JID: JPMA

ARTICLE IN PRESS [m5GeSdc;October 28, 2020;10:42]

International Journal of Project Management xxx (xxxx) xxx

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

International Journal of Project Management

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijproman

Cross-learning between project management and international

development: Analysis and research agenda
Lavagnon A. Ika a,∗, Jonas Söderlund b, Lauchlan T. Munro a, Paolo Landoni c
a
University of Ottawa, Canada
b
BI Norwegian Business School, Norway
c
Politechnico di Torino, Italy

a b s t r a c t

Both project management and international development came of age as scholarly and practice domains in the 20th century. They share a central concern with
organizing work and delivering change. Though international development played a role in defining the project management domain in the 1950s and the 1960s,
there has been little cross-fertilization between project management and international development in recent decades. The centrality of projects in international
development efforts and the need for project management to help tackle global challenges that overlap with international development, such as climate change
and COVID-19, make such cross-learning timely and rewarding. Accordingly, with the aim of cross-fertilization and integration, this paper examines what connects
and differentiates the two domains of project management and international development, both conceptually and through the distinctive nature of their modes of
delivery. The paper lays out a research agenda for the interface between project management and international development.

1. Introduction in low- and middle-income countries (hereinafter the Global South)

Project-based work is omnipresent in every sector of the world econ-
omy (Schoper et al., 2018) and interest in project management has
grown considerably in recent decades (Geraldi & Söderlund, 2018).
By some accounts, 24% of the world’s GDP ($19 trillion) is generated
through projects every year (World Bank, 2015) and millions of new
project management jobs are expected to be created globally in years to
come, which include the development of new products and systems, the
delivery of new infrastructure, and the implementation of major change
efforts (PMI, 2018). Yet, while project management as a scholarly and
practice domain experiences a boom, gloom and doom performance of-
ten plague projects (Denicol et al., 2020; Morris, 2013). Projects may be
“cool” yet complex to manage (Grabher, 2002) but many projects come
in over budget and/or over time (Flyvbjerg, 2016). Worse, projects may
fail to deliver on their immediate objectives or their strategic goals or
else their stakeholder expectations (Meredith & Zwikael, 2020; Shenhar
& Dvir, 2007).
In international development, which is in itself a vibrant and impor-
tant scholarly and practice domain, things are similar albeit different.
Projects have become the quintessential way – a sort of administrative
commodity – to conceptualize, fund, and measure international devel-
opment performance (Freeman & Schuller, 2020). Thus, much like in the
project management domain (Schoper et al., 2018), the project form is
prevalent more than ever as international development projects seek to
contribute, directly or indirectly, to achieving the sustainable and eq-
uitable poverty reduction and/or the improvement of living standards
(Ika et al., 2020). This is the case of large-scale international develop-
ment infrastructure projects with their huge size, their enormous scope,
their great number and diversity of stakeholders, and their unprece-
dented transformational intent (Abers et al., 2017; Gil et al., 2019).
The peculiarity of these goals makes it, perhaps, even more challenging
to win success in international development projects than in what we
call “other projects”, i.e. non-international development projects, the
projects that the mainstream project management literature has dealt
with, or projects whose objective is something other than the dedicated
promotion of international development.
Indeed, for 70 years, trillions of dollars have been spent on in-
ternational development projects, many times with little to show
for it (Easterly, 2006). Evidently, numerous projects fail to deliver
much-needed impact for beneficiaries (Andrews, 2018; Banerjee & Du-
flo, 2011; Ika, 2012). There are, however, many international devel-
opment successes (Feeny & Vuong, 2017; Honig, 2018; Ika, 2018). By
several accounts, the managerial explanations for project failures seem to
be the same for both international development and other projects (Gow
& Morss, 1988; Ika & Donnelly, 2017). Thus, it could help if one could
open the project management “black box” and learn how international
development projects are actually carried out (Ika, 2015).
Considering their distinctive nature and the particular mode of
project management their delivery requires, international development
projects qualify as a specific type of projects, though one that seldom
features in the mainstream project management literature (Ika et al.,
2020), whether in textbooks (e.g., Shenhar & Dvir, 2007), summaries

∗
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: ika@telfer.uottawa.ca (L.A. Ika).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2020.10.005

