Link to thesis. - Concept - NTNU

PAPERSGovernance Frameworks for Public Project Development and Estimationso there is a link between the governanceprinciples on a high level and onlower levels, and a link between theinternal processes (company, project)and its surroundings (the trade, thesector, the industry, etc.). Similarly,“The reality that project governance isthe context, not the content, must bereinforced. Meaning, project governanceis the space in which the day-to-dayproject activities occur” (Patel, 2007,p. 2). Artto, Kujala, Dietrich, andMartinsuo (2007) further underpin thepoint of looking at the project in itsenvironment. We are therefore confidentthat the framework is a key to understandinghow well projects perform.Major public projects are complexprojects in a complex public context.Amin and Hausner (1997) suggest that“the successful governance of complexeconomic systems . . . requires a strategicinteractive approach. . . Such anapproach can be summarized as onecombining central strategic guidancewith decentralized associative governance.”This seems to be quite parallelto Miller and Hobbs (2005). They add,“Any attempt to build effective governancemechanisms should include:Simplifying models and practiceswhich reduce the complexity of theworld. . . . Developing the capacity fordynamic social learning about variouscausal processes. ...Building methodsfor coordinating actions across differentsocial forces. ... Establishing botha common world view for individualaction and a system of meta-governanceto stabilize key players’ orientation,expectations and rules of conduct.”They also say that “the veryprocesses of governance co-constitutethe objects which come to be governedin and through these same processes”(pp. 104–5). This leads us to the idea ofthe “negotiated economy”—a “thirdway” between market economics andcentral planning (p. 117).Above we have only talked aboutsingle projects. Clearly, projects that areinterlinked into a program of projectsneed to be looked at as a whole entity.But equally clearly, our structures ofgovernance through projects needs tolook at the overall portfolio of projects,and see how the corporate strategy isrealized through that portfolio (Morris &Jamieson, 2004) or, alternatively, askhow aligned the portfolio is with theoverall strategy of the organization—thisreflects the first (and third) point of thepreviously mentioned APM definition.Governance framework is definedlike this (our definition):Governance framework: an organizedstructure established asauthoritative within the institution,comprising processes and rulesestablished to ensure projects meettheir purpose.The project meeting its purpose is away of defining its success. It impliesboth delivering the relevant solution inan effective way and achieving a sustainableeffect.Study MethodologyThe aim of this work is to look at howthe governance regimes for majorinvestment projects in different countriesaffects project performance, aswell as comparing this with the frameworks’intended effect. We wish toinvestigate how and why underestimationoccurs, rather than simplisticallycomparing estimates with out-turns,such as the Morris and Hough (1987)work admits but as is also in Flyvbjerget al. (2003), which does not distinguishunderestimation in the early governancephase from execution-phaseeffects such as mismanagement, scopechanges, and the “double-dip” underestimationeffect (Eden, Ackermann, &Williams, 2005). This type of questioncannot be properly answered by a positivistapproach. It can only beapproached by a phenomenologicalapproach, looking in depth at a smallnumber of cases (see, e.g., Flyvbjerg,2006). We need case studies offeringcontext-dependent knowledge to comprehendfully the platform for expandingtheory into this field. Once this stepis complete, and initial understandinggained, this could be confirmed orexpanded in the future by a wider, positiviststudy.There are essentially two types ofsuch study: action research (Eden &Huxham, 2006), in which we couldaffect the course of the projects underconsideration, or case studies, in whicheffects are observed by an essentiallyneutral observer. In this study, we haveto take the latter role, although itshould be noted that the very existenceof the QA regime, of which the ConceptResearch Program is an associated part,has a significant effect on the estimationprocess in the Norwegian projectsstudied.While we clearly need empiricalstudy of cases to establish the effects ofthe governance framework, we are notentering the cases blindly. First, wehave already established the aboveunderlying theories of what projectgovernance is. Second, since we wish tocompare frameworks, we can establishthe variations between frameworks topoint us to how to carry out the casestudies. Therefore, these studies willbe pointed and directed, rather thanthe very open studies carried out under(for example) grounded theory. Thiswas a small study undertaken to findinitial results. It was, therefore, proposedto analyze a very small numberof projects as case studies, in just twocountries.Norway and the United Kingdomwere chosen as having a fairly newpublic-sector project governance frameworkand a well-established one, respectively.Two projects were studied in eachcountry. As described below, it wasfound as part of the U.K. study thatdefense projects (the largest public projects)were governed under a differentframework from other U.K. public projects,so it was decided to study a defenseproject and a civil project in each country.Similarity between the projects ineach country was sought, but, as in mostcase-study research, access was difficultand to a certain extent we had to acceptthe projects that were available.S30 2008 ■ Project Management Journal ■ DOI: 10.1002/pmj