A FOUNDATION OF PROJECT MANAGEMENT THEORY Louis Lousberg 1 and Hans Wamelink Department of Real Estate & Housing Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands ABSTRACT The product approach of project management theory still outweighs the social science approach. The latter deals with power and politics, as constituent as it is in managing projects. Choosing the linguistic turn as a starting point of the paradigm change that has been made in organizational studies, in this paper, the foundations, the theorizing and examples of the social science approach will be explored. This exploration is based on a literature study and the preliminary results of PhD research on conflicts in complex Public Private Partnership projects in spatial developments. First, the ontological and epistemological starting point of this approach is elaborated by a description of an attempt of Husserl to escape the subject/object dualism. Next, the following theses are worked out: (1) there is not one theory, but there are multiple approaches; (2) there is not one form of managing projects, but there are several; and (3) due to the gap of knowledge of social project management forms research should be focused on the specific, context-dependent practice and be grounded in what practioners say about this practice. Based on these theses the paper ends with a conclusion about a foundation of a project management theory. 1. INTRODUCTION Literature shows that the underlying theory of project management is obsolete (Koskela, 2002a), that in prior literature it has been generally seen that there is no explicit theory of project management (Koskela et al, 2002a) and that several prominent authors have raised the need to introduce alternative theoretical approaches to the study of projects, and to identify the implications that they may have for how we organise and manage projects (Cicmil et al, 2006b). Therefore, the quest for a theory of project management can be stipulated as problematic. Hence, the central question addressed in this article is: what is the foundation of a project management theory that is practical; practical in the sense that it enhances understanding for practioners and practical in the sense that it works? 2. STARTING POINT: THE LINGUISTIC TURN. In search for theories that are underlying the PMBOK, (Project Management Body Of Knowledge) as described in the PMBOK Guide of the Project Management Institute, it can be concluded that anomalies that occur in the application of these underlying project management theories are regarded as strong enough for the claim that a 1 l.lousberg@bk.tudelft.nl 1
paradigmatic transformation of the discipline of project management is needed (Koskela et al, 2002a). Where hence Koskela is searching in descriptions and categorisations of existing theories, this paper departs from the assumption that the foundation of a theory can only be found in choosing a ontological and hence epistemological, in short paradigmatic, position. Here The linguistic turn (Rorty, 1967) is taken as the starting point of the requested paradigm shift. The roots of the linguistic turn lie in a stream of work in philosophy concerned with the nature of meaning and experience. The linguistic turn describes a particular philosophical understanding that proposes a particular relation of language to social/historical embedded seeings of the world and every person s situated existence (Deetz, 2003) (Clegg, 2005). It is interesting that Deetz article describes the linguistic turn as one of the historical attempts to escape the subject/object dualism and the assumption of a psychological foundation of experience, starting by Husserl (1913, 1962): In his treatment, specific personal experiences and objects of the world are not given in a constant way but are outcomes of a presubjective, preobjective inseparable relationship between constitutive activities and the stuff being constituted. Thus, the science of objects was enabled by a prior but invisible set of practices that constituted specific objects and presented them as given in nature. And, the presence of personal experiences as psychological, required first a constituting perspective, invisible and prereflective, through which experiences were possible. A floating/social/historical/cultural/intersubjective I thus always preceded either the objects of science or the psychological I of personal experience (Deetz, 2003). Deetz continues: Most objects and experiences come to us as a sedimentation from their formative conditions. They are taken as our own or in the world, and the specific conditions of their formation are forgotten. These perspectives or standpoints are institutionalized and embedded in formed experiences and language, and as such, invisibly taken on as one s own, while they are reproductions of experiences originally produced somewhere else by others. These positions or standpoints are unavoidably political (Deetz, 2003). So language no longer represents reality: it is reality itself. Contrary to the problem of language as the mirror of nature (Deetz, 2003) social reality is here regarded as a social construct. Therefore theory about that reality can be nothing more than a social construct and exactly that makes such a theory practical. 3. THESES 3.1 Theory and approaches What strikes in the discussion about project management and its underlying theories is that the distinction and interconnection between the concepts of project management, theory, approach and paradigm are often not made clear. It therefore blurs this discussion. With the definition of paradigm of Kuhn in mind- a paradigm is a common accepted scientific achievement that delivers for a certain time model problems and solutions to a community of researchers (Kuhn, 1996) it can even lead to remarkable statements as Lean production can be understood as a new paradigm (Howell et al. 2004) Project management is here defined as an act and theory as consisting primarily from concepts and causal relationships that relate these concepts (Koskela, 2002a). It is though not always clear whether theory precedes (lies under) this act or is constituted in this act (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). This depends on the approach that is used. From a systems-theory approach other theories about the same subject will evolve than for instance from a social science 2
