09 Learning from international development projects - Blending ...

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ScienceDirect International Journal of Project Management 32 (2014) 1182 – 1196 www.elsevier.com/locate/ijproman

Learning from international development projects: Blending Critical Project Studies and Critical Development Studies Lavagnon A. Ika a,⁎, Damian Hodgson b,1 a b

Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa, 55 Laurier Avenue East, Ottawa, Ontario K1N 6N5, Canada Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, Booth Street West, Manchester M15 6PB, United Kingdom Received 27 May 2013; received in revised form 19 December 2013; accepted 14 January 2014 Available online 31 January 2014

Abstract This article aims at making international development (ID) projects critical. To that end, it shows that project management (PM) in ID has evolved as an offshoot of conventional PM moving like the latter, but at varying speeds, from a traditional approach suited to blueprint projects where tools matter (1960s–1980s); towards eclectic and contingent approaches suited to process projects where people matter the most (1980s–now); and finally pointing towards the potential contribution of a critical perspective which focuses on issues of power (1980s–now). Consequently, it points to a confluence between the Critical Project Studies movement and Critical Development Studies movements. More specifically, it argues that the postdevelopment, the Habermasian, the Foucauldian and the neo-Marxist lenses may be effectively called upon in that scholarship. Thus, it suggests a framework to encourage project actors to reflect on their personal positions in light of the power relations which shape PM in ID. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. APM and IPMA. All rights reserved. Keywords: Critical Project Studies; Critical Development Studies; International development; Project management approaches; History; Power

1. Introduction The past few decades have witnessed a rapid expansion in the reach and impact of project management (PM) (Morris, 2013; Shenhar and Dvir, 2007), notably so outside its traditional heartlands in construction and engineering. Nevertheless, PM is still largely based on experience and research within a relatively narrow set of industries and sectors (Carden and Egan, 2008; Kloppenborg and Opfer, 2002). Since PM is a pluralistic area of management, navigating at the crossroads between specialisation and fragmentation, there is a pressing need to learn from other related areas, sectors, and fields (Gauthier and Ika, 2012; Morris, 2013; Söderlund, 2011). International development (ID) is one such sector which is specific yet similar to other sectors of PM application in terms of the ubiquitous use of projects to deliver change (Morris, 2013; Shenhar and Dvir, 2007) or in this case, economic ⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 613 562 5800x4781; fax: + 1 613 562 5960. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (L.A. Ika), [email protected] (D. Hodgson). 1 Tel.: + 44 161 3068791; fax: +44 161 3063505. 0263-7863/$36.00 © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. APM and IPMA. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2014.01.004

growth and/or poverty reduction in the global South drawing on financial support from the North. Within ID, the seemingly mundane, neutral and taken-for-granted conceptions of projects and PM practices have also become ubiquitous (Dar, 2008; Ika et al., 2010; Kerr, 2008; Landoni and Corti, 2011). Arguably, PM in ID has developed as an offshoot of conventional PM since the invention of ID by the US President Truman in the ‘Point Four’ of his Inaugural Address on 20 January 1949 (Rist, 2008). Thus, both conventional PM and PM in ID date back to the 1950s. Both share a central concern for change in the world. Both historically embody an entrenched inclination towards a managerialist, technocratic, and instrumental approach — a worldview of PM inherited from the fields of engineering, construction, and economics (Hodgson and Cicmil, 2006; Ika, 2012). Both thus have been dominated by assumptions that include an embedded faith in instrumental rationality, objectivity, reductionism and expectations of universal validity (Cicmil and Hodgson, 2006; Ika et al., 2010). Finally, both, as we will contend, have fairly similar project failure rates – at least by some accounts – and the managerial reasons for these failures seem to be virtually the same (Ika, 2012; Lovegrove et al., 2011; The Chaos Report, 2011).

L.A. Ika, D. Hodgson / International Journal of Project Management 32 (2014) 1182–1196

In light of this affinity, there have been remarkably few attempts to traverse the divide and compare theory and practice in both PM in ID and conventional PM. The conventional and indeed critical PM literatures have paid relatively little attention to ID projects (notable exceptions being Diallo and Thuillier, 2004; Ika, 2012; Ika et al., 2010; Khang and Moe, 2008; Landoni and Corti, 2011; Youker, 1989). Similarly, although much has been written about ID management (Cooke and Dar, 2008; Curtis and Poon, 2009; Thomas, 1996, 2000), the ID literature has rarely analysed in detail the nature of projects and PM (here, exceptions include Biggs and Smith, 2003; Gow and Morss, 1988; Hirschman, 1967; Hulme, 1995; Khwaja, 2009). This article represents an initial attempt to consider the development of both PM in ID and conventional PM, their limited interpenetration to date, and the purchase which may be gained through a critical analysis of each. Both fields, it will be argued, have moved at varying speeds from a universalist understanding of the applicability of a rationalist PM ‘methodology’ to a contingent and eclectic perspective faced with the limitations, failures and necessary adaptations of practices to diverse contexts, environments and settings. Both, we will argue, may be productively analysed drawing on critical perspectives (Hodgson and Cicmil, 2006; Kerr, 2008). While attempts have been made to bridge critical work on ID and critical work on management, as evidenced in the New Development Management (Cooke and Dar, 2008), very few authors have attempted to depict PM in ID in critical terms (Dar, 2008; Kerr, 2008), and those who do have so far failed to relate the critical ID management literature with work in the tradition of Critical Project Studies encompassed by the Making Projects Critical movement (Cicmil and Hodgson, 2006; Cicmil et al., 2009; Hodgson and Cicmil, 2006). Similarly, critical research on projects has much to learn from a fuller engagement with past and present research and practice in ID projects. Thus, this article is not critical in the sense that it challenges the inadequate or inappropriate use of PM practices in ID. Nor it is critical in some sense that there is a room for managerially improving these PM practices. Rather it is critical in the sense that there is something fundamentally wrong with the theory and practice of PM in ID. As such, it explores the interconnections that Critical Project Studies and Critical Development Studies (Cooke and Dar, 2008; Kerr, 2008) offer in terms of scholarship and alternative understandings of ID projects and PM. It promotes the idea that we have to introduce critical theory into the research process in order to move beyond the managerialist, narrow and taken-for-granted instrumentalism that bedevils yet largely defines both conventional PM and PM in ID (Dar, 2008; Hodgson and Cicmil, 2006; Kerr, 2008). This article is a conceptual one, based on a review of both the literatures of conventional PM and PM in ID and at times, for illustration purposes, uses two examples of ID projects. The contribution and value of the article are twofold. First, it is an attempt to contribute to making ID projects critical and, as such, it suggests a number of ways in which critical approaches could support analyses of ID projects, and a framework to encourage project actors to reflect on their personal positions in light of the power relations which shape PM in ID. Second, its

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insights could move forward critical research insofar as it looks at PM in ID, in particular, and the limits of projects and projectification, in general. The remainder of this article is structured as follows. First, it traces the conventional PM history and scope and identifies three key generic approaches that have characterised PM over time. Using this chronological and historical account of conventional PM, it describes and summarises the history and approaches to PM in ID. Then, it opens up a discussion on the possibility of examining systematically PM in ID from a critical perspective and from four specific lenses. 2. Tracing the boundaries and history of project management: from conventional to international development projects As PM is a social construct that evolves with time, tracing the evolution of PM helps us to understand both what it is and what it is not (Gauthier and Ika, 2012; Morris, 2011, 2013). Various histories of the relatively short life of PM trace its formal existence as a recognised and named discipline, back to the middle of the 20th century (Morris, 2011, 2013), built on the technological achievements of the 1940s/50s onwards in engineering, particularly the military and defence sectors of the US. Its contribution to the delivery of a number of high profile ‘megaprojects’ in the US through this period and into the 1960s and 1970s, including the various Apollo space missions and other activities of NASA and the US military–industrial complex (Hughes, 1998) raised the stock of PM significantly, supported by the gradual emergence of a number of professional associations in various countries. Given this foundation, it is therefore no surprise that the worldview of conventional PM reflects the established assumptions of the field of engineering. Hence, it was readily argued by proponents of PM that it provided a valuable methodology which would be effective in most or all sectors and settings; as stated by the Project Management Institute (PMI) in their published body of knowledge, ‘the knowledge and practices described are applicable to most projects most of the time’ (PMI, 2004). Spurred on by assumptions of (near) universal applicability, the techniques of conventional PM did not long remain confined to engineering and construction, and, hence, the adoption of PM by other sectors, ‘from legal work to reconstructive surgery to urban regeneration’ (Cicmil et al., 2009, p. 82). This expansion of influence of PM gave rise to the notion of projectification (Lundin and Söderholm, 1998), the progressive colonisation of other areas, sectors and fields of activity by PM ‘methodologies’. For many, then, ‘the project’ may be seen as a defining feature of late modernity, reflecting shifts towards discontinuity, flexibility, insecurity and impermanence across both developed and developing societies (cf. Bauman, 2000; Boltanski and Chiapello, 2005). Faced with this diversity of contexts in which the same PM models and techniques were to be implemented, a gradual recognition of the need for adaptation, even a plurality of models emerged (Morris, 2013; Shenhar and Dvir, 2007). For example, since 1987, the PMI PMBoK has been the subject of many adaptations such as government, construction, and US DoD