Available online xxx

0263-7863/© 2020 Elsevier Ltd, APM and IPMA. All rights reserved.
Please cite this article as: L.A. Ika, J. Söderlund, L.T. Munro et al., Cross-learning between project management and international development:
Analysis and research agenda, International Journal of Project Management, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2020.10.005
JID: JPMA
ARTICLE IN PRESS
L.A. Ika, J. Söderlund, L.T. Munro et al.
(e.g., Davies, 2017) or standards (e.g., PMI, 2013). Where they do ap-
pear, international development projects are often caricatured as “hu-
manitarian aid… in a war-torn country” (Davies, 2017, p. 2), (implicitly)
delivered by international non-governmental organizations (PMI, 2013,
p. 36). This dearth, we argue, is paradoxical since it is common in the
project management literature to look into projects of different kinds
in different contexts in order to understand their (mis)performance, a
scholarly trend Morris et al. (2011) refer to as “the third wave” of project
management research. It seems mainstream project management litera-
ture refers to international development projects especially when high-
lighting some of their peculiar tools (e.g., Golini et al., 2015), their fail-
ures over the years (e.g., Ika, 2012), and their management standards
(e.g., Landoni & Corti, 2011) but that this stream of literature has spent
little time developing in-depth knowledge about the challenges asso-
ciated with organizing and managing in these unique settings. At the
same time, projects have frequently been an object of research in inter-
national development (Abers et al., 2017; Freeman & Schuller, 2020),
although with very little focus on the issues pertaining to project man-
agement and project leadership. Instead, in many of these prior studies,
projects are treated as a “black box” where little interest is devoted to
what really goes on inside (Ika, 2015).
Furthermore, the project management literature often makes strong
but usually implicit assumptions about what kinds of projects it deals
with (i.e. projects with a tangible deliverable, done in and by the pri-
vate or public sector, e.g., infrastructure projects) (Munro & Ika, 2020)
and under what kinds of institutional settings those projects take place
(i.e. a modern, developed economy) (Golini & Landoni, 2013). These
ramifications exclude a great many international development projects
that typically involve high degrees of change in weak institutional set-
tings (Calderisi, 2007; Picciotto, 2020). Indeed, the project management
literature has barely focused on hard international development projects
(e.g., infrastructure projects) (Abers et al., 2017; Gil et al., 2019) and
very little on soft international development projects such as capac-
ity building projects which, as complex change projects, seek to im-
prove or transform institutions if not the whole society in developing
countries (e.g., delivering policy reforms) (Andrews, 2018; Ika & Don-
nelly, 2017). As a result, the conversation at the interface between the
neighboring domains of project management and international develop-
ment is limited (Heeks & Stanforth, 2014; Ika & Hodgson, 2014). Indeed,
they constitute separate domains of knowledge with separate ideolo-
gies that have been maintained separate, yet share key concerns that
call for cross-fertilization and joint disciplinary community-building
(Davies et al., 2018).
Against this backdrop, this paper seeks to address the question that is
at the heart of this special issue: When project management meets inter-
national development, what can we learn? The paper explores the evo-
lution of the domains of project management and international devel-
opment and their little cross-fertilization to date. It examines what con-
nects and differentiates international development and other projects,
so as to foster a fertile cross-learning. Such a contrast, we recognize,
is prone to ambiguity. For international development projects are alike
yet unalike other projects and different kinds of projects prevail in dif-
ferent kinds of contexts in both project management and international
development (Ika & Donnelly, 2017; Morris, 2013). What is more, while
international development projects differ in terms of their goals and con-
texts, they include, like other projects, hard (e.g., infrastructure) and
soft (e.g., change) undertakings. Therefore, for the purposes of a consis-
tent comparison, we focus on these common kinds of projects between
project management and international development and contrast them
by looking at the intangibility of their goals and the socio-political com-
plexity of their surrounding contexts (Ika & Donnelly, 2017; Ika & Hodg-
son, 2014). In so doing, the paper provides a deeper understanding of
the interface between both domains of knowledge and sheds light on the
specificity of international development projects in terms of why they
exist, how they differ from other projects but also among themselves,
and how they evolve (Ika & Hodgson, 2014; Söderlund, 2004). This re-
2
[m5GeSdc;October 28, 2020;10:42]
International Journal of Project Management xxx (xxxx) xxx
search consists of a conceptual paper, which is based on a review and
comparison of the project management and international development
literatures and on insights from the other papers in the special issue.
The research is significant for three reasons. First, the core ques-
tion of this special issue is timely and relevant given that both project
management and international development are increasingly question-
ing their long-entrenched inclinations towards a managerialist, techno-
cratic, and instrumental way of managing (Dar & Cooke, 2008; Ika &
Hodgson, 2014). Second, in the “Age of Relevance”, research on project
management is increasingly scrutinizing the links between projects,
programs, portfolios, policies, strategies, and organizational, societal,
and global challenges (Morris, 2013, p. 269). At the same time, simi-
lar debates are taking place inside the international development do-
main, for instance around the return of national development plan-
ning (Chimhowu et al., 2019). Third, while both scholarly domains
are evolving, though at varying speeds, they share a concern for eco-
nomic, technological, social, political, and environmental transforma-
tions (Fischer, 2019; Geraldi & Söderlund, 2018) through international
development projects (Heeks & Stanforth, 2014; Ika & Hodgson, 2014).
Thus, project management and international development may offer
plenty of opportunities to reconnect and to learn, at the interface, from
one another (Ika & Hodgson, 2014), in a true scholarship of integration
and cross-fertilization (Boyer, 1990; Davies et al., 2018). This paper sets
out to offer some ideas on how this may come to fruition.
This paper is structured as follows: after this introduction, we com-
pare international development projects with other projects. Next, we
provide a theoretical and historical context to the two domains of project
management and international development, outlining their similarities
and differences, and the ways each has evolved over time. We then syn-
thesize the findings and propose a new agenda for future research at the
interface of project management and international development.
2. International development and other projects are similar
2.1. International development and other projects have common
characteristics
International development projects come in different types across a
wide variety of sectors: infrastructure, utilities, agriculture, transporta-
tion, water, electricity, energy, sewage, mines, health, nutrition, popu-
lation and urban development, education, environment, social develop-
ment, and governance (Diallo & Thuillier, 2004, 2005; Manning, 2017).
In international development, it is customary to distinguish between
hard, blueprint or physical-capital based projects (e.g., infrastructure
projects) and soft, process or human-capital based projects (capac-
ity building e.g., delivering policy reforms; governance, e.g., anti-
corruption initiatives; global challenges, e.g., responding to climate
change or COVID-19). It is also common to differentiate between sys-
tematic projects (e.g., infrastructure) which ultimately seek to reduce
poverty and emergency/humanitarian projects (e.g., disaster relief or
post-conflict rehabilitation projects) (Ika, 2012; Ika et al., 2020).
Regardless of their type, however, international development
projects are projects in the classic sense of the term. They consist in
limited, temporary, unique, and multidisciplinary undertakings and
deliver goods and services. They have a life cycle, which typically
evolves from the preparation phase to the implementation phase to
the closure/evaluation phase. They require the competent utilization
of project management approaches, tools and techniques to deal with
their delivery constraints such as time, cost and quality (Golini et al.,
2015; Ika et al., 2010; Landoni & Corti, 2011; Munro & Ika, 2020).
International development projects therefore bear a resemblance to do-
mestic public sector initiatives such as infrastructure or change projects
funded, initiated, and implemented within the same country, whether
the latter belongs to high-income countries, i.e. the Global North or
low- and middle-income countries, i.e. the Global South (Ika, 2012).
A good example of an international development infrastructure project
JID: JPMA
ARTICLE IN PRESS
L.A. Ika, J. Söderlund, L.T. Munro et al.
is the Three Gorges Dam project in China (1994–2011), the world’s
largest hydroelectric dam, which was managed by a government-owned
company with an initial budget of $ 22.5 billion (Shenhar & Holz-
mann, 2017). A good illustration of a change project is the $120 million
Nigeria public-sector reform governance and capacity-building project
(2010–2017), which aimed at improving transparency, accountabil-
ity, and quality in public finance and human resource management
systems, in order to strengthen governance in the participating states
(Andrews, 2018).
What is more, international development projects, be they hard
or soft, are often international projects in that they reach beyond na-
tional boundaries, involve stakeholders and/or use resources or pro-
vide services from multiple world sites, geographies, cultures, organi-
zations, and time zones, government or business units and functions,
whether physically or virtually (Köster, 2010; Manning, 2017; Munro
& Ika, 2020). These international development projects may be termed
transnational (e.g., the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami relief in
2004–05) or even global projects (e.g., the Roll Back Malaria program,
climate change and COVID-19 responses) when they respectively in-
volve numerous countries or the entire world (Henderson et al., 2018;
Oldekop et al., 2020; Orr et al., 2011). As such, while they differ
from strictly domestic projects as multi-cultural, multi-country, multi-
site, multi-organization, and multi-stakeholder temporary endeavors re-
alized across the world, international development projects are com-
plex international and interorganizational systems or networks (Jones &
Lichtenstein, 2008; Manning, 2017), often characterized by high trans-
action costs.
Coordination costs are caused by a slew of factors such as complexity
and scale, interdependence, uncertainty, and time pressure (Orr et al.,
2011). These factors are akin to what Geraldi et al. (2011) refer to as
the structural complexity, uncertainty, and pace dimensions of project
complexity. They are further exacerbated by defining challenges such
as network complexity or the webs of formal and informal relationships
between project participants, distance or the institutional differences
in terms of beliefs, traditions, and rule systems between project partic-
ipants, and dispersion across multiple world regions and time zones,
thus creating what Orr et al. (2011) term “institutional costs”. While
dispersion may be considered as part of structural complexity, network
complexity and distance, however, point to socio-political complexity, at
least in Geraldi et al.’s (2011) terminology. Equally, as is often the case
for international projects, international development projects are sub-
ject to changes in their goals, implementation, and even more so, their
environmental context including changes in governments in the recipi-
ent country, a characteristic which is also called dynamic or emergent
complexity (Geraldi et al., 2011).
Some international development projects consist in large-scale in-
ternational infrastructure projects with transformational intent. This is
the case of the $4 billion Addis Ababa-Djibouti Railway project, de-
signed to provide the booming but landlocked Ethiopian economy with
an outlet to the sea and cut transport times from the port of Djibouti
to the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa by three-quarters. While the Chi-
nese partners delivered the railway on time and on budget, Ethiopia’s
electrical supply grid has been unreliable, resulting in frequent power
outages and immobilized trains and a failure to deliver promised bene-
fits (Ng, 2018).
Both international infrastructure projects and international devel-
opment projects in other sectors such as health or governance tend
to be large and interorganizational projects with transformative intent
(De Savigny et al., 2008; Sydow & Braun, 2018) that share the following
attributes (Orr et al., 2011):
• they involve global and local participants in perhaps a “once-in-a-
century project” in the recipient poor countries;
• they include complex interfaces such as a contrasted focus of the
public sector on accountability, transparency, and due process and
the private sector on efficiency, innovation, and effectiveness; and
3
[m5GeSdc;October 28, 2020;10:42]
International Journal of Project Management xxx (xxxx) xxx
cross-functional interfaces further complicated by institutional dif-
ferences;
• they feature high levels of local embeddedness or contact points be-
tween global and local participants;
• they experience high socio-political complexity due to their social,
environmental, and distributive impacts with differing expectations,
tensions, frictions, and conflicts;
• they are more or less irreversible because of the physical nature of
their constructions, excavations, and structures;
• they require a close attention to both time and budget and thus
are prone to performance measurement challenges when it comes
to their transaction costs.
As a result, international development projects are, like many inter-
national and global projects, prone to institutional exceptions or situa-
tions where ignorance of unfamiliar institutional contexts prevails (Orr
& Scott, 2008).
2.2. International development and other projects have common
management concerns
The above summary suggests that international development and
other projects are alike. They share so much in common that
Youker (1999), taking stock of the lessons learned in both international
development and domestic USA project management, concludes that
“the problems are almost exactly the same (in both sets of projects) and
that the solution is to learn the basic lessons of good project manage-
ment and to apply them in the specific context of each specific projec-
t…The lessons for effective project implementation are the same” (pp. 6–
7). Therefore, the management of international development and other
projects is similar in terms of the challenges that confront project spon-
sors, managers and stakeholders. As Ika and Donnelly (2017) note about
international development projects: “They all too frequently fail in part
because of mismanagement: imperfect project initiation, poor under-
standing of the project context, poor stakeholder management, “dirty”
politics, delays during project execution, cost overruns, poor risk anal-
ysis, inadequate monitoring and evaluation failure, etc.” (p. 45).
Project planners and managers in both international development
and other projects (Flyvbjerg, 2016; Munro & Ika, 2020) may fall foul
to pessimism bias or its opposite, optimism bias (the belief that they
are at less risk than anyone else of experiencing a negative consequence
in their project) and/or strategic misrepresentation (knowingly under-
rating initial costs and overrating benefits in projects) and, hence, to
the “malevolent” Kahneman’s (2011) Planning Fallacy or the tendency
for forecasts of project schedules, costs, and benefits to be unrealisti-
cally close to best-case scenarios. An example of a Planning Fallacy is
the $16 million PlayPumps project (2006–2010) to install 4000 water
pumps in Africa which flogged an unworkable and financially disas-
trous pump technology, often at the expense of better, existing pumps
(Ika, 2018). Furthermore, international development project planners
and managers, much like their other project counterparts, may also
experience the “benevolent” Hirschman’s (1967) Hiding Hand princi-
ple and thus believe that it is not always bad for them to overrate the
benefits of proposed projects and underrate their costs and challenges
inasmuch as they also underestimate their own creativity and stumble
into success in the face of unexpected challenges. An example of a Hid-
ing Hand is the $270 million World Bank-funded Ouagadougou (Burk-
ina Faso, West Africa) Water Supply project which had a cost overrun
of more than $60 million yet was able to connect more than 90% of
the city’s population to the water system in 2007 from 30% in 2001
(Ika, 2018).
We note that the concerns of the Planning Fallacy and the Hid-
ing Hand provide an example of a cross-fertilization between project
management and international development that has sparked a de-
bate recently over whether the Planning Fallacy outweighs the Hid-
ing Hand when it comes to understanding project (mis)performance
JID: JPMA
ARTICLE IN PRESS
L.A. Ika, J. Söderlund, L.T. Munro et al.
Fig. 1. International development projects show high socio-political complexity and intangibility of objectives (based on Ika & Hodgson, 2014 and Ika & Don-
nelly, 2017).
(Flyvbjerg, 2016; Ika, 2018). In the next section, we turn our atten-
tion to what sets international development projects apart from other
projects.
3. International development and other projects are dissimilar
3.1. International development and other projects have different
characteristics
As we noted in the introduction, compared to other projects, inter-
national development projects differ in their goals. Indeed, they fun-
damentally seek to achieve intangible goals such as poverty reduction,
improved governance or capacity building (Golini & Landoni, 2013; Ika
& Donnelly, 2017) and thus connote the enactment of social change in
the life of poor people, markedly in the Global South (Hirschman, 1967;
Oldekop et al., 2020). Ika (2012), summarizing the characteristics of in-
ternational development projects, argues that they:
are characterized by high complexity and subtleness, strong front-
end activity, the relative intangibility of their ultimate objective of
poverty reduction, a large array of heterogeneous stakeholders, di-
vergent perspectives among these stakeholders, the need for compro-
mise, project appeal in the eyes of politicians, the profound cultural
and geographical gap between project designers and their benefi-
ciaries, the asymmetrical distribution of power between the world’s
richest countries, institutions and people and its poorest, and the
prevalence of rather bureaucratic rules and procedures… Certainly,
none of these conditions are necessarily unique to ID projects and
project management (p. 20).
Essentially, international development projects tend to differ from
other projects, whether they are domestic or international, hard or soft,
regarding the intangibility and ambiguity of their end-goal of poverty
reduction and the relatively higher and interwoven socio-political com-
plexity, along with their induced and relatively higher transaction costs
(Heeks & Stanforth, 2014; Ika & Donnelly, 2017; Ika & Hodgson, 2014;
Orr et al., 2011). Two examples may suffice to make this point.
The overall goal of the socio-politically complex $4 billion Chad-
Cameroon pipeline project was to reduce poverty and strengthen Chad’s
institutional capacity. Despite the completion of the project ahead of
4
[m5GeSdc;October 28, 2020;10:42]
International Journal of Project Management xxx (xxxx) xxx
schedule in a country with limited project management capacity, the
Chadian government, when threatened by rebels, reneged on its agree-
ment with the World Bank and spent the oil revenues on arms and mili-
tary equipment instead of health and education. Thus, the project failed
to create good governance and reduce poverty and turned out to ben-
efit the government, the investors and lenders, but certainly not the
beneficiaries, the poor people in Chad (Calderisi, 2007; Ika & Saint-
Macary, 2012).
Abers et al. (2017) have shown how difficult it is for the government
to implement the agenda of social inclusion and participation in two
high profile international development projects in the Brazilian Ama-
zon: the 1780 km-long BR-163 highway road and the $16 billion and
11,233 Megawatt Belo Monte dam, the fourth largest hydroelectric dam
in the world. As these authors suggest, navigating the pernicious and
overlapping power inequalities between social groups, within the bu-
reaucracy and between territorial center and periphery proves so chal-
lenging that, in the end, the government “has more capacity to build
distant infrastructure that provides resources for centrally located eco-
nomic elites than to implement social and environmental policies that
bring improvements to the lives of poor local residents in those regions”
(p. 861).
Table 1 compares international development and other projects.
In sum, we propose a typology of projects according to project types
and levels of socio-political complexity and intangibility of project ob-
jectives (see Fig. 1). The typology suggests that international develop-
ment projects, i.e. the two boxes in the top right-hand corner, differ in
terms of both socio-political complexity and the intangibility of their
objectives compared to other projects, whether they are private or pub-
lic sector, domestic or international projects, i.e. the three boxes in the
bottom left. This typology reflects the fleeting landscape of international
development funding – once dominated by donors or lenders from the
Global North (e.g., the World Bank, the European Development Fund,
USAID, OXFAM) – and the arrival of new donors or lenders, i.e. govern-
mental or other organizations from the Global South (e.g., Government
of Nigeria; the Tata Foundation; the New Development Bank, the Export-
Import Bank of China) (Ika et al., 2020). Such a changing international
development context requires to deal with increasingly intangible objec-
tives like governance improvement, gender equality, and environmen-
tal sustainability and higher levels of socio-political complexity than in
other projects.
JID: JPMA
ARTICLE IN PRESS [m5GeSdc;October 28, 2020;10:42]