approach. How different approaches generate different theories is illustrated by the following reflection on success and failure in projects: Despite the levels of research founded on the presumptions of instrumental rationality in decision-making and control, it is increasingly apparent that accepting and applying such orthodoxy does not eliminate project failures, not does it guarantee project success (Williams, 2004). The issue of ambiguity associated with qualifying a project as success or failure has recently attracted scholarly attention. The debate focuses on a more strategic level of decision making, in which project failure appears to be strategic rather than linked to technical problems, and is seen as a result of political processes of resistance in organisations. Table 1 summarises different approaches to understanding project failure by distinguishing three perspectives and linking them to a wider domain of the project management process. Table 1. Perspectives on project success and failure (adapted from Fincham, 2002: 3 in Cicmil et al, 2006b) Perspective Instrumental Processual Narrative Form of Organizational Behaviour and Action Organizational goals; managerial and organizational structures surrounding the project Organizational and sociological processes; projects as form of a decision outcome Organizational and socio-political processes; symbolic action; themes Methodological Focus Simple cause and effect Socio-technical interaction Interpretation and sense-making; rhetoric and persuasion; critical/hermeneutics Success and Failure seen as Objective and polarised states Outcomes of organizational processes Social constructs; paradigms So different perspectives or approaches lead to different definitions of Success & Failure wherein different concepts are used. Questioning Success & Failure therefore leads to different concepts and causal relationships that relate these concepts : thus different theories. Hence, this section is concluded with the thesis that there is not one theory, but there are multiple approaches. 3.2 Approaches and forms of management For the same reason that different approaches lead to different theories, different approaches lead to different forms of management. The same problems as normative as they are are described with different concepts, hence the ways to solve them forms of management are described in different terms. So it depends on the way a problem is described, what form of management is suitable. Dominant variable to distinguish between forms of steering is uncertainty/complexity. Interpreting five forms of steering in this paper three kinds of managing projects are distinguished; they can be placed along an increasing scale of complexity/uncertainty 3
between routine and improvisation: project management (as defined e.g. in PMBOK), programme management and process management. Table 2. Different forms of managing projects along an axis of increasing complexity Amount of Form of steering Form of Examples uncertainty management Very low Open loop Routine Managing industrial fabrication Average Feedback Project management Managing systems Reasonable Feed forward Programme management Managing policy High (also ambiguity) Meta Process management Managing interaction Very high (also ambiguity) Intrinsic Improvisation Managing brainstorms To get things sharp, the difference between Project and Process management is elaborated here. To describe the concept of process management in literature it is presented as opposed to project management. Table 3 is an example of this. Table 3. Differences between project and process management Project One time activity One goal Limited time Temporarily organization Uncertainty Production out of line management Violates well known conventions Disturbs line organizations Process Multiple activity Several goals Long time orientation Organization of interaction Uncertainty and ambiguity Production in arena s within organization Seeks new conventions Generates dynamics; requires flexibility Surely this enlightens the differences, but, as indicated here before, several publications tend to emphasise the differences between project/systems management and process/interaction management in favour of process management (see e.g. the section about project success or failure above). This while literature shows that both approaches have their own value, depending of the issue that has to be dealt with; this within one project. As experienced project managers the writers of this article fully agree on this; as a project manager one has to be able to shift quickly from a project approach to a process approach, wherein contrary to the project approach the content of the project is the result of a development that takes place along the way. So different forms of management are suitable for different problems/questions/subjects. Therefore, these different forms of management can be appropriate within one project. Hence this section can be concluded with the thesis that there is not one form of managing projects, but there are several. 3.3 Gap of knowledge and interpretative research Although there are different forms of managing projects suitable for different problems or questions, existing project management literature is dominated by a 4
