and instrumental in nature, with an emphasis on the identification and codification of best practices and critical success factors (CSFs). In response to the limitations of this Universalist approach, the mid-1980s saw attempts to re-contextualise projects, drawing on social constructionist traditions in management and other social sciences, and paying more attention to soft factors like leadership and culture. This gave rise to a contingency approach to project management, in line with broader attempts to tailor styles to project types (Shenhar and Dvir, 2007).

In this special issue we present differing conceptual and empirical perspectives on project management in the complex world of ID. The first paper by Mohamed Yamin and Adriel Sim is a study of perceptions of ID project success by local project teams in the Maldives. Using a conceptual framework developed by Ika et al. (2012) to examine the relationship between CSFs and project success as perceived by World Bank project supervisors, they found that the perspectives of the local project teams was more focused on monitoring, which they can control, than on design, coordination, training and institutional environment CSFs that are outside their control. In noting the heavy reliance on donors to come up with project proposals on behalf of the recipient country, they highlight a significant challenge when it comes to the sustainability agenda.

Following on from this, the second paper by Rachel Julien looks at demonstrating results. Broadly speaking there are at least three separate key stakeholders in ID projects: the donors who pay for but do not receive project deliverables, the implementing units involved in their execution, and the target beneficiaries who expect some benefit from them (Khang and Moe, 2008). Julien explores the different and at times competing interests and expectations when these come together to bring about social change. Her paper focuses on stakeholder influence on the demonstration of results, and why actual results are frequently not the same as demonstrated results. The gap between actual and demonstrated results is symptomatic of the gap between the localised context in which projects take place and the politicised and powerful international system that has its own very different needs to meet.

The third paper by Peter McEvoy, Malcolm Brady and Ronald Munck looks at the concept of capacity and how it fits into the complex landscape of ID. They question whether the predominance of results based management (RBM) among donors and NGOs (the implementing agencies) are appropriate to the reality of the complex and unstable environments in which capacity development projects are undertaken. By examining complex adaptive systems thinking and how it can offer a countervailing perspective to RBM, they propose that an approach like this which recognises the complexity of social systems and has already been absorbed into the public sector management literature can provide a complementary and worthwhile addition to the standard tools and conventions of ID project design and evaluation.

Paper four by Svetlana Cicmil and Eamonn O'Laocha challenges some of the more fundamental assumptions about projects as a means through which social change can be achieved. Drawing on the documented reflections of local participants in community development projects from Rwanda and Zimbabwe, they argue that social good is local and contextual, and that the instrumental and functionalist approaches adopted in projectised interventions is incongruent to the collective action required to achieve it. In doing so they take the debate well beyond the traditional approaches to project management and the contingent approaches that emphasise the importance of people and perspectives in ID projects, to provide a critical examination of the meaning and ethics of ID and its global projectification. Using the notion of community development as a means to explore the nature and key intentions commonly assumed by expressions like ID, international aid and sustainable development, they propose that social change requires a redefinition of projects and project management as a participatory virtue that is beyond methodology and the inclusion of beneficiaries in the sharing of benefits.

Together the selection of papers in this special issue demonstrates how ID projects are arenas of negotiated compromise in which an uneasy relationship exists between the reporting of results and the achievement of real social change. Accountability-for-results-oriented tools like RBM (Ika and Hodgson, 2014) are an essential and unavoidable aspect of the ID project landscape since the bureaucratic aid agencies continue to insist on the demonstration of value for money. In keeping with the rationalist perspective on project management, effective ID project management methodologies are also seen as a key condition for the monitoring and appraisal of development interventions (Golini and Landoni, 2014). But as Ika and Hodgson (2014) point out, project management is a social construct that cannot be objective. If project goals and objectives set by donors are the source of meaning for all stakeholders, local meanings, experiences and voices may become lost. Even the tools provided by the project management methodologies which are invariably designed to satisfy the needs of donors and implementing units can exclude those who should benefit from ID projects. The challenge therefore is to find ways that project management can contribute to meeting the social responsibilities of sustainable development, as well as the economic and political imperatives that determine development interventions.

The need to engage in learning between sectors and fields (Söderlund, 2011; Gauthier and Ika, 2012) suggests that a broader reflection on the lessons from ID projects would be beneficial. Projects everywhere can benefit from a re-examination of issues like participation and control, and from explorations of how real rather than reported value and success can be properly understood. Exploring and challenging established project management imperatives in contexts that offer a myriad of competing perspectives and agendas is worthwhile, and can offer insights into project management in other complex environments. There is need and opportunity for more high impact research in the area of ID in particular, not least because of the extent to which it broadens engagement with project management discourses. As a starting point this special issue opens the door on some helpful debates in the sector.

John Lannon, Dan Aherne and Catriona Burke

Kemmy Business School, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland

Note

1. See www.unmillenniumproject.org

References

Blewitt, J. (2014), Understanding Sustainable Development, Routledge, New York, NY

Diallo, A. and Thuillier, D. (2005), “The success of international development projects, trust and communication: an African perspective”, International Journal of Project Management, Vol. 23 No. 3, pp. 237-252

Gauthier, J.B. and Ika, L.A. (2012), “Foundations of project management research: an explicit and six-facet ontological framework”, Project Management Journal, Vol. 43 No. 5, pp. 5-23

Golini, R. and Landoni, P. (2014), “International development projects by non-governmental organizations: an evaluation of the need for specific project management and appraisal tools”, Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal, Vol. 32 No. 2, pp. 121-135

Ika, L.A. (2012), “Project management for development in Africa: why projects are failing and what can be done about it”, Project Management Journal, Vol. 43 No. 4, pp. 27-41

Ika, L.A. and Hodgson, D. (2014), “Learning from international development projects: blending critical project studies and critical development studies”, International Journal of Project Management, Vol. 32 No. 7, pp. 1182-1196

Ika, L.A., Diallo, A. and Thuiller, D. (2012), “Critical success factors for World Bank projects: an empirical imvestigation”, International Journal of Project Management, Vol. 30 No. 1, pp. 105-116

Khang, D.B. and Moe, T.L. (2008), “Success criteria and factors for international development projects: a life-cycle-based framework”, Project Management Journal, Vol. 39 No. 1, pp. 72-84

Shenhar, A.J. and Dvir, D. (2007), Reinventing Project Management: The Diamond Approach to Successful Growth and Innovation, Harvard Business Review Press, Boston, MA

Söderlund, J. (2011), “Pluralism in project management: navigating the crossroads of specialization and fragmentation”, International Journal of Management Reviews, Vol. 13 No. 2, pp. 153-176