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extensions and of minor revisions including the latest one that added Project Stakeholder Management as a tenth knowledge area in 2013. While the PMBoK focuses on managing the ‘lonely project’ (Engwall, 2003; Morris, 2013), the UK Association for Project Management (APM), which, was first published in 1993, emphasises the management of multiple projects. While the PMBoK is articulated around a set of processes, the International Project Management Association (IPMA) BoK stresses the competence elements of managing a project. The UK PRINCE II, first released in 1996, offers a PM methodology for managing public projects. In 1994, COBIT (Control Objectives for Information and Related Technology) was developed for a better management of IT project risk. In contrast to the PMBoK and conventional waterfall approaches that plan the entire project up front, a range of agile software development methods including Rapid Application Development (RAD), SCRUM, Extreme Programming (XP) and their variants became popular in the 1990s. In today's complex and rapidly changing and at times turbulent environment, there is increasing evidence that PM is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. In their best selling and influential book, Reinventing Project Management, Shenhar and Dvir (2007) advise to adapt our PM styles according to four project characteristics: Novelty, Technology, Complexity, and Pace (NTCP) and, thus, to distinguish between assembly, system and array projects. Other scholars suggest that project sponsors and managers should adapt their PM style and, in particular risk management, to the context of the project, especially in the public sector where the number of stakeholders, media scrutiny, political influences, and regulations are paramount (Flyvjberg, 2005; Wirick, 2009). The project team must adapt to the international context and local practices, language, time zones, resources, laws, politics, etc. when embarking on projects which are conducted in multiple countries and cultures (Grisham, 2010). Also, a PM methodology for post-disaster reconstruction was developed in 2005; recently developed PM guidelines PM4DEV and PMD Pro are now available for managing ID projects in the NGO context; the Japanese P2M is applied to Japan International Cooperation Agency activities (JICA). Landoni and Corti (2011) have shown that the project cycle management approaches, although similar, are different among ID agencies and have changed over time. All of these developments can be traced to specific ‘moments’ in the history of conventional PM reflecting, in our view, key generic approaches to managing projects. But which ones? “History is always seen through the eyes of the historian” (Morris, 2011, p.16). Thus, the story of PM can be told in different ways by different scholars with different emphases, objectives and perspectives (Morris, 2011, 2013). Here, drawing on the works of Joffre et al. (2006) and Hodgson and Cicmil (2006), we argue, from a research perspective, that chronologically and historically, three ‘moments’, generic approaches can be identified: • First, a pioneering, traditional, scientific, instrumental and universalist approach that dates back to the 1950s and that bears the influence of NASA and the US military–industrial

complex and the engineering and construction sectors. This tradition is currently exemplified by the activities of the PMI, focusing on the identification and codification of so-called ‘best practices’ and critical success factors; • Second eclectic, contingent or middle-range approaches emerge from the mid-1980s, highlighting the limitations of the traditional approach and attempts to re-contextualise projects, drawing on social constructionist traditions in management and other social sciences, paying particular attention to ‘soft’ factors in PM such as leadership and culture (as in the Scandinavian School of PM). Later, this diversity of understandings gives rise to a contingency approach to PM, as exemplified most recently by attempts to tailor PM styles to project types (Shenhar and Dvir, 2007) and to identify ‘Nine Schools’ of PM (Turner et al., 2010); • Third, critical perspectives on PM have been articulated, which attempt to broaden our understanding of the impact of PM by locating PM in a wider political and sociological perspective (Hodgson and Cicmil, 2006). Such approaches have opened the door to analyses of project organising which highlight, for instance, “issues of power and domination in project settings, ethics and moral responsibility within projects, tensions between standardisation and creativity in project organisations, the limits to projectification and the broader dysfunctions of project rationality” (Cicmil et al., 2009, p. 86). In the two latter approaches, the ‘widespread assumption that a universal theory of project management can be applied to all types of projects’ has been challenged (Engwall, 2003; Morris, 2013; Shenhar and Dvir, 2007). The critical perspective takes this argument one step further, inferring that attempts to construct PM as universal and invariant are part of a political project of domination and colonisation, imposing a specific and instrumentalist understanding of project and PM upon diverse activities across sectors and silencing alternative conceptions of how discontinuous undertakings might be organised and structured (Cicmil et al., 2009). Thus, rather than asking the question ‘What is a project?’, the PM critical writer would instead ask: ‘What do we do when we call something “a project”?’ (Hodgson and Cicmil, 2006, p. 32). But how to fully answer such a question if, in spite of the above diversity of application, the PM knowledge base remains dominated and structured by its traditional activity area? As Kloppenborg and Opfer (2002) note, some two thirds of articles in the conventional PM literature draw on PM's traditional heartlands of engineering and construction. The question of the transferability of PM is a key theme which locates the fault lines between the different approaches to PM. In its quest for a broader empirical base and a robust knowledge base (Morris, 2013), PM needs to confront the challenge of diversity and learn more from other sectors of PM application. Evidently, PM in ID deals with global challenges and offers a potent source of learning for conventional PM. Of course, both conventional and ID projects fail. The failure rates appear, by some estimates, fairly similar: 64% of ID projects fail to produce much needed intended impact for beneficiaries (Lovegrove et al., 2011) and 63% of IT projects fail according


to the Standish Group's 2011 Chaos Report. Such blunt statistics are open to disputation, but the point remains that both conventional and ID projects all too frequently fail, in part, because of mismanagement, and that the reasons in both fields seem to be virtually the same (Ika, 2012), as we will see in the next section. Furthermore, at a time when uncertainty, complexity, strategy and the links between projects, programmes, portfolios, policies, organisational, societal and global challenges matter a good deal in all projects (Morris, 2013; Shenhar and Dvir, 2007), PM may benefit from a better understanding of ID projects. Such understanding may shed light on the practice of conventional PM and on what is required from conventional projects that comprise fewer sectors and dimensions, given that ID projects are typically multisectorial, social, technical, and political undertakings, and, thus, far more complex, as we will see later. In light of the above, we focus on the ID sector as a ‘critical case’ where projects have for many decades served as the main vehicle for activity, and a particular and distinctive mode of PM has evolved to reflect the distinctive conditions of ID as a sector and activity, and the political and social contexts within which ID projects and operations are conducted. 3. What is distinctive about international development projects and why are they so difficult to manage? 3.1. International development projects cover almost every sector of project management application Projects have always been part of the ID landscape, whether as stand-alone or part of programmes (European Commission, 2007; World Bank, 1998). Since its inception in the 1950s, a good proportion of ID aid has been spent through projects funded by multilateral agencies (e.g., the World Bank); bilateral agencies (e.g., the UK Department for International Development, DFID); and many other governmental and non-governmental organisations (e.g., OXFAM). The idea is to deliver goods or services that are intended for public use in every single ‘poor’ country around the World and in almost every sector of activity: infrastructure, utilities, agriculture, transportation, water, electricity, energy, sewage, mines, health, nutrition, population and urban development, education, environment, social development, reform and governance, etc. (Diallo and Thuillier, 2004). As they cover almost all possible sectors of PM application, they inevitably share some characteristics with conventional projects in that they deliver goods and services; are limited, temporary, unique, multidisciplinary; they develop through a life cycle; they face time, cost and quality constraints; and require some specific tools and techniques for their implementation (Ika, 2012). 3.2. International development projects are public sector projects ID projects are typically public sector projects and, as such, have: often intangible and even conflicting objectives and outcomes; changing scope or ambition levels; many layers of