L.A. Ika, J. Söderlund, L.T. Munro et al. International Journal of Project Management xxx (xxxx) xxx

Table 1
Similarities and differences between international development and other projects.

Other projects (non-international development

International development projects (the object of projects) (the object of study of the project
study of the international development domain) management domain)

Similarities
International development projects are like • Limited, temporary, unique, and
any other project multidisciplinary initiatives
• Deliver goods and services in almost
every project setting
• A lifecycle (from preparation to
implementation to closure/evaluation
phase)
• Project management approaches, tools,
and techniques
• Time, cost and quality constraints.
• Limited, temporary, unique, and
multidisciplinary initiatives
• Deliver goods and services in almost
every project setting
• A lifecycle (from initiation to planning to
execution to closure phase)
• Project management approaches, tools,
and techniques
• Time, cost and quality constraints.

International development projects are like
domestic public sector projects (e.g.,
infrastructure) and usually international
projects (e.g., joint ventures in two or more
countries)
• A high number of stakeholders distributed
globally and locally with differing if not
contradictory expectations; multi-level
principal-agent problems
• Mismanagement concerns: initiation,
understanding of context, stakeholder
management, execution delays and cost
overruns, risk analysis, monitoring and
evaluation, Planning Fallacy or optimism
bias and/or strategic misrepresentation,
Hiding Hand, and pessimism bias.
• Creativity and innovation are critical for
success.
• Structural complexity, uncertainty, pace,
and dynamic or emergent complexity
challenges.
• Institutional exceptions are common.
• A high number of stakeholders distributed
globally and locally with differing if not
contradictory expectations; multi-level
principal-agent problems
• Mismanagement concerns: initiation,
understanding of context, stakeholder
management, execution delays and cost
overruns, risk analysis, monitoring and
evaluation, Planning Fallacy or optimism
bias and/or strategic misrepresentation,
Hiding
• Hand, and pessimism bias.
• Creativity and innovation are critical for
success.
• Structural complexity, uncertainty, pace,
and dynamic or emergent complexity
challenges.
• Institutional exceptions are common.

International development projects are like
any (international) interorganizational project
• Collaboration with multiple organizations
from different backgrounds and
institutions (e.g., multinational
organizations and local partners across
the world).
• Collaboration with multiple organizations
from different backgrounds and
institutions (e.g., multinational
organizations and local partners across
the world).

Differences
Nature and tangibility of the project goals • More intangible and ambiguous goals, e.g. • Relatively tangible goals relating to
poverty reduction, governance delivery of project benefits.
improvement, capacity building, national
transformation.