discourse wherein the instrumental project approach and form outweighs the social process approach and form (Lousberg, 2006; Howell et al, 2004), Cicmil et al, 2006 a, b, c). Several attempts have been made to correct this unbalance, but seek the solution in applying again instruments e.g. software as Last Planner or Scrum (Koskela, 2002b; Ballard, 1994, Howell et al, 2004). This is done even from the notion that current project management fails to create the conversations necessary to develop a shared background of obviousness and common concerns (Howell et all, 2004), but this seems not to be based on an understanding understanding meant here in Max Weber s way as verstehen : a internalised understanding of social processes within a project that could lead to alternative ways of handling things. Research programmes should therefore focus on this supposed gap of social knowledge in the project management discourse. Similar to the idea that there is not one theory of project management, in social science the era of a grand theory that could claim to uncover pre-existing and universal explanations for social behaviour, seems to be far gone. Part of contemporary project management research from a mere social science point of view is focussed on the specific, the context-dependent. In the following are some examples of this research. In their study Govern mentality matters, designing an alliance culture of interorganizational collaboration for managing projects Clegg et al, 2002, investigate the Sydney Harbour sewage project as it was successfully completed in terms of time and money before the Olympic games of 2002. The project designing and building a sewage facility in the harbour of Sydney- was started with an alliance contract that contained a minimum of requirements. The project strategy, specifications and design had to be developed by interaction within the project team and by tuning with the project environment; so by talking. The key themes for the analysis became the project culture and its relationship to a set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) of Schedule, Budget, Occupational Health and Safety, Community and Ecology. An extensive research of written texts, artefacts like banners and talks like meetings for instance over 1000 pages of transcripts were analyzed was done. This led to the findings that Govern mentality poses an alternative to policing, litigation and arbitration, especially in situations of multiple actors and interests, through the design of a more collective and coherent practical consciousness within which to make sense. First, the example shows how the instrumental can surely play an important role in managing a project. Further: Design of a more collective and coherent practical consciousness within which to make sense. and to develop a shared background of obviousness and common concerns (Howell et al, 2004) seem to be similar. However the instrument is not invented before and then implemented, as it is with software, but invented while talking about the project, so emerging from the challenges that had to be met in the project and therefore leading to other probably far more effective solutions than implementing software, although the latter of course can help. Another example is the study: an Inquiry into Project Managers and Skills (Cicmil, 2006c). In order to obtain an answer to the question of what it might mean and take to be a high performer or a virtuoso project manager, respondents were asked in open interviews to reflect on themes as key challenges, their own performance, personal careers and the role of training. Interesting in the realm of this article is 5
that the research method used, characterised as originating from a pragmatic epistemology, and designed as a participative cooperative inquiry based on active interviewing, involving reflective practitioners and pragmatic researchers. Some of the insights of project management practice that emerged from this cooperative inquiry are continuous renegotiation of the project s direction and plans, experienced in a social context where conversations and power play an equally important role as documents and procedures and understanding project management as a social and political action in context: evaluating the situation using judgment, intuition, previous experience and a holistic, multi-perspective approach as well as logic and universal principles of project management to act and perform in the specific local context of the living present. These findings confirm the earlier in this article supposed coexistence of the instrumental and social forms of project management. The example also shows that the role of project managers as implementers can be a problematic one. But foremost it illustrates that taking practice as the basis for research, can reveal a different picture of daily project management compared to more common representations in existing project management research literature and make this literature therefore richer. The last example of research focussed on the specific, context-dependent is part of my PhD-research on conflicts in complex public private spatial planning projects. The