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stakeholders with conflicting, if not contradictory, expectations; over-optimism and political interferences and manipulations including strategic misrepresentation or misinformation about costs, benefits and risks (support for ‘pet’ projects for political gain, knowingly pitching initial budgets low, and overestimating benefits), in particular, for the largest projects (Flyvjberg, 2005); media scrutiny; intolerance of failure; rigid bureaucratic procedures or guidelines and often cumbersome policies; and make do with existing staff more often than private sector projects (Ika et al., 2010; Wirick, 2009). As with many public initiatives, the time between conception and delivery is relatively long. They are typically not-for-profit, social and political undertakings (Diallo and Thuillier, 2004; Khang and Moe, 2008) and they fit into programmes, strategies and policies such as the recipient country Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) (European commission, 2007; Ika, 2012). There are, however, grey areas. Some ID projects are international private–public partnerships (Flyvjberg, 2005). Examples include international energy infrastructure projects partly funded by donors and partly by international corporate investors. This is the case of a nearly 4-billion $ US pipeline Chad–Cameroon project partly funded by the World Bank and an international consortium led by Exxon-Mobil. 3.3. International development projects are international projects ID projects are also, de facto, international projects. They are funded by ID agencies and donors from the West and implemented in the South. They utilise resources from or in more than one country. This exposes them to high levels of risk and socio-political complexity and, in particular, cultural complexity in terms of local ways of life, institutions, politics, laws, regulations and rules, customs, practices, standards, languages, time zones, holidays, processes, contracts, conflicts, and resources (Grisham, 2010). 3.4. International development projects share managerial/ organisational challenges with conventional projects Like conventional projects, ID projects all too frequently fail to achieve their goals due to a number of issues that are of a managerial/organisational nature: imperfect project design, poor stakeholder management, delays during project implementation, cost overruns, poor risk analysis, inadequate monitoring and evaluation failure, etc. (Diallo and Thuillier, 2004; Gow and Morss, 1988; Ika, 2012; Ika et al., 2010). 3.5. International development projects are different and more complex: unique goals and way of organising ID projects may often appear to be ‘hard’ — with a tangible deliverable like the building or repair of a new road, school, hospital or pipeline. However, this physical infrastructure must correspond to a need or value on the part of beneficiaries. Specifically, an impact in terms of poverty reduction is what sets ID projects apart from conventional projects. While there

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are generally two categories of stakeholders for conventional projects and, in particular, for industrial projects: the clients, who pay for the project and benefit from it, and the contractors, who get paid by the client to implement a project and deliver expected results, ID projects require at least three separate key stakeholders: the funding agencies, who pay for (through loans or outright grants) but do not receive project deliverables, the implementing units who are involved in their execution, and the target beneficiaries, who expect some benefit from them (Hirschman, 1967; Ika, 2012; Khang and Moe, 2008). Let us consider here the case of a World Bank funded project. While the project manager works for the recipient government, the project supervisor works and oversees the project implementation for the World Bank. The project manager is not under the project supervisor's authority. Consequently, the former needs to secure a ‘no-objection’ from the latter when it comes to proceed with important transactions such as terms of reference, short lists, and contract awards. When the no-objection is not granted, the project manager must return to the drawing board and repeat the whole process (Diallo and Thuillier, 2004; Ika and Saint-Macary, 2012). 3.6. International development projects are different and more complex to manage: unique context and institutional challenges Since ID projects are part of a broader and specific context, they face serious problems in developing countries which may reflect political, economical, physical/geographical, sociocultural, historical, demographical, and environmental challenges. This context is characterised by institutional and sustainability problems such as corruption, capacity building setbacks, recurrent costs of projects, lack of political support, lack of implementation and institutional capacity and overemphasis on visible and rapid results from donors and political actors. Consequently, many ID project failures are more institutional than technical (Collier, 2007; European Commission, 2007; Gow and Morss, 1988; Ika, 2012; Moyo, 2009; Rondinelli, 1983). For example, the failure of a $ 4 billion Chad–Cameroon pipeline project to deliver impact for the beneficiaries, despite its completion a year ahead of schedule in 2003, can be explained by pointing to institutional factors. The project failed to deliver services to the poor as the Chadian government used the oil revenues to purchase arms and military equipment (Ika and Saint-Macary, 2012). 3.7. Different types of projects emerge with time and with an increasing complexity Building on the idea that at a certain period of time a specific type of project and a specific type of project organisation prevail (Söderlund, 2009 calls these periods, “epochs”), we argue that there are different types of ID projects and that they mirror different ID management phases (Cooke and Dar, 2008; Ika, 2012). First, ‘blueprint’ projects in the form of either infrastructure projects typical of the 1950s/1960s or agricultural/rural projects typical of the 1970s. They prevailed in the

early phase of ID administration. Second, the autonomous process projects typical of the 1980s include projects in policy advice, education, health, and institutional building, etc. Third, whether ‘hard’ or ‘soft’, all projects became programme components and, thus, prevailed during the ID management phase which emerged in the 1990s, and transformed into a ‘managerialist’ ID management in the postdevelopment era. These projects as programme components are still prevailing in the ‘New Development Management’ phase that embraces a critical perspective (Cooke and Dar, 2008). Thus, different types of projects have been the focus of different eras of ID, reflecting different ID management phases and an increasing complexity because of the socio-political aspects. 3.8. Overall, international development projects are an extreme case of conventional projects In light of all the above discussion, we argue that ID projects are not necessarily unique but, perhaps, they are an extreme case of characteristics common to conventional projects, whether they are private or public sector, national or international projects (Ika, 2012). Their socio-political complexity, we argue, is often high and, thus, they would fit at the far right end of the spectrum on a continuum from private sector projects, through public sector projects and international projects. Fig. 1 compares the extreme socio-political complexity of ID projects to that of conventional ones. In this distinctive context, there have been various shifts in philosophy over time over the way in which PM in ID should be approached and implemented. These shifts will be analysed in the next part of the article. 4. Traditional project management approach in international development: tools matter Projects were fundamentally prominent in ID until mid-1990s, despite the early debate between the project and programme approaches (Rondinelli, 1983). Projects used to be the building blocks, the privileged particles or the predominant vectors of ID assistance (Hirschman, 1967) and the cutting edge of ID (Gittinger, 1984). This period was the reign of the High

International Development projects International projects

Socio-political Complexity

Weak

Public sector projects Private sector projects

Type of project

Fig. 1. International development projects are extreme case of socio-political complexity.