Degree of socio-political complexity of the
project context
• Higher degrees of environmental • Low to moderate environmental
uncertainty complexity.
• Greater challenges with regards to • Institutional stability.
institutional exceptions due to ignorance
of unfamiliar institutional contexts where
projects take place.

Transaction costs • Lack of a clear or powerful customer • Specific customer

• Asymmetry of power between the world’s
richest and poorest countries and
institutions
• Unique ways of organizing and strong
procedures orientation (e.g., procurement
guidelines)
• Unique, complex and uncertainty-prone
contexts and institutional settings:
Political, legal, cultural, technical,
organizational, social, economic, and
environmental challenges.
• Greater symmetry of power relations
between customer and contractor.
• Some flexibility in procedures orientation,
depending on customer.
• More stable, predictable contexts and
institutional settings leading to more
predictable transactions costs.

3.2. International development and other projects have different
management concerns
• it is often difficult if not impossible to involve the target benefi-
As international development projects differ from other projects,
they must be managed differently for the following reasons (Munro &
Ika, 2020):
• the funding agency often leads the project identification in line with
its own objectives (Youker, 2003) but it is not a client/owner like
in other projects as it does not receive the deliverables (Khang &
Moe, 2008);
ciaries or end-users in project discussions because of literacy, vol-
ume, distance, and communication problems (Youker, 2003); as
a consequence, international development projects exhibit a “lack
of a defined and/or powerful customer” (Golini & Landoni, 2013,
p. 18);

5
JID: JPMA
ARTICLE IN PRESS
L.A. Ika, J. Söderlund, L.T. Munro et al.
• governments in low-income countries face more acute resource
shortages than the governments of upper-income countries (Ika &
Donnelly, 2017; Youker, 2003);
• the project is more likely to fall prey to corruption in developing
countries, where extreme resource scarcity often induces fierce com-
petition (Grindle, 1980; Ika & Hodgson, 2014);
• and there may be a lack of an entrepreneurial mindset in the project
setting (Youker, 2003).
Since they tend to be altogether not-for-profit, technical, social,
and political undertakings, international development projects face a
litany of management challenges (Gow & Morss, 1988; Heeks & Stan-
forth, 2014) falling into three problem areas:
• structural or political, economic, physical/geographic, sociocultural,
historic, demographic, and environmental problems;
• institutional or collusion/corruption, capacity building, lack of po-
litical support, too much political interference, governance, and
principal-agent problems;
• and managerial or initiation, planning, implementation, and moni-
toring and evaluation problems (Ika, 2012).
International development projects pose particular challenges be-
cause of where they take place, that is in developing countries or of-
ten resource-poor, higher risk, lower capacity or conflict-riddled envi-
ronments often characterized by weak institutions or bad governance
(Crost et al., 2014; Picciotto, 2020) and because they frequently involve
complicated international funding and implementation arrangements
(Ika & Hodgson, 2014). Thus, bilateral and multilateral donors have
put great emphasis on project procedures, including stringent monitor-
ing and reporting requirements such as compliance with procurement
guidelines. For example, documentation of project completion is typi-
cally a requirement to ensure that funding has been used according to
donors’ rules (Freeman & Schuller, 2020).
As we have seen with the Brazilian Amazon and the Chad-Cameroon
pipeline projects (Abers et al., 2017; Calderisi, 2007), there exists an
intrinsic socio-political facet of international development projects and
their management (Grindle, 1980; Heeks & Stanforth, 2014). Indeed,
politics is everywhere in these projects, from their selection by fun-
ders and political leaders to their execution and evaluation. Interna-
tional politics can exacerbate the tensions between stakeholders. For in-
stance, the World Bank’s President at the time of the Chad-Cameroun
pipeline, Jim Wolfensohn, ended up lending hard, not soft, loans to
highly indebted Chad and Cameroon, which had no international credit
rating at the time to fund their project. The reason was that Germany
was against the use of soft loans and thus threatened Wolfensohn’s re-
election (Calderisi, 2007). This makes Ika and Saint-Macary (2012) note:
“As politics is sometimes defined as the art of the possible (Napoleon),
project management is thus practiced as the art of coping with the po-
litical situation of the project” (p. 431).
Such high levels of socio-political complexity and intangibility
of objectives are not without consequences on the differing under-
lying assumptions and shifts in epistemology over time of interna-
tional development when compared to project management. These
assumptions and shifts will be analyzed in the next section of the
paper.
4. A comparison between project management and international
development and their underlying assumptions
4.1. Three reasons for a cross-fertilization between project management
and international development
In light of the similarities and differences between their respective
objects of study, we focus on tracing the evolution of the domains
of project management and international development and comparing
their underlying assumptions in order to foster their cross-fertilization.
6
[m5GeSdc;October 28, 2020;10:42]
International Journal of Project Management xxx (xxxx) xxx
We hasten to note, however, that such cross-learning is not new. In-
deed, both project management and international development emerged
as intersecting domains of knowledge in the third quarter of the 20th
century (Picciotto, 2020). Some of the foundations for project manage-
ment research grew out of challenges associated with international de-
velopment projects, for instance with regards to funding decisions, per-
formance assessment, and project governance (Morris, 1994). Interna-
tional development has contributed a wealth of knowledge to project
management, including logical frameworks, feasibility studies, cost-
benefit analyses, evaluations, gender analysis, and results-based man-
agement (Biggs & Smith, 2003; Golini et al., 2015; Ika, 2012; Munro
& Ika, 2020). Moreover, project scholars have recently discovered that
they owe to international development one of the main theoretical prin-
ciples about project behavior and decision making: the Hiding Hand
(Ika & Söderlund, 2016; Kreiner, 2020). Again, the recent debate that
ensues in the flagship journal of international development – World De-
velopment – over whether the Planning Fallacy trumps the Hiding Hand
(Flyvbjerg, 2016; Ika, 2018) is a vivid example of the possibilities for
cross-fertilization between project management and international de-
velopment. We suggest there are more of these opportunities between
these two domains of knowledge for three reasons:
First, both project management and international development share
a central concern for change and rely heavily on projects in general and
interorganizational projects in particular (Manning, 2017) as ubiquitous
means to deliver either organizational (Schoper et al., 2018) or devel-
opmental change (Freeman & Schuller, 2020).
Second, both project management (Morris, 2013; Shenhar &
Dvir, 2007) and international development (Chimhowu et al., 2019;
Horner & Hulme, 2019) increasingly situate projects in programs, port-
folios, and strategy. Project management has notably grown from the
narrow execution-oriented management of a single project where the
focus is doing things right, i.e., meeting time, cost, and quality, to a
broader, more strategic, and complex management of projects where
the focus is doing the right things right, i.e., effectively delivering
benefits for stakeholders and end-users (Meredith & Zwikael, 2020;
Williams et al., 2019). Since the 1950s, international development, for
its part, has dealt with important, global, contentious, fast-changing,
complex or wicked challenges such as alleviating poverty, improving
governance, building institutional capacity, promoting human rights,
adapting to climate change, and delivering COVID-19 global response
(Munro, 2020; Oldekop et al., 2020; Smith et al., 2011). As a conse-
quence, project management becomes a strategic lever to address these
grand challenges, especially in developing countries desperate for an ef-
fective and efficient allocation of scarce resources for their development
(Ika & Hodgson, 2014).
Third and last, both project management and international develop-
ment are pluralistic domains of knowledge at crossroads between spe-
cialization and fragmentation, with a diversity of scholarly backgrounds,
empirical settings, and theoretical underpinnings (Dar & Cooke, 2008;
Fischer, 2019; Geraldi & Söderlund, 2018; Söderlund, 2011). Much like
there have been calls to move from the narrow and classic “project man-
agement” to a broader “project studies” (Geraldi & Söderlund, 2018),
“international development studies” as both a phenomenon and a do-
main of knowledge conveys something broader than classic “interna-
tional development” (Fischer, 2019). For instance, classic project man-
agement “refers to the processes, tools, techniques and concepts to man-
age the execution of a project” and as such represents a means to deliver
organizational or developmental objectives (Geraldi & Söderlund, 2018;
Ika & Hodgson, 2014, p. 57).
4.2. Project management and international development: similar albeit
different underlying assumptions
Considering project management as a social construct whose story
can be told differently in different contexts (Morris, 2013), we focus on
dominant trends in the theory and practice of each domain of knowl-
JID: JPMA
ARTICLE IN PRESS [m5GeSdc;October 28, 2020;10:42]

L.A. Ika, J. Söderlund, L.T. Munro et al. International Journal of Project Management xxx (xxxx) xxx

Table 2
The underlying assumptions of project management and international development (based on Chimhowu et al., 2019; Fischer, 2019; Geraldi & Söderlund, 2018; and
Ika & Hodgson, 2014).