research question is how to deal with conflicts in a way that they are no longer dysfunctional. Part of the research is the analysis of cases to obtain insight in the evolution and possibly the cause of conflicts in the specific context. Literature shows that differences in perception play an important role in the emergence of conflicts. To confront this with practice a method was chosen that analyses the actual production of meanings and concepts used by social actors in real settings (Gephart, 2004) (Suddaby, 2006). Purpose of the analysis is to make statements about how actors interpret reality, not to develop scientific truth about reality. Transcriptions were made of open interviews about the theme s conflict, dysfunctional conflicts and solutions. Next the raw data of each interview were interpreted through comparison with each other into theoretical concepts and relations between these concepts, valid for this particular case. Findings are that: - in the conflict case, non matching images of each other between the architect and the project developer, seem to be dominant in escalating into a disfunctional conflict; - in the non conflict case a relation seems to be between preventing conflicts and understanding each other differences in perception of quality, costs and revenues, shortly: economic feasibility. This research example illustrates how concepts and their relations emerge from data and the following analysis, instead of the other way around: derived from prior theory that guided data collection and analysis (Suddaby, 2006). What these three examples of specific, context-dependent research have in common is that they: choose project management practice as the basis of the research; use interpretative qualitative research methods; investigate the construction of a shared reality, of shaping theory in reality; distinguish between the instrumental/rational and social/personal, but study both; and 6
deliver deep insight in the practice of project management. Therefore this section is concluded with the thesis that the distorted balance between knowledge about the instrumental forms of project management and knowledge about the social forms of project management can be restored in favour of the latter by research that is focused on the specific, context-dependent practice and be grounded in what practioners say about practice. 4. CONCLUSIONS The central question addressed in this article is: what is the foundation of a project management theory that is practical; practical in the sense that it enhances understanding for practioners and practical in the sense that it works? Three theses have been elaborated: 1. there is not one theory, but there are multiple approaches; 2. there is not one form of managing projects, but there are several; 3. due to the gap of knowledge of social project management forms research should be focused on the specific, context-dependent practice and be grounded in what practioners say about practice. From these three theses it is concluded that the foundation of a project management theory that is practical, is practice itself. 6. REFERENCES Ballard, G. (1994) The Last Planner. Northern California Construction Institute. Monterey, CA. Cicmil, S., Williams, T., Thomas, J. and Hodgson, D. (2006a) Rethinking Project Management: researching the actuality of projects. International Journal of Project management, 24(8), 675-86. Cicmil, S. and Hodgson, D. (2006b) New Possibilities for Project Management Theory: A Critical Engagement. Project Management Journal, 37(3), 111-22. Cicmil, S. (2006c) Understanding project management practice through interpretative and critical research perspectives. Project Management Journal, 37 (2), 27-37. Clegg, S.R, Pitsis, T.S., Rura-Polley, T. and Marosszeky, M. (2002) Governmentality matters: designing an alliance culture of inter-organizational collaboration for managing projects. Organization Studies, 23(3), 317-37. Clegg, S. (2005) Talking Construction into Being. inaugural address, VU University, Amsterdam. Deetz, S. (2003) Reclaiming the Legacy of the Linguistic Turn. Organization, 10(3), 421-9. Glaser, B.G. and Strauss, A.L. (1967) The discovery of grounded theory: strategies for qualitative research. Aldine, New York. Howell, G., Macomber, H., Koskela, L. and Draper, J. (2004) Leadership and project management: time for a shift from Fayol to Flores. Proceedings 12 th Annual Lean Construction Conference (IGLC-12). 2-6 August, Elsinore, International Group for Lean Construction (http://www.iglc.net). Koskela, L. and Howell, G. (2002a) The underlying theory of project management is obsolete. In D.P. Slevin, J.K. Pinto and D.I. Cleland (eds) Proceedings PMI 7
Research Conference 2002, Project Management Institute, Newtown Square, PA, 293-302. Koskela, L. and Howell, G. (2002b) The theory of project management: explanation to novel methods. In C.T. Formoso and G. Ballard (eds) Proceedings 10 th Annual Lean Construction Conference (IGLC-10). 6 8 August, Gramado, International Group for Lean Construction, 1 11 (http://www.iglc.net). Kuhn, T. (1996) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 3 rd edn. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Lousberg, L.H. (2006) Towards a theory of project management. Proceedings SCRI Symposium, 03-04 April, Delft, Delft University of Technology and University of Salford., 40-53 Rorty, R. (1967) The linguistic turn: recent essays in philosophical method. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Suddaby, R. (2006) From the editors: what grounded theory is not. Academy of Management Journal, 49(4), 633-42. 8