ID administration phase, as suggested above (Cooke and Dar, 2008). The justification for the project approach has been the belief that ID primarily poses a technical and managerial problem, and that rationally planned and controlled projects can provide the best structure and the most efficient means to deliver capital investment and thereby achieve ID goals and objectives. In its first decades, then, PM in ID was dominated by a prescriptive approach, a ‘paradigm’ grounded in the tradition of fields such as engineering, construction and economics, in terms of process and content, with a mechanistic rationality at the basis of all project models, cycles or sequences (Baum, 1978; Biggs and Smith, 2003; Ika et al., 2010; Johnson, 1984; Landoni and Corti, 2011; Youker, 1989). Fig. 2 depicts the World Bank project cycle. These project cycles have been around in ID for more than 40 years; they have been promoted by aid agencies; and they have been the subject of many ID textbooks. Although they are somewhat different, they share the same essential characteristics (Landoni and Corti, 2011); they are normative or ideal; they rely upon logically ordered sequences of activities which are determined by a known and explicit objective or set of objectives; they are rational since their objectives constrain the analysis of options and risks; their planners are professional and, as such, are expected to act rationally, suppressing subjective considerations (Hulme, 1995). The pioneers of this traditional approach have attempted to generalise procedures over a range of different types of projects without significant consideration of organisational structure or managerial responsibility and control (Johnson, 1984). Therefore, a kind of ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach similar to the traditional approach within conventional PM dominates PM practice in ID (Ika et al., 2010). For example, the common ancestry of the World Bank project life cycle can be traced back to the Baum cycle (Baum, 1978; Biggs and Smith, 2003;

Landoni and Corti, 2011). As Baum argues, “No two projects are alike; each has its own peculiar history, and lending has to be tailored to its circumstances. On the other hand, each project passes through a cycle, that with some variations, is common to all” (Baum, 1978, p. 12), a description deeply resonant of the construction and engineering intellectual roots of conventional PM. It is not coincidental that those PM practitioners and field consultants who outline ID project cycles are often embedded within and informed by these fields (Gittinger, 1984; Johnson, 1984; Youker, 1989). It is in this true technical tradition that tools like Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) with related appraisal techniques such as discounted cash-flow, net present value, Internal Rate of Return (IRR), sensitivity analysis and financial risk analysis, budget monitoring, monitoring of disbursements, and technical targets have been developed; CBA for large scale infrastructure or agricultural projects, financial analysis for private business investments, and technical targets in the case of public investment projects and process projects. In the 1970s, the classic planning tool in ID became the logframe, and in particular, its 4 by 4 matrix, as it gives a convenient overview of the project to be implemented (Ika et al., 2010; Youker, 1989) (see Table 1 for many of these tools). This prescriptive ‘one-size-fits all’ approach, also called the ‘blueprint approach’ is mostly concerned with ‘what should be done’ rather than ‘what does happen’ (Analoui, 1989). Thus, it tends to define ‘what should be without relating it to what is’ (Hulme, 1995, p. 230). In this orthodox approach, the human side of PM in ID has been severely neglected and the role of the project manager is self-evident, at best peripheral and by and large, overlooked (Analoui, 1989). The project manager simply had to execute the ‘mini-project cycle’ of implementation for time, cost and quality (Gittinger, 1984, pp. 17–20; Youker, 1989). Table 1 Project management tools in international development (adapted from Ika et al., 2010). Project management approaches

Key “Tools of the Trade”

Traditional

Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA); Critical Path Method (CPM); Programme Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT); the logical framework; Results Based Management (RBM); Project Management Information Systems (PMIS); budget monitoring; monitoring of disbursements; performance indicators; scoring techniques; with/without analysis; before/after analysis; technical targets; etc. Action-Planning Participatory Worskshops: Appreciation/Influence/Control (AIC); Objectives-Oriented Planning (ZOPP); teamUp; Community-Based Participatory Approaches: Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA); Selfesteem, Associative strength, Resourcefulness, Action planning, and Responsibility (SARAR); Beneficiary Assessment (BA), Social Assessment (SA); Gender Analysis (GA); Systematic Client Consultation (SCC); Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation (PM&E); Poverty Reduction and Strategy Papers (PRSPs); grid/group framework; stakeholder and conflicts resolution frameworks; organisational and cultural analysis frameworks; etc.

Contingent

Fig. 2. The World Bank Cycle. New phases added to Baum (1978)'s cycle in italics (Adapted from Ika et al., 2010).

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This traditional approach is founded on the principles of formal rationality, reductionism and a top-down conception of development (Bond and Hulme, 1999). Not surprisingly, the planning view of projects is the prevailing one where “a project is a planned complex of actions and investments, at a selected location, that are designed to meet output, capacity, or transformation goals, in a given period of time, using specified techniques” (Johnson, 1984, p. 112). Hence, the belief that project planning is the fundamental activity since there is a need for a systematic way of ‘getting the job done’ (Analoui, 1989; Ika et al., 2010) (For a discussion on the type of planning, strategic vs. implementation planning, and the role of the project manager, see Ika and Saint-Macary, 2012). As a consequence, project analysts have shared a deep conviction that ID project failure can be best addressed by the use of better procedures, tools and techniques which would lead to more effective PM in ID, and thus, project success, which is measured by time, cost and, mostly, financial return on investment (Internal Rate of Return, IRR) (Ika et al., 2010). In a mordant critique of this leading approach, Hulme argues that projects here are seen as ‘the products of technical analysis concerned with the cost-effective achievement of well-defined goals’; as a consequence, “project failure can be explained by poor implementation (if one is a planner) or poor planning (if one is an implementer). Political representatives can point out that there was a shortfall because of errors in the technical analysis, whilst bureaucrats argue that political interference hampered the project. There are escape hatches for all, except the project's intended beneficiaries!” (Hulme, 1995, p. 216). Thus, in this orthodox approach, “poor project outcomes have been seen as a consequence of ‘weak links’, rather than a fundamental misconception of the overall approach” (Hulme, 1995, p. 218). This is in fact reminiscent of the first moment of the conventional PM history: “While this traditional core of the field has indeed met serious challenges over the years – such as the need to coordinate projects within project portfolios, the managerial and the motivational aspects often referred to as the ‘human side of projects’, or the unavoidable impact of external complexity on the internal project process – the response remains the same; to construct new, even better, rational tools to ensure project success” (Cicmil et al., 2009, p. 83). The traditional approach has, thus, not lived up to expectations. As a matter of fact, despite the billions of dollars invested by donors and the tireless efforts of project supervisors and managers, the strong belief that tools matter and that they will deliver ID, the results of infrastructure projects (roads, railways, dams, ports, airports, power stations, telecommunications and so forth) and agricultural and rural projects (for example, water supply projects) continue to disappoint stakeholders. In fact, dissatisfaction with project results and performance dates back to the first decade of development (see, for example, J.F. Kennedy's speech to Congress in 1961). Also, early evaluations of the infrastructure projects of the 1950s and 1960s and the agricultural/rural projects of the 1970s have concluded that many projects have produced poor results (Hulme, 1995; Tacconi and Tisdell, 1992). The well-known Howell report demonstrates that, based on a rate of return

criterion below 10%, 54% of the World Bank rural ID projects in the early 1970s in Africa were failures (Howell, 1990). The first ever sustainability evaluation carried out after 38 years of existence of the World Bank reveals that only 12 agricultural projects out of 25 achieved sustainability (Cernea, 1985; Youker, 1989). Thus, the need to ‘go deeper’ has surfaced in PM in ID. 5. Contingent project management approaches in international development: people matter the most The poor results of projects from the 1950s through the 1980s have led to disillusionment with the traditional approach and widespread calls to change or even reject outright the traditional PM approach in ID and adopt instead what have been described as ‘process’ projects (Bond and Hulme, 1999; Hulme, 1995; Korten, 1980; Rondinelli, 1983). A large number of disparate ideas and alternatives have been drawn up particularly from inputs from social scientists, emerging as a reaction to the ineffectiveness of the traditional PM approach in ID (Hulme, 1995). “At the heart is the recognition that the challenges of development are not well-structured problems that can be “thought through” by clever people. Rather they are “messes” that have to be “acted out” by social experimentation and interaction” (Johnston and Clark, 1982, pp. 23–28). It has been argued that project appraisal focuses only on finance, cost-effectiveness and technical accomplishment and gives the problems of managing a project little attention. Hence, Goodman and Love (1980) have identified the urgent need of skilled project managers and insisted on staffing as an important part of the project life cycle in their Integrated Project Planning and Management Cycle (IPMC). Acknowledging this progress, Analoui (1989) has suggested moving from the traditional prescriptive approach to a more descriptive approach where the role of the project manager is significant as a decision-maker, a change agent or a leader and not just an implementer. In this descriptive approach, the concern is mostly on ‘what actually takes place’ rather than ‘what ought to happen’. The project manager under the descriptive approach is no longer an economic man or an objective arbiter of interests, or even a technocrat or a responsive man but a proactive and engaged key actor. “In contrast, a ‘descriptive’ approach tends to view projects and managers as they really are and ‘situations’ through eyes of the key actors, stakeholders and the management (and even the beneficiaries)” (Analoui, 1989, p. 42). The ‘enlightened’ project planner recognises that traditional techniques, although not perfect, may be helpful but micro-political considerations are also key to project success (Johnson, 1984). Some have even called this a sensitised traditional approach (see Hulme, 1995 for details). Other authors have suggested other perspectives to overcome the poor results of projects. For example, proponents of the social planning school suggest adapting the traditional approach and including sociological variables such as participation. In fact, in a blueprint approach, participation does exist but it is limited to the involvement of beneficiaries in project