Classic project Classic international International development

management1950s–90s development1950s–80s Project studies1990-now studies1980-now

Disciplinary roots Engineering, Engineering, Engineering, construction, and Most research is inter-disciplinary to a
construction and construction, and IT are still important, plus degree: all social sciences (including
Information economics dominate, inter-disciplinary contributions gender studies) plus health,
Technology (IT). with some sociology from organization studies, environmental, and agricultural
and political science. sociology, psychology, political sciences.
science, economic geography.
Project types Mono projects, Mono projects, To an increasing extent Interorganizational projects of
typically infrastructure typically infrastructure interorganizational projects of different types (e.g., blueprint; and
or military technology or agricultural/rural different types including process or human capital including
(e.g. rockets, nuclear (blueprint or physical megaprojects and change capacity building and governance).
submarines). capital). projects.
Key concepts Rationality, objectivity, Rationality, objectivity, Organizing, learning, Experimentation, learning,
and reductionism. and reductionism. institutions, networks, participation, complexity, uncertainty,
ecologies, complexity, resilience, adaptation, flexibility,
uncertainty, adaptation, empowerment, power, and/or
governance, collaboration. exploitation contest with rationality,
objectivity, and reductionism.
Domain metaphor Classic project Classic international A family of studies in, on and A family of studies on long-term
management is a development is a top around projects within- and between-country social,
means to an end or a down, technical and political, economic, environmental,
method, tool, way to managerial problem of and technological structural
achieve project and lagging behind rich or transformations.
organizational developed countries.
objectives.
Key approaches, tools, Best practices (e.g., Best practices (e.g., Process studies, (temporary) Strong residual of top-down “best
and techniques project management National development organization studies, practices” (e.g., randomised control
standards and tools planning, program and governance and institutional trials, results-based management)
such as CPM, PERT, project management studies, ecological and societal increasingly challenged by
organizational standards and tools effects studies, etc. participatory approaches, critical
structures, breakdown such as logical discourse analysis, deconstruction,
structures). framework, ethnography, environmental
cost-benefit analysis, assessment, social, gender, and
linear programming, institutional analysis.
input-output tables).
Epistemological Though much Positivism dominates Positivism still dominates No dominant paradigm. Positivist,
underpinnings literature is silent on along with linear though recent literature with linear rational planning (e.g.
epistemology, rational planning, emancipatory knowledge results-based management and
positivism dominates, whether socialist, interest. Input-output thinking neo-institutionalism) dominate official
along with linear capitalist or dirigiste, is still present, as are “best discourse. Input-output thinking is in
rational planning and and input-output practices” standards. Linear retreat, except in randomised control
input-output thinking. thinking. Top-down rational planning competes trials. “Post-” and critical approaches
Problems are simple to state-led approaches with competency-based are prevalent in academia. Critical
complicated. dominate. approaches, agile/adaptive realism and new pragmatism are
Problems are simple to management, and emerging trends. Processes and
complicated. organizational learning. Some institutions seen as dominant causal
influence of critical project factors. Complexity, resilience and
studies. adaptability are replacing “best
More emphasis on institutions, practices”.
complexity, and the Problems are complicated to complex
importance of ecological and to wicked.
societal effects of projects.
Problems are complicated to
complex.

edge such as disciplinary roots, project types, key concepts, domain
metaphor, key approaches, tools and techniques, and epistemological
underpinnings, and thus trace the development of both domains (Ika
& Hodgson, 2014). We distinguish between two key chronological and
historical “moments” in their development and hence contrast classic
project management (1950s–1990s) (Morris, 2013) with project studies
(1990-now) (Geraldi & Söderlund, 2018) and classic international de-
velopment (1950s–1980s) (Ika & Hodgson, 2014) with international de-
velopment studies (1980-now) (Fischer, 2019). We then compare both
domains of knowledge based on the dominant trends in the same era.
Table 2 below summarizes the evolution of both project management
and international development since their emergence as domains of
knowledge in the third quarter of the 20th century.
Table 2 is instructive. As Ika and Hodgson (2014) have shown, both
project management and international development have evolved simi-
larly yet differently. Hence, there is a sort of isomorphism between clas-
sic project management and international development when it comes
to the delivery of projects. As attested by the prevailing use of best prac-
tices and project management standards, rationality, objectivity and re-
ductionism or linear rational planning with its positivist, managerialist,
one-best or instrumental way of thinking reigned in this era of classic
project management theory and practice (Ika & Hodgson, 2014).
The same sort of thinking dominated the theory and practice of inter-
national development as most governments, bilateral aid donors and in-
ternational organizations adhere to some form of results-based manage-
ment with its well-known rigidities and dysfunctions (Chimhowu et al.,
2019; Munro & Ika, 2020). These shared underlying concepts and episte-
mological underpinnings reflect both domains’ pioneering disciplinary
backgrounds in construction and engineering and their focus on infras-
tructure or blueprint projects.