costs and sharing of benefits — and even this restricted notion of participation – ‘consultation’ – is often seen as a cause of project implementation delays in the usual timely budgeting and delivery system, a source of project inefficiency due to the fact that it is personnel intensive, and an element that decreases the control of bureaucrats and powerful élites (Tacconi and Tisdell, 1992). However, in the social planning approach, participation is viewed as a success factor implying the involvement of beneficiaries in decision-making as a source of information about local conditions without which the project will likely fail; it entails the involvement of beneficiaries in decision-making, and means putting people first and empowering them (Kottak, 1985). Therefore, this approach does not trade-off participation against other variables and, so, pays attention to micro-political issues (Tacconi and Tisdell, 1992). Furthermore, some writers have suggested incorporating environmental implications, scale issues and government role, capacity-building and local management in the debate over participation (for a discussion of these approaches, see Tacconi and Tisdell, 1992). For example, many advocates of participation suggest scaling down projects because ‘small is beautiful’ (Schumacher, 1974). Others, however, argue that small scale is not necessarily ‘beautiful’ (Adams, 1990) and that scale can affect sustainability in different ways. Overall, participation, whether it is low level community participation such as monetary contribution of households to capital and maintenance costs of water supply projects, or high level community participation such as community-driven approach to social investment fund projects, is considered to improve project outcomes and community members' perceptions of their effectiveness (Heinrich and Lopez, 2009). Elsewhere, writers have proposed rejecting the traditional approach and suggested an alternative to the prescriptive model, arguing that “a more flexible, adaptive, experimental and responsive set of planning and implementation procedures must be used” (Rondinelli, 1983, p. 325). Following the work of Rondinelli, Korten (1980) proposed a ‘learning process’ in which projects are not decisively ‘thought through’ but incorporate flexibility, learning, reflection and a revised acting-out in a virtuous and iterative process. Picciotto and Weaving (1994) have even proposed that listening, piloting, demonstrating, and mainstreaming make up the new ‘learning’ cycle for donors. Bond and Hulme (1999) have proposed considering process approaches as schools of thought that fall on a continuum that ranges from purists to managerialists. Purists tend to emphasise beneficiary participation and learning, and to argue for the abandonment of the concept of project (Korten, 1980). For purists, then, “process is seen as synonymous with local institutional development in which the role of external agents and resources should be minimised” (Bond and Hulme, 1999, p. 340). In contrast, managerialists still view the role of external actors as significant but argue for flexibility and adaptation for projects, managers and management systems (Bond and Hulme, 1999). We are then in the era of ‘people-centred management’ where ID projects, alongside their goals, are now

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seen as participatory, relatively fluid and flexible, and non-hierarchical (Dichter, 1989), and ‘putting people first’ has become the modus operandi or the success formula (Cernea, 1985). The proponents of these eclectic and contingent approaches consider that the orthodox or traditional approach is flawed. Their assumption is that technical aspects, alongside organisational, sociological, environmental, institutional variables, scale, government role, beneficiaries and stakeholder involvement, will affect project results. Hence, the older ‘blueprint’ project cycle has been greatly refined and developed over the years to take on, at various points of the project cycle, process ideas such as participatory processes and concerns such as the environment, poverty, gender, empowerment, human rights, institutional development, capacity building, and sustainability (Biggs and Smith, 2003). These participatory approaches include tools such as workshop-based or ‘action-planning workshops’ used to bring stakeholders together for project design purposes, communitybased methods such as Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA), methods of stakeholder consultation, and methods for social analysis including Social Assessment (SA) and Gender Analysis (GA) (Ika et al., 2010) (See Table 1 for a few of these participatory approaches). Since the voice of beneficiaries becomes important, this gives rise to the proliferation of NGOs in the ID landscape. According to the proponents of this position, there is no one best approach. Rather, “the approach best suited to any particular circumstance is dependent on the objectives of the intervention and the specific context” (Bond and Hulme, 1999, p. 1354). This is in fact reminiscent of the second moment of conventional PM history: contingent approaches and the incorporation of soft critical success factors (Engwall, 2003; Hodgson and Cicmil, 2006; Joffre et al., 2006). Thus, paraphrasing Peter Drucker, one may advance that then the most basic principle of PM in ID is: ‘It depends’. As a result, here, there is more than the single point of view of the donor; project success becomes a question of perspective. The assessment can be made, at least, from the perspectives of the donor, the recipient government and the beneficiaries. However, time, cost, objectives and, most importantly, satisfaction of the beneficiaries and stakeholders become the key success criteria (Diallo and Thuillier, 2004; Ika et al., 2010). For example, the Chad–Cameroon pipeline was delivered on time, which pleased both the donor and the Chadian Government but from the perspective of the beneficiaries, it was a failure (Ika and Saint-Macary, 2012). Other attempts to broaden the PM agenda in ID include the analysis of projects as micro-political arenas for conflict, bargaining and trade-offs, in which power and skill are used in manipulating agenda, blocking a potential item, or withholding information that does not suit the holder's needs (Hulme, 1995; Schaffer, 1984). In these arenas, the objectives are not only seldom precise but also multiple; some of the objectives are visible and many other are hidden and ‘what is must become what should be’ (Hulme, 1995, p. 225). As no starting point exists for the project cycle, and there is no clean slate, parties compete to set and manipulate the agenda for public discussion

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Periods ID management phases Project types Development metaphor Project metaphor Key questions

Underlying philosophical concepts Project manager figure Key stakeholders

Key tools

Traditional PM in ID: tools matter

Contingent PM in ID: people matter the most

Critical PM in ID: does power matter the most?

1960s–1980s The ID administration or “blueprint” administration phase Blueprint (physical capital) Development is a technical problem (top down conception) Projects are means to achieve development objectives

1980s–now The “people-centred management” phase and then the ID management phase (1990s) Process (human capital) Development is a ‘messy’ technical, managerial and socio-political problem (bottom-up conception) Projects are context-specific and micro-political means to achieve specific development objectives What is the best way to achieve project objectives according to the context? What is or what does happen? How do we create consensus? Experimentation, learning, interaction, participation, adaptation, flexibility; empowerment, etc. Searcher; engaged actor; experimenter; learner Donors; agencies; recipient governments and organisations; execution agencies; civil society; beneficiaries' groups NGOs and philanthropist organisations and people including pop and movie stars (George Harrison; Bob Geldof; Bono, etc.)…

1980s–now The critical and postdevelopment management or the “New Development Management” phase Projects as programme components Development is a historical, social and political power play

What is the best way to achieve project objectives? What should be done? Is the project cost-effective? Rationality; objectivity and reductionism Architect; economic man; planner Donors; agencies; recipient governments and organisations; execution agencies

Key authors

Logical framework; Cost Benefit Analysis; Results Based Management, etc. Time, cost; mostly Internal Rate of Return (e. IRR over 10%) Baum (1978), Gittinger (1984), Johnson (1984)

Intellectual roots

Engineering; economics; construction

Success criteria

Participatory rural appraisal; participatory monitoring and evaluation; poverty reduction strategy papers, etc. Time, cost, objectives, and satisfaction of beneficiaries/stakeholders Hirschman (1967), Rondinelli (1983), Cernea (1985), Korten (1980), Schaffer (1984) Sociology; anthropology

Projects are arenas of social and power play in the context of global capitalism and ethnocentrism What really is? Who is in? Who is out? How are the decisions really arrived at? Cui bono? Power, domination, manipulation, exploitation Political and ethical actor; reflective performer; phronetic manager. Donors; agencies; recipient governments and organisations; execution agencies; civil society; beneficiaries' groups; NGOs and philanthropist organisations and people including pop and movie stars (George Harrison; Bob Geldof; Bono, etc.)… Critical discourse analysis, deconstruction, critical ethnography, etc. N/A. Barnett (1977), Dar (2008), Kerr (2008), Rist, (2008), Escobar (1995), Harvey (2005) Political science; political economy; sociology; anthropology


Table 2 Approaches to project management in international development (PM in ID) and their assumptions.


in terms of their self-interests; trade-offs between the interests of different parties are commonly but informally agreed. In such arenas, the search for a consensus is hence a permanent quest in the ‘chaos of purposes and accidents’ before any agenda receives a serious consideration (Hulme, 1995). This micro-political analysis of ID projects, similar to the (micro-) political PM perspective, sees projects as organisational and social arrangements (Pinto, 1996) and tends to criticise the naivety or duplicity of proponents of the traditional approach for overlooking, ignoring or suppressing the intrinsically political nature of projects in favour of an idealised and apolitical rationalism. However, writers such as Hulme (1995) argue that the micro-political approach similarly ignores the contribution of technical analysis to PM in ID. Some writers therefore argue in favour of a hybrid model in which projects are simultaneously technocratic exercises and micro-political arenas for conflict, bargaining and trade-offs, in which data and technical tools, power and skill are used to set and manipulate the agenda, to block a potential item, or to withhold information that does not suit the holder's needs (Hulme, 1995; Schaffer, 1984). Such a hybrid model, at mid-point between the traditional and the micro-political ones, we argue, also represents a contingent approach to PM in ID. “Such political perspectives on projects tend to suggest the need for a wider picture which considers what goes on in the social construction of projects and project management making processes…” (Cicmil et al., 2009, p. 85). Table 1 showcases many of the ‘tools of the trade’ that prevail in PM approaches for managing ID projects and Table 2 summarises these PM approaches, their defining features and assumptions. The contingent approaches seem to have failed to settle the political question of power and influence in PM in ID. “A serious attempt at a process approach to intervention does not merely incorporate beneficiary participation; rather, it entails a fundamental reconfiguration of the involvement of stakeholders in programme-objective setting, design, implementation and monitoring. This means a redistribution of power and influence over decision-making” (Bond and Hulme, 1999, p. 1451). But even if this works, it still falls short of addressing the global imbalance in power which influences the international, economic and macro-political context. For example, the contingent project design orthodoxy (Khwaja, 2009) bears little weight in face of the broader asymmetrical distribution of power between the world's richest countries, institutions, and people and its poorest (Ika and Saint-Macary, 2012). It might be next to impossible to adapt or even discard rationality and efficiency-driven PM tools such as the Gantt chart or accountability-for-results-oriented tools such as Results-Based Management (RBM) if the powerful and bureaucratic aid agencies willing to show to the general Western public ‘value for money’ for their projects still politically advocate their use (Ika and Saint-Macary, 2012; Ika et al., 2010). In fact, quite apart from the micro-political myopia of traditional PM in ID, identified and attacked by various approaches in contingent PM in ID, the macro-political dimension of ID projects is not only ignored but also obscured by PM's emphasis on rationality, as the activity is therefore presented as “technocratically neutral, with the words

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‘assistance’ or ‘cooperation’ implying a non-existent parity of power between the technical helpers and the helped” (Cooke, 2004, p. 607). In such a macro-political and international context, PM in ID is a social construct and, thus, the idea that PM is something objective is naive. As a consequence, PM departs from an ideal which purports that the project goal and objectives are the source of meaning, direction and raison d'être for all stakeholders. Both the traditional and contingent approaches should therefore be challenged in light of a detailed, explicit and critical examination and problematisation of the practices underlying PM in ID (Dar, 2008; Kerr, 2008). 6. Towards critical project management in international development? Does power matter the most? Despite all the above attempts to pay particular attention to tools and techniques vs. people or ‘hard’ vs. ‘soft’ factors, the poor performance of ID projects and the disappointment of project stakeholders and beneficiaries seem to have become the rule and not the exception in contemporary development (Ika, 2012). The Meltzer Commission claimed, in 2000, that 55% to 60% of the World Bank operations including projects were failures. The World Bank found that its project failure rate in Africa was over 50% over the past 20 years; likewise, its private arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) found that only 50% of its Africa projects succeed; the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG), in an independent rating, claimed that in 2010, nearly 40% of World Bank projects were unsuccessful; many other agencies have not fared better (Ika, 2012); in fact, a recent McKinsey–Devex survey suggests that 64% of donor-funded projects fail (Lovegrove et al., 2011). The paradox of the above prevailing conventional approaches to PM in ID becomes apparent as there seems to be a disparity between the robustly rationalist toolbox of PM in ID and the effectiveness of its use (Hulme, 1995; Ika et al., 2010). The ID project practitioners appear to repeat the same mistakes (lack of beneficiary participation, weak design, scope creep, goal-changes and so forth). Hence, there seems to exist, for example, a paradox of learning in the project cycle despite its refinements to include process ideas. While the underlying idea behind the project cycle is learning, it appears to be ‘remarkably robust against such learning’ (Biggs and Smith, 2003, p. 1). On the one hand, there is a vast normative and traditional PM literature in ID that advocates, in a true Baum (1978) tradition, ‘best practice’ guidelines or ‘what should be done’. On the other hand, and alongside this literature, there is a contingent one that goes deeper, describes what really happens in practice, in a true Hirschman (1967) tradition, and that questions the use of project cycle and its associated tools such as the logical framework (Biggs and Smith, 2003). So, ‘crises’, deadlock, and impasse in the theory and practice of ID management (Cooke and Dar, 2008) and conventional PM (Cicmil et al., 2009) point to ‘cracks in the façade’ of the two above prevailing PM approaches in ID. As a consequence, many ponder whether there is something fundamentally wrong with the theory and practice of PM in ID. Thus, it is time to

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look behind and beyond the PM ‘façade’ in ID (Cicmil et al., 2009; Dar, 2008; Kerr, 2008). So far the dominant response to this ‘deadlock’ has been a greater emphasis on technicist and managerialist solutions such as logical frameworks, RBM and a return to a strong instrumental rationality (see for example, Kerr, 2008). This is reminiscent of the kind of response that conventional PM has offered when facing a similar ‘crisis’ (Hodgson and Cicmil, 2006). Furthermore, whether it is ‘plain’ PM (traditional or blueprint approach) or ‘fancy’ PM (eclectic and contingent approaches) that is practiced, some suggest that the approaches and tools are not the problem but the underlying instrumental rationality: “It is not the tools but the kind of fuzzy thinking that has weighed them down with so much symbolic freight” (Dichter, 1989, p. 384). Yet, if some authors strongly call for improving PM (Dichter, 1989; Ika, 2012), they fall short of outlining an alternative to the prevailing PM approaches. However, in order to move beyond this narrow instrumentalism, we argue that we may turn to a critical social theory scholarship in PM research in ID. In the remainder of this section, we suggest four dominant critical research lenses in which we might plant the seeds for making ID projects critical: the postdevelopment, the Habermasian, the Foucauldian, and the neo-Marxist lenses. While distinct, there are several core similarities between these critical lenses. The postdevelopment lens sees development itself as embodying Western, modernist values and imposing these upon (what are for such writers, problematically termed) ‘developing’ countries, arguing instead for “local culture and knowledge; a critical stance toward established scientific discourses; and the defense and promotion of localized, pluralistic grassroots movements” (Escobar, 1995, p. 215). The Habermasian lens is equally suspicious of ‘objective, abstract and universal body of knowledge’ suggesting that the knowledge “proprietary to project management fails to live up to the challenges of the embodied and power-laden realities of its operation” (Hodgson and Cicmil, 2006, p. 13). A Foucauldian position also focuses on the operation of power, highlighting “the implied calculability and formality of project management methodology” (Hodgson and Cicmil, 2006, p. 13). Pointing to the interdependence of power/knowledge, work in this vein examines how power works on and through the formation and action of project managers themselves, through for instance the professionalisation of project management (Hodgson, 2002). Finally, the neo-Marxist perspective tends to examine the operation of power in projects as a practice of domination or coercion, aimed at controlling the means of production and the project labour process (Metcalfe, 1997). Although each of these approaches has its own distinctive contribution to make, the collective value of a critical perspective on ID projects can be illustrated by addressing the question of corruption as it affects PM in ID. Corruption is seen as a distinguishing feature which bedevils ID and is regularly described as a silent killer of ID projects and growth (Collier, 2007; Hobbs, 2005; Moyo, 2009). Yet, the identification and understanding of corruption is frequently taken-for-granted; the World Bank defines corruption as ‘the misuse of public office for private gain’ and the Asian Development Bank defines it as