7
JID: JPMA
ARTICLE IN PRESS
L.A. Ika, J. Söderlund, L.T. Munro et al.
Similarities also exist between project and international develop-
ment studies, notably their focus on interorganizational projects, their
broad interdisciplinary base, moving away from the earlier dominance
of engineering and construction and embracing social sciences and their
associated concepts and epistemological underpinnings (Fischer, 2019;
Geraldi & Söderlund, 2018; Ika & Hodgson, 2014). The two domains of
knowledge share contingent and political if not critical approaches fo-
cused on what really happens in the context surrounding projects and
thus a central concern for people and power. Both share to a degree a
conceptualization of projects as context-specific and political means to
achieve organizational or developmental change or arenas for social and
power play in a context of global capitalism and ethnocentrism (Geraldi
& Söderlund, 2018; Ika & Hodgson, 2014).
There are differences, however, between project studies and interna-
tional development studies, which deals with the more complex issues in
light of its long-term horizon and focus on structural transformations not
only within but between countries (Fischer, 2019). Again, international
development projects tend to show high levels of socio-political com-
plexity. The level of collaboration and coordination in international de-
velopment projects is high (especially for those involving international
partners), not only within but between projects within a program, be-
tween programs within the same country, between funders and donor
countries, and between the latter and the recipient countries, and be-
tween multiple organizations working together in both the Global North
and the Global South (Manning, 2017; Oldekop et al., 2020).
The international development domain’s concerns with process
thinking, experimentation, learning, adaptation (Picciotto, 2020;
Rondinelli, 1983), capacity building and institutions (Ika & Don-
nelly, 2017), gender studies (Brière & Auclair, 2020), environmental
assessment, human rights, participatory approaches, and external stake-
holder engagement (Munro & Ika, 2020) all predate the arrival of sim-
ilar concerns in the project management literature. There also prevail
more tensions and paradoxes between project management processes
and international development processes. The former tend to be short-
term and the latter rather long-term (see in this special issue, Brière &
Auclair, 2020 on the tensions between project management and gen-
der mainstreaming). Furthermore, the rise of postmodern and postcolo-
nial agendas in international development (e.g., Spivak, 1988) generally
precedes the rise of critical project studies (Hodgson & Cicmil, 2001).
Project management has not gone as far as international development
in embracing critical project studies (Ika & Hodgson, 2014).
These similarities and differences in underlying assumptions and
shifts in epistemology over time open the door to cross-learning between
the neighboring domains of project management and international de-
velopment. In the next section, we address the question behind this spe-
cial issue.
5. What can project management learn from international
development and what is the agenda for future research?
At this juncture, in an attempt to tackle this question, we draw in-
sights not only from the papers in the special issue but also from the
comparison we have made between the two domains of project man-
agement and international development. As we present the following
seven cross-learning opportunities, we also reflect on the corresponding
sevenfold future research agenda at the interface of project management
and international development.
5.1. Cross-learning I: interorganizational project governance
As the papers in the special issue show, international development
projects confront wicked problems and global challenges. These projects
take place in complex, uncertain, volatile, and crisis-ridden contexts
(Picciotto, 2020; Rodriguez-Rivero et al., 2020), making partnerships
and stakeholder engagement (Lannon & Walsh, 2020), social capital and
knowledge management (Mikovic et al., 2020), gender mainstreaming
8
[m5GeSdc;October 28, 2020;10:42]
International Journal of Project Management xxx (xxxx) xxx
(Brière & Auclair, 2020), and adaptation, evaluation, and learning cru-
cial (Picciotto, 2020). As Picciotto (2020) suggests, a partnership-based
approach and adaptable processes are required in such contexts. As
Lannon and Walsh (2020) argue, however, these tensions confront the
inward-focused and task-oriented view of projects and wider strategy-
focused view of programs as sites for adaptability and learning and thus
require project facilitation. Consequently, the theorizing of the gov-
ernance of interorganizational project management (Jones & Lichten-
stein, 2008) may benefit from the experience of international develop-
ment in governing and delivering interorganizational projects across
the world (Manning, 2017), for instance in terms of how to handle
partnership-based programs, adaptability, and learning in the face of
complexity and uncertainty. We thus invite project management schol-
ars to address this first research question:
• Agenda for research I: How does the governance of international de-
velopment projects, especially those funded by bilateral or multi-
lateral donors, compare with the governance of interorganizational
projects outside international development?
5.2. Cross-learning II: external stakeholder engagement
Reading through the papers, we note that international development
has long focused on people-centered and participatory approaches and
thus engaged with external stakeholders such as project beneficiaries
(e.g., Abers et al., 2017). Rodriguez-Rivero et al. (2020), for example,
have underscored the importance of participatory work with stakehold-
ers including beneficiaries to envision project execution, convert un-
certainties into opportunities, and achieve project objectives. Project
management standards in international development tend to put much
greater emphasis on the participation of stakeholders outside the project
management team than do the standards outside international develop-
ment (Munro & Ika, 2020). Thus, project management may have much
to learn from the literature on participation in international develop-
ment (e.g., Chambers, 1997) when it comes to external stakeholder en-
gagement in interorganizational projects (Lehtinen & Aaltonen, 2020)
and the related tensions in particular. Hence, our second research ques-
tion:
• Agenda for research II: In what ways does the participation literature
in international development complement and extend the (external)
stakeholder engagement literature in project management?
5.3. Cross-learning III: strategy and global challenges such as climate
change and COVID-19
While the papers in this special issue have not focused explicitly
on strategy, strategic alignment and implementation have always mat-
tered in international development (Easterly, 2006; Goldsmith, 1996;
Hirschman, 1967; Oldekop et al., 2020). For example, Lannon and
Walsh (2020) in their study of partnership-based programs have high-
lighted the importance of strategy. This becomes even more paramount
in a context where governments seek to include projects into compre-
hensive national and sub-regional action plans to ensure their effective
delivery (Chimhowu et al., 2019) and donors from the Global North
emphasize performance, accountability, and learning (Clementz, 2020;
Gil et al., 2019). It seems relevant to advance our knowledge about
how projects contribute to strategy formation and how multi-level and
multi-country strategies are materialized through projects. The project
management literature is becoming increasingly aware of the challenges
of implementing a strategy through complex projects with deliverables
that are contested and/or hard to quantify and measure. Notably, the
domain of international development provides a number of interest-
ing examples of global challenges like COVID-19 and climate change
that are addressed by the concept of “global development” (Horner &
Hulme, 2019; Oldekop et al., 2020). This leads to the third research
question:
JID: JPMA
ARTICLE IN PRESS
L.A. Ika, J. Söderlund, L.T. Munro et al.
• Agenda for research III: What insights can project management gain
from international development projects working on global chal-
lenges like climate change, COVID-19, and global governance re-
form?
5.4. Cross-learning IV: complexity and projects
This special issue has not examined the topic of complexity though
it appears inherent within international development projects. While
complexity thinking is increasingly present in both international de-
velopment (e.g., Ramalingam, 2013) and project management (e.g.,
Geraldi et al., 2011), the related idea of flexibility or adaptation
(e.g., Shenhar & Dvir, 2007) has been a key concept in international
development for more than 37 years (Rondinelli, 1983). Rodriguez-
Rivero et al. (2020), for instance, have underlined how such flexibility
can help deal with project-related uncertainties. Scholars and practition-
ers in international development have pioneered techniques for adap-
tive planning under conditions of complexity (e.g., Hummelbrunner &
Jones, 2013). Such tools have applicability beyond international devel-
opment projects. This explains Picciotto’s (2020) call for mainstream
project management scholars to embrace adaptable processes, systems
thinking, and experimental approaches where they see fit. Hence, the
fourth research question is as follows:
• Agenda for research IV: How does the project management literature
compare with the international development literature in terms of
their respective uses of complexity, adaptation, and experimenta-
tion? What aspects of agile/adaptive management are present in the
international development literature that could benefit project man-
agement more broadly?
5.5. Cross-learning V: context and institutional complexity
In contrast to project management (Engwall, 2003), we note that
context has always mattered in international development and that with
their intangible end-goal of poverty alleviation, international develop-
ment projects are fraught with multiple rationalities and points of views
(Dar & Cooke, 2008; Gil et al., 2019; Ika & Hodgson, 2014). In that
respect, the institutional approach to projects and project dynamics
(Söderlund & Sydow, 2019) would have much to learn from exploring
what has been done in international development, and also to further
explore this context empirically in order to see how interorganizational
projects adapt to institutional requirements and cope with institutional
complexity.
For example, with the rise of China as a global player, there are now
two contrasting approaches to the funding and management of inter-
national development projects, one used by Western-dominated agen-
cies such as the World Bank and the other, where Chinese state-owned
and state-linked enterprises like Export–Import Bank reign supreme.
Whereas the former cherishes transparency and order to avoid institu-
tional void, the second uses a fast-track approach and exploits institu-
tional gaps. This sort of “duality by design” is interesting to study and
can inspire project management scholarship in terms of its influence
on organizational choice and performance in different institutional con-