the ‘the abuse of public or private office for private gain’, while Transparency International suggests replacing these definitions by ‘the abuse of entrusted power for private gain’. These prevailing definitions and the related anti-corruption fight build on the idea that we may certainly know and do something about corruption. Indeed they are part of the neoliberal ‘good governance’ framework to reduce poverty and achieve economic growth in developing countries. In that sense, there exists a World Bank's stated policy of zero tolerance of corruption in the projects it finances. However, there seems to be “… an apparent paradox whereby the Bank talks a ‘no corruption’ talk but plays a ‘tolerate corruption’ game. This paradox exists because it is too costly for the Bank to implement measures to eradicate corruption of its funds. Corruption also plays a functional role in making the projects the Bank funds a success. The Bank therefore tolerates a level of corruption; however it must also convince influential constituents that it considers corruption of its funds unacceptable. The Bank engages in a process of ‘organised hypocrisy’, whereby it says one thing, does another and all the while tries to conceal the fact that it is being hypocritical” (Hobbs, 2005, p. 18). So, while, for mainstream PM, corruption may simply be a problem or contextual factor to be ‘managed’ away, a critical reading might see corruption as a function of the broader wealth disparity between developed and developing countries; or as a reflection of the Western dichotomy of public and private spheres; or might question the (arbitrary?) distinction between immoral but legal corporate behaviour on a grand scale (regarding, say, aggressive tax avoidance) and relatively petty illegal behaviour by employees (Brown and Cloke, 2011; Lennerfors et al., 2012). 6.1. A postdevelopment critical lens In a true postdevelopment tradition (Escobar, 1995), a critical PM writer in ID may question and even outright reject the very notion of a project. “In the name of this fetishistic term – which is also a portmanteau or “plastic” word – schools and clinics are built, exports encouraged, wells dug, roads laid, children vaccinated, funds collected, plans established, national budgets revised, reports drafted, experts hired, strategies concocted, the international community mobilized, dams constructed, forests exploited, deserts reafforested, high-yield plants invented, trade liberalized, technology imported, factories opened, wage–jobs multiplied, spy satellites launched” (Rist, 2008, p. 11). So, what's a project really is? What does ‘project’ have to do with ID? Can projects really deliver ID? Is not ‘project management’ an oxymoron? Take for instance the Chad–Cameroon pipeline. Taking the Hodgson and Cicmil (2006)'s stance, a critical writer might ponder: Is it really an ID project? What do they do when they call it a project? From the perspective of the World Bank, it is an ID project as it would deliver services to the poor in Chad paid for by oil revenues. Thus, the World Bank uses its substantial financial and symbolic power to build a public– private partnership with the Oil Consortium led by Exxon


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Mobil. As the latter is a commercial entity, they have to make it profitable for the investors, the lending financial institutions and themselves. But, the Chadian government uses oil money to purchase arms and military equipment to win their battle over the rebels. Thus, a critical postdevelopment writer might argue that it was not an ID project in the first place and, therefore, there is no surprise in the end. Undeniably, there are ID projects but they are not necessarily projects for ID as they may in fact be promoting other objectives such as capitalism, imperialism and globalisation (Rist, 2008). Thus, paraphrasing Thomas (2000), one may argue that PM for ID remains an ideal rather than a mere description of what does really take place. The weaknesses of projects have already been highlighted in ID (European Commission, 2007; World Bank, 1998). Stand-alone donor projects tend to undermine the ownership of ID by national authorities insofar as donors exert a high control on the selection, design and implementation of projects. They also accelerate the deterioration of government systems by bypassing them with parallel, non-government and donor-established project management structures, special staffing and accounting requirements. In doing so, due to proliferation, fragmentation, duplication of efforts and loss of coherence between projects funded by local and external resources, they often corrode normal structures of democratic accountability, force governments to be accountable to donors rather than to parliaments and their people, and generate high transaction costs of aid delivery. This is what is happening now in Haiti where hundreds – even thousands according to some estimates – of NGOs received and spent an estimated $ 3 billion in private contributions in numerous projects with little to show for it other than creating a parallel state more powerful than the government itself. “It would be of help to no one if every NGO and private contractor in Haiti packed up and left the country next week. But it is equally problematic that they continue to operate on multi-billion dollar contracts with no accountability and no requirement for publishing public budget and project data” (Ramachandran and Walz, 2012, p. 30). Furthermore, a postdevelopment analysis of the use of soft PM techniques by the World Bank such as the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) shows that, behind the ostensible concern for poverty reduction, there still exists a set of neoliberal requirements in terms of economic, social and fiscal policy. “Associated with PRSP implementation is a narrative that suggests that the failure of their predecessors – notably the infamous structural adjustment programmes – was a consequence not of their flawed (to say the least) ultra-neoliberalism, but of the failure of World Bank experts to achieve ‘ownership’ for such programmes on the part of national governments. Hence the turn to soft managerialism is a tool of neoliberalism, rather than a shift to a genuine democratic participation ” (Cooke and Dar, 2008, p. 5).

technicist and instrumentalist forms of rationality in ID project settings. “From this perspective, the possibility of critical project management will depend on the extent to which a social theory about the nature of projects provides concerned actors with authentic insights into their position in project environments, leading to their enlightenment, changed attitudes and emancipatory action” (Hodgson and Cicmil, 2006, p. 13). Two examples will show how this might work. First example, conceiving the project as a universal and instrumental methodology and as a terminology and practice of control and surveillance, Kerr (2008) uses a Habermasian critical perspective and shows that ID projects are seen by managers and team members as matters of technical control and surveillance in which their lived experience is irrelevant. “‘Becoming, change, and renewal’ are what projects are supposed to be about, but they have been devised as technologies, as articulations of instrumental reason – devised by the Centre, the policy makers and strategists, the established order, those with hierarchical rank, privileges – projects are thus constructed as systems of constraints on agency (norms, prohibitions), not as what they might be, celebrations or adventures” (Kerr, 2008, p. 109). Then Kerr also shows that the logical framework tool, a part of management and accountability system that measures the managerialists' concepts of effectiveness and efficiency, can be seen as a technology of governance that takes the place of the manager in the hierarchy. Hence, “the role of the manager is delegated to the logframe, which then becomes the organizer and monitor of the work. So in this model the project disappears leaving the local manager, who is replaced by regulation and accountability systems, operating to concentrate power in the hands of the bureaucratic policy makers and performing the division labour between the thinkers and the doers” (Kerr, 2008, p.106). In a similar vein, Cooke and Kothari highlight pressing but often unarticulated concerns over the motivation and practice of participation in ID, pointing to “the naivety of assumptions about the authenticity of motivations and behaviour in participatory processes, how the language of empowerment masks a real concern for managerial effectiveness; the quasi-religious associations of participatory rhetoric and practice; and how an emphasis on the micro-level of intervention can obscure, and indeed sustain, broader macro-level inequalities and injustice” (Cooke and Kothari, 2001, p.14). Even participative models of PM in ID generally fail to take account of the ways in which “participation and empowerment are used in the workplace as means of control”; indicating that participation and empowerment in PM in ID, far from combating inequities, “can sustain, through co-optation and undermining resistance, macro-level inequalities and exploitation” (Cooke, 2004, p. 253).

6.2. A Habermasian critical lens

With the Foucauldian influence on making ID projects critical, it might be possible to draw attention not only on the inner-country power relations that shape PM and the social reality of projects in ID; but also on the asymmetry of power between rich and poor countries in the world including the

From the Habermasian perspective, it might be argued that both the traditional and contingent PM approaches in ID fail to live up to the challenges of the embodied and power-laden realities of the

6.3. A Foucauldian critical lens

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postcolonial asymmetry of power (Kenny, 2008). One example will illustrate doing research within the Foucauldian tradition. Drawing inspiration from a Foucauldian perspective, Dar (2008) shows that the ever-present monitoring and evaluation practice of project reporting is not neutral and that a politically engaged discourse analysis is needed to reveal the construction of meanings and ideas and the fragmented representation of social reality. She concludes that project reporting is rather symbolic in that it gives the implementing NGO reputation, status and prestige with the donor. It is creative in that it may create or delegitimate roles, identities and activities, and, thus, makes PM real or real-ized, in a regime of truth and denoted legitimacy. Reporting is all about PM performativity and, thus, it plays a role in constructing an identity for organisations, forming a relationship between the reader and the author of the report, the reader and the organisation, and also the author and the organisation. Reporting plays a significant role in concealing the political underpinnings of ID projects (‘community-self management’) in that it carves out what community means, sets out the problem with that community, proposes a strategy to deal with it, removes all direct responsibility to beneficiaries as it redefines the community as a collective and homogeneous group, and even predicts the hypothetical fate if the project does not go ahead. Reporting contributes to objectifying the project through the intervention ‘logic’ that underlies it and, thus, the underlying problem gets translated into a ‘situation’ that is subject to a detailed analysis for better chances of success. In doing so, reporting helps reconstituting people as stakeholders, thus making possible ‘stakeholder analysis’. Dar concludes that textual artefacts such as organisational reports have material consequences such as the constructing of meanings and ideas and the revealing of the fragmented representation of reality and the gap between texts and realities.

governance projects might be thought of as part of a neo-liberal imperialist project of pushing the predatory costs of over-accumulation (or overproduction) onto the weakest states and peoples; many other ID projects in the context of the ‘war on terrorism’, the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and the overt use of military force might be thought of as part of a neo-conservative imperialist project: ‘the establishment of and respect for order, both internationally and upon the world stage’ (Harvey, 2005, p. 190) (See also Noonan, 2010, for a broad review of neo-Marxist critiques of imperialism). For example, the US $ 3-billion-South-Africa-Medupi project to build a 4800-MW coal fired power plant turns to be a failure in terms of impact because the project largely benefits major industries that consume electricity below cost rather than the poor who suffer the negative environmental impacts of the project, showing the inner-country asymmetrical distribution of power between project planners/implementers and beneficiaries; suggesting that the project is a product and tool of the capitalism system, and as such, reflects the interests of the ruling classes at the detriment of the needy and non-powerful classes. From the above four critical lenses, we hope to have set the scene for a critical debate in PM in ID by focusing on “who is included in and who is excluded from the decision making process, analysing what determines the position, agendas, and power of different participants, and how these different agendas are combined and resolved in the process by which decisions are arrived at” (Hodgson and Cicmil, 2006, p. 12), located within a wider and enduring imbalance of power between developed and developing worlds, and in particular, between the world's richest institutions and people and its poorest. A critical perspective in PM in ID might help to recognise the ways in which macro-politics affects the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of ID projects.

6.4. neo-Marxist lens 7. Conclusion A fourth and last major influence on critical work implication for understandings of PM in ID is the neo-Marxist tradition. Long before, in parallel to the contingent positions described in the preceding section of this article, there was a more radical macro-political perspective where, for example, projects could be considered as “a sub-category of societal actions which can only be understood through the historical analysis of the distribution of social and political power” (Hulme, 1995, p. 229). From this position, ID projects may be understood as means of subordination of the labouring classes to the demands of global capitalism on a global scale. Although neo-Marxist analyses seldom focus specifically on the project level, the assumption is that projects as products and tools of the capitalism system inevitably reflect the interests of the ruling classes and therefore subordinate the interests of labouring classes, driven and supported by a neo-liberal global agenda (Barnett, 1977; Harvey, 2005). In an era of globalisation, ID projects might be tools for the deployment of both the capitalist (economic) and the territorialist (political) logics of the imperialist power (Harvey, 2005). In particular, some ID projects such as institutional, reform and

This paper is an attempt to draw attention to the pressing need for a dialogue between critical perspectives on conventional project management (PM) and project management in international development (PM in ID). Thus, the article argues that conventional PM should learn from a specific and offshoot sector of PM application: ID. This exercise, we suggest, will entail and support a greater engagement with critical perspectives, to illuminate the theory and practice of both conventional and ID projects. Both PM and PM in ID, we have argued, have grown, sharing a central concern for change in the world and an entrenched inclination towards a managerialist, technocratic and instrumental approach. In particular, the same three moments, three generic approaches that describe chronologically and historically conventional PM can shed light on the specific evolution of PM in ID. It is hence possible to describe and summarise PM history in ID as moving from a traditional, instrumental and monolithic approach suited to blueprint projects; towards eclectic or contingent approaches that are suited to process projects; and finally pointing towards the


potential contribution of a critical approach that draws on broader critical, postdevelopment, neo-Marxist and postcolonial discourses to embed the macro-political context in our understanding of the operation and impact of ID projects. Thus, celebrating the ‘power of power’, the article argues that the traditional as well as the alternative eclectic and contingent PM approaches are yet to sufficiently account for questions such as power, influence, domination, exploitation and ethnocentrism. Hence, it calls for a critical perspective in the study of ID projects from four lenses: postdevelopment, Habermasian, Foucauldian, and neo-Marxist. However, there are limitations to this exercise. From a chronological perspective, while contingent approaches follow the traditional, unitary and managerialist ‘paradigm’ in conventional PM, this has not been exactly the case in PM in ID. In fact, political approaches have to some extent preceded contingent approaches such that traditional and micro-political ‘models’ have been termed ‘conflicting images’ or seen as ‘either…or’ situations; the contingent approaches may be seen in that perspective as hybrid approaches (Hulme, 1995). Likewise, there has not been a perfect time-isomorphism between PM approaches in ID and ID management phases. Another limitation is the possible distinction or nuance between the labels ‘political’ and ‘critical’ approaches, which some in the field of ID may blur (Cooke and Dar, 2008; Rist, 2008). Here we have assumed that critical approaches take a more explicitly macro-political perspective than (micro-) political ones, although the boundaries are not clear-cut. Thus, when we mean ‘critical’, we strongly refer to the very idea that there is something fundamentally wrong with the theory and practice of PM in ID (Cooke and Dar, 2008; Kerr, 2008). So, like the latter authors, we are aware of what opponents of the critical understandings would call a lack of instrumental value or relevance, such as the lack of an immediate alternative which may serve as panacea to current PM approaches in ID. Nonetheless, we would argue that this exercise is valuable for three reasons. First, projects are still relevant and important in ID settings, while their management and operation remain contentious, and debates over the nature of PM in ID can be enhanced by drawing on similarities with critical perspectives on conventional PM. Making ID projects critical does not necessarily mean that tools do not matter. Neither does it suggest that context and people do not count. It is neither about managerially improving PM in ID. But it instead conveys the idea that any PM approach in ID may be ‘ineffective’ to the extent that it fails to consider the intrinsic micro-political and macro-political (both at the national and international levels) conditions, that mostly influence their planning, implementation, and evaluation. Thus, we recognise the value of PM practices which address the political sides of projects. Second, this engagement will also move forward the case for critical PM research. ID projects have been challenged and their limitations widely criticised in the ID literature (European Commission, 2007; World Bank, 1998), providing an opening for a critical contribution to the debate. As the critical perspective in conventional PM research investigates the limits of projects, PM and indeed projectification, by their very nature, ID projects

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