texts (Gil et al., 2019). There is, however, very little research on this to
date (Munro, 2018; Rahman & Baranyi, 2018). Hence, the fifth research
question:
• Agenda for research V: How do international development projects
adapt to institutional requirements and cope with institutional com-
plexity and what can the institutional approach to project manage-
ment learn?
5.6. Cross-learning VI: understanding and emancipatory interests in
project studies must co-exist with technical matters
Our comparison between the neighboring domains of project man-
agement and international development has shown that the move to
9
[m5GeSdc;October 28, 2020;10:42]
International Journal of Project Management xxx (xxxx) xxx
international development studies precedes the move to project studies.
The 10-year gap presents cross-learning opportunities for project stud-
ies. While there has been a longstanding conversation on the scope and
content of project management as a discipline or an amalgam of neigh-
boring disciplines (Morris, 2013), the ongoing debate as to whether the
international development domain should be relabeled global develop-
ment (Fischer, 2019; Horner & Hulme, 2019; Oldekop et al., 2020) is
insightful for project studies. Years ago, Morris (2013) lamented the
fact that the project management domain had moved too far from what
matters to practice to much interest in projects as (inter)organizational
phenomena.
Of course, project studies proffers three types of studies: type 1 or
the studies of projects which are instrumental, prescriptive or norma-
tive in essence and hence seek to “solve” practical problems; type 2
or the studies of projects with a focus on description or the actual-
ity of projects so to foster understanding or theorizing to a degree;
and type 3 or studies of projects with prominent ethical, theoretical,
and/or practical value/uniqueness so as to further relevance and rigor
(Geraldi & Söderlund, 2018). Hence, learning from international devel-
opment studies, project studies should guard against embracing type 2
and type 3 studies with an understanding or emancipatory interest at
the expense of type 1 with a technical interest, to borrow the terms of
Habermas’s (1972) theory of knowledge-constitutive interests. Project
studies should not be in a situation where a few years down the road
it should have to bring back the technical interest into project manage-
ment research. While the hardcore proponents of critical project studies
in international development have raised important issues concerning
power in and around projects, their inability to proffer practical solu-
tions (Ika & Hodgson, 2014; Munro, 2020) is a cautionary tale which
project studies can learn from. In that sense, we submit this sixth re-
search question:
• Agenda for research VI: How to ensure that project studies strikes a
balance between understanding, emancipatory, and technical inter-
ests, and so avoids the trap of critical project studies in international
development?
5.7. Cross-learning VII: specificity of project management practices in a
changing international development funding and management landscape
Despite the editors’ best efforts, all the papers in this special issue
relate to international development projects funded by traditional bi-
lateral and multilateral donors. But donor-funded projects are not the
whole story in international development. Most people now live in
middle-income countries that have low levels of dependency on offi-
cial development assistance (“aid”). Public, private, and philanthropic
actors in these countries are increasingly funding and managing their
own international development projects, without donor or other inter-
national support or are increasingly using such support on their own
terms (Rahman & Baranyi, 2018).
Moreover, where developing countries still rely on international
funding and expertise, the Western-dominated financial institutions and
multilateral organizations (e.g., the World Bank, the UN) and official
development assistance from OECD countries are no longer the only op-
tions (Munro, 2018). China, India, the Persian Gulf countries, and many
other emerging countries stand ready to finance and provide technical
assistance to international development projects. Though there is reason
to believe that project management practices in international develop-
ment projects funded by new donors may differ from those in projects
funded by traditional OECD donor countries (Chin & Gallagher, 2019),
we are not aware of any work that looks inside the “black box” of project
management where traditional donors and multilaterals play little to no
role. Hence, the seventh and last research question reads as follows:
• Agenda for research VII: How will the management of international
development projects change as the influence of traditional donors
JID: JPMA
ARTICLE IN PRESS
L.A. Ika, J. Söderlund, L.T. Munro et al.
recedes and what new insights for the practice of project manage-
ment will this bring?
6. Conclusion
This paper has highlighted the lack of cross-fertilization between
the neighboring scholarly domains of project management and inter-
national development in recent decades. It suggests that the impetus for
project management to address global challenges that overlap with in-
ternational development such as climate change and COVID-19 makes
this cross-learning timely and rewarding. To that end, the paper looks
at what connects and differentiates international development and non-
international development projects. It also compares project manage-
ment and international development in terms of their underlying as-
sumptions and shifts in epistemology over time. It concludes with an
agenda for future research at the interface between project management
and international development.
The paper concludes that cross-learning opportunities are possible
between project management and international development without
losing their unique disciplinary orientations and ideologies. Following
the advice of Davies et al. (2018), there are two principal ways in which
this could be achieved. One relates to the elaboration of so-called meta-
theories that may allow scholars to draw on each other’s work to a
greater extent and engage in conversations that make them more aware
of the similarities across their contexts, rather than their differences (see
Söderlund & Sydow, 2019 for institutional theory for example). Another
way of ensuring cross-fertilization and thus avoiding too much encap-
sulation is by arranging joint-community building events. This may in-
clude separate workshops and conferences to make scholars more aware
of each other’s work and to establish partnerships that cut across these
disciplinary camps.
This special issue is but one example of such a joint-community
building event that was spurred by a workshop at the Academy of Man-
agement and subsequently a special issue with editors and reviewers
from both domains of knowledge. We certainly hope that this is a first
step for a promising future where these two strands of scholarly in-
quiry will continue to prosper, yet learn from each other to a greater
extent. This seems crucial as the global challenges are now mounting. At
a time when the delivery of global public goods such as climate change
and COVID-19 responses and other significant issues such as relative
poverty, social protection, sustainability transitions, migration, human
rights, urbanism, affordable housing, precarious work and livelihoods,
food security, and effective states (Oldekop et al., 2020) has never been
more critical in both the Global North and the Global South, the op-
portunities of cross-learning and further research between project man-
agement and international development remain plentiful. Will project
scholars be up to the task?
References
Abers, R. N., de Oliveira, M. S., & Pereira, A. K. (2017). Inclusive development and the
asymmetric state: Big projects and local communities in the Brazilian Amazon. Journal
of Development Studies, 53(6), 857–872.
Andrews, M. (2018). Public policy failure: ‘How often’ and ‘what is failure, anyway’? A study
of World Bank project performance. Harvard University Center for International Devel-
opment Paper No. 344, December.
Banerjee, A. V., & Duflo, E. (2011). Poor economics: A radical rethinking of the way to fight
global poverty. New York: Public Affairs.
Biggs, S., & Smith, S. (2003). A paradox of learning in project cycle management and the
role of organizational culture. World Development, 31(10), 1743–1757.
Boyer, E. L. (1990). Scholarship reconsidered. Priorities of the professoriate. Carnegie Foun-
dation for the Advancement of Teaching.
Brière, S., & Auclair, I. (2020). Toward gendered projects in international development:
Paradox, resistances and convergent approaches. International Journal of Project Man-
agement.
Calderisi, R. (2007). Why foreign aid isn’t working. The trouble with Africa. New York: Pal-
grave Macmillan.
Chambers, R. (1997). Whose reality counts: Putting the last first. Rugby, UK: Practical Action
Publishing.
Chimhowu, A. O., Hulme, D., & Munro, L. T. (2019). The ‘new’ national development plan-
ning and global development goals: Processes and partnerships. World Development,
120, 76–89.
10
[m5GeSdc;October 28, 2020;10:42]
International Journal of Project Management xxx (xxxx) xxx
Chin, G. T., & Gallagher, K. P. (2019). Coordinated credit spaces: The globalization of
Chinese development finance. Development and Change, 50(1), 245–274.
Clementz, P. (2020). Improving learning and accountability in foreign aid. World Devel-
opment, 125.
Crost, B., Felter, J., & Johnston, P. (2014). Development projects and civil conflict. Amer-
ican Economic Review, 104(6), 1833–1856.
Dar, S., & Cooke, B. (2008). The new development management: Critiquing the dual modern-
ization. London: Zed Books.
Davies, A. (2017). Projects: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press.
Davies, A., Manning, S., & Söderlund, J. (2018). When neighboring disciplines fail to learn
from each other: The case of innovation in project management research. Research
Policy, 47, 965–979.
De Savigny, D., Kasale, H., Mbuya, C., & Reid, G. (2008). Fixing health systems (2nd ed.).
Ottawa: International Development Research Centre.
Denicol, J., Davies, A., & Krystallis, I. (2020). What are the causes and cures of poor
megaproject performance? A systematic literature review and research agenda. Project
Management Journal, 51(3), 328–345.
Diallo, A., & Thuillier, D. (2004). The success dimensions of international development
projects: The perceptions of African project coordinators. International Journal of
Project Management, 22(1), 19–31.
Diallo, A., & Thuillier, D. (2005). The success of international development projects, trust
and communication: An African perspective. International Journal of Project Manage-
ment, 23(3), 237–252.
Easterly, W. (2006). The white man’s burden: Why the west’s efforts to aid the rest have done
so much ill and so little good. New York: The Penguin Press.
Engwall, M. (2003). No project is an island: Linking projects to history and context. Re-
search Policy, 32(5), 789–808.
Feeny, S., & Vuong, V. (2017). Explaining aid project and program success: Findings from
Asian development bank interventions. World Development, 90, 329–343.
Fischer, A. M. (2019). Debate: Bringing development back into development studies. De-
velopment and Change, 50(2), 426–444.
Flyvbjerg, B. (2016). The fallacy of beneficial ignorance: A test of Hirschman’s Hiding
Hand. World Development, 84(1), 176–189.
Freeman, S., & Schuller, M. (2020). Aid projects: The effects of commodification and ex-
change. World Development, 126.
Geraldi, J., Maylor, H., & Williams, T. (2011). Now, let’s make it really complex (compli-
cated). International Journal of Operations and Production Management, 31(9), 966–990.
Geraldi, J., & Söderlund, J. (2018). Project studies: What it is, where it is going. Interna-
tional Journal of Project Management, 36, 55–70.
Gil, N. A. P., Stafford, A., & Musonda, I. (2019). Duality by design: The global race to build
Africa’s infrastructure. Cambridge University Press.
Goldsmith, A. A. (1996). Strategic thinking in international development: Using manage-
ment tools to see the big picture. World Development, 24(9), 1432–1439.
Golini, R., Kalchschmidt, M., & Landoni, P. (2015). Adoption of project management prac-
tices: The impact on international development projects of non-governmental organi-
zations. International Journal of Project Management, 33, 650–663.
Golini, R., & Landoni, P. (2013). International development projects: Peculiarities and man-
agement approaches. Newton Square, PA: Project Management Institute.
Gow, D. D., & Morss, E. R. (1988). The notorious nine: Critical problems in project imple-
mentation. World Development, 16(2), 1399–1418.
Grabher, G. (2002). Cool projects, boring institutions: Temporary collaboration in social
context. Regional Studies, 36(3), 205–214.
Grindle, M. S. (1980). Politics and policy implementation in the third world. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Habermas, J. (1972). Knowledge and human interest. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Heeks, R., & Stanforth, C. (2014). Understanding development project implementation:
An actor-network perspective. Public Administration and Development, 34(1), 14–31.
Henderson, L. S., Stackman, R. W., & Lindekilde, R. (2018). Why cultural intelligence
matters on global project teams. International Journal of Project Management, 36(7),
954–967.
Hirschman, A. O. (1967). Development projects observed. Washington, DC: Brookings Insti-
tution.
Hodgson, D., & Cicmil, S. (2001). Making projects critical. London: Macmillan.
Honig, D. (2018). Navigation by judgment. Why and when top-down management of foreign
aid doesn’t work. New York: Oxford University Press.
Horner, P., & Hulme, D. (2019). From international development to global develop-
ment. New geographies of 21st century development. Development and Change, 50(2),
347–378.
Hummelbrunner, R., & Jones, H. (2013). A guide for planning and strategy development in
the face of complexity. Background note. London: Overseas Development Institute.
Ika, L. A. (2012). Project management for development in Africa: Why projects are failing
and what can be done about it. Project Management Journal, 43(4), 27–41.
Ika, L. A. (2015). Opening the black box of project management. Does project supervision
influence project impact. International Journal of Project Management, 33, 1111–1123.
Ika, L. A. (2018). Beneficial or detrimental ignorance: The straw man Fallacy of Flyvbjerg’s
test of Hirschman’s Hiding Hand. World Development, 103(1), 369–382.
Ika, L. A., Diallo, A., & Thuillier, D. (2010). Project management in the international
development industry: The project coordinator’s perspective. International Journal of
Managing Projects in Business, 3(1), 61–93.
Ika, L. A., & Hodgson, D. (2014). Learning from international development projects: Blend-
ing critical project studies and critical development studies. International Journal of
Project Management, 32(1), 1182–1196.
Ika, L. A., & Saint-Macary, J. (2012). The project planning myth in international develop-
ment. International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, 5(3), 420–439.
Ika, L. A., & Söderlund, J. (2016). Rethinking revisited: Insights from an early rethinker.
International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, 9(4), 931–954.
JID: JPMA
ARTICLE IN PRESS
L.A. Ika, J. Söderlund, L.T. Munro et al.
Ika, L. A., & Donnelly, J. (2017). Success conditions for international development capacity
building projects. International Journal of Project Management, 35(1), 44–63.
Ika, L. A., Söderlund, J., Munro, L. T., & Landoni, P. (2020). Editorial. When project man-
agement meets international development, what can we learn? International Journal
of Project Management.
Jones, C., & Lichtenstein, B. (2008). Temporary inter-organizational projects: How tem-
poral and social embeddedness enhance coordination and manage uncertainty. The
oxford handbook of inter-organizational relations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking fast and slow. Doubleday Canada.
Khang, D. B., & Moe, T. L. (2008). Success criteria and factors for international devel-
opment projects: A life-cycle-based framework. Project Management Journal, 39(1),
72–84.
Köster, K. (2010). International project management. London: Sage Publications.
Kreiner, K. (2020). Conflicting notions of a project: The battle between Albert O.
Hirschman and Bent Flyvbjerg. Project Management Journal.
Landoni, P., & Corti, B. (2011). The management of international development projects:
Moving toward a standard approach or differentiation? Project Management Journal,
42(3), 45–61.
Lannon, J., & Walsh, J. N. (2020). Project facilitation as an active response to tensions in
international development programs. International Journal of Project Management.
Lehtinen, J., & Aaltonen, K. (2020). Organizing external stakeholder engagement in in-
ter-organizational projects: Opening the black box. International Journal of Project
Management, 38(2), 85–98.
Manning, S. (2017). The rise of project network organizations: Building core teams
and flexible partner pools for interorganizational projects. Research Policy, 46(8),
1399–1415.
Meredith, J. R., & Zwikael, O. (2020). Achieving strategic benefits from project invest-
ments: Appoint a project owner. Business Horizons, 63(1), 61–71.
Mikovic, R., Petrović, D., Mihić, M., Obradovic, V., & Todorovic, M. (2020). The inte-
gration of social capital and knowledge management – The key challenge for interna-
tional development and cooperation projects of non-profit organizations. International
Journal of Project Management..
Morris, P. W. G. (1994). The management of projects. London: Thomas Telford.
Morris, P. W. G. (2013). Reconstructing project management. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Morris, P. W. G., Pinto, J., & Söderlund, J. (2011). Introduction: Towards the third wave of
project management. Oxford: The Oxford Handbook of Project Management.
Munro, L. T. (2018). Strategies to shape the international order: Exit, voice and innova-
tion versus expulsion, maintenance and absorption. Canadian Journal of Development
Studies, 39(2), 310–328.
Munro, L. T. (2020). The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic: Lessons for international development.
Centre for international policy studies. University of Ottawa https://www.cips-cepi.
ca/2020/04/03/the-sars-cov-2-pandemic-lessons-for-international-development/.
Munro, L. T., & Ika, L. A. (2020). Guided by the beauty of our weapons: Comparing project
management standards inside and outside international development. Development in
Practice.
Ng, E. (2018). Botched Addis Ababa-Djibouti railway project a warning to Belt-and-
Road investors. South China Post 28 October https://www.tesfanews.net/botched-
addis-ababa-djibouti-railway-project-a-warning-to-belt-and-road-investors/.
Oldekop, J. A., et al. (2020). COVID-19 and the case for global development. World De-
velopment, 134.
Orr, R. J., & Scott, W. R. (2008). Institutional exceptions on global projects: A process
model. Journal of International Business Studies, 39(4), 562–588.
11
[m5GeSdc;October 28, 2020;10:42]
International Journal of Project Management xxx (xxxx) xxx
Orr, R. J., Scott, W. R., Levitt, R. E., Artto, K., & Kujala, J. (2011). Global projects: Dis-
tinguishing features, drivers, and challenges. In W. R. Scott, R. E. Levitt, & R. J. Orr
(Eds.), Global projects: Institutional and political challenges (pp. 15–51). New York: Cam-
bridge University Press.
Picciotto, R. (2020). Towards a ‘new project management’ movement? An international
development perspective. International Journal of Project Management.
PMI. (2013). A guide to the project management body of knowledge (PMBOK® guide) (Fifth
ed.). Newton Square, PA: Project Management Institute.
PMI. (2018). PMI’s pulse of the profession. The high cost of low performance. Newton Square:
PMI.
Rahman, S. S., & Baranyi, S. (2018). Beyond binaries: Constructing new development
partnerships with middle-income countries. Canadian Journal of Development Studies,
39(2), 252–269.
Ramalingam, B. (2013). Aid on the edge of chaos: Rethinking international cooperation in a
complex world. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rodriguez-Rivero, R., Ortiz-Marcos, I., Diaz-Barcos, V., & Lozano, S. A. (2020). Apply-
ing the strategic prospective to project management in a development project in
Columbia. International Journal of Project Management.
Rondinelli, D. A. (1983). Development projects as policy experiments: An adaptive approach
to development administration. New York: Methuen & Co.
Schoper, Y.-. G., Wald, A., Ingason, H. T., & Fridgeirsson, T. V. (2018). Projectification in
Western economies: A comparative study of Germany, Norway and Iceland. Interna-
tional Journal of Project Management, 36, 71–82.
Shenhar, A., & Holzmann, V. (2017). The three secrets of megaproject success: Clear strate-
gic vision, total alignment, and adapting to complexity. Project Management Journal,
48(6), 29–46.
Shenhar, A., & Dvir, D. (2007). Reinventing project management. Cambridge: Harvard Busi-
ness School Press.
Smith, J. B., Dickinson, T., Donahue, J. D. B., Burton, I., Haites, E., Klein, R. J. T.,
et al. (2011). Development and climate change adaptation funding: Coordination and
integration. Climate Policy, 11, 987–1000.
Söderlund, J. (2004). Building theories of project management: Past research, questions
for the future. International Journal of Project Management, 22(1), 183–191.
Söderlund, J. (2011). Pluralism in Project Management: Navigating the crossroads of spe-
cialization and fragmentation. International Journal of Management Reviews, 13(2),
153–176.
Söderlund, J., & Sydow, J. (2019). Projects and institutions: Towards understanding their
mutual constitution and dynamics. International Journal of Project Management, 37(2),
259–268.
Spivak, G. C. (1988). Can the Subaltern Speak?. In C. Nelson, & L. Grossberg (Eds.), Marx-
ism and the interpretation of culture (pp. 271–313). Basingstoke: Macmillan.
Sydow, J., & Braun, T. (2018). Projects as temporary organizations: An agenda for further
theorizing the interorganizational dimension. International Journal of Project Manage-
ment, 36(1), 4–11.
Williams, T., Vo, H., Samset, K., & Edkins, A. (2019). The front-end of projects: A
systematic literature review and structuring. Production Planning & Control, 30(14),
1137–1169.
World Bank, (2015). World Bank Indicators http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.GDI.
TOTL.ZS, accessed on 4 January 2017.
Youker, R. (1999). Managing international development projects: Lessons learned. Project
Management Journal, 30(2), 6–7.
Youker, R. (2003). The nature of international development projects. In Proceedings of the
PMI conference.