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The world spends some 2.5 trillion a year in transport, power, water, and telecom systems, to spur economic growth and provide much-needed services to citizens but this falls far too short to tackle epic traffic gridlocks, jammed ports, long blackouts, broken dams, and tainted water supplies (Woetzel, Garemo, Mischke, Hjerpe, & Palter, 2016). According to some estimates, the world may need up to tens of trillions of dollars of investment in infrastructure projects to achieve the United Nations' development goals by 2030 or the so-called 2030 Agenda. The coronavirus outbreak may disrupt infrastructure delivery but not change this heavy trend (Ika, Love, Matthews, & Weili, 2020).
As we have witnessed, since the 2008 financial crisis, the revival of interest in infrastructure in a number of advanced economies to address secular stagnation, there seems to be a strong case for infrastructure led-development in developing and emerging economies. China's economic and poverty-reduction success story with large-scale infrastructure projects has aroused interest in other developing countries in search for replication (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development [UNCTAD], 2018; Woetzel et al., 2016). As Hirschman (1958) notes, large-scale infrastructure planning is a matter of faith in the development potential of a country or region (p. 84). Such a faith fuels the scramble to deliver large-scale infrastructure projects in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. Great examples include the China's Belt and Road Initiative and the Make in India Initiative in Asia, infrastructure development plans from the African Development Bank, the Initiative for the Integration of the Regional Infrastructure of South America, and the Caribbean Infrastructure PPP Roadmap. Even the World Bank, a key player in international development policy, has moved from a focus on getting institutions right a.k.a. the good governance agenda to getting the territory right or the integration of countries' economies with global value chains (Schindler & Kanai, 2018). Thus, the World Bank has pledged to scale up infrastructure investments from billions to trillions (UNCTAD, 2018).
However, the planning and delivery of infrastructure remains a risky business (Flyvbjerg, 2014; Hirschman, 1958; Rondinelli, 1979), especially in developing and emerging economies (Gil, Stafford, & Musonda, 2019; Schindler & Kanai, 2018). In these parts of the world, large-scale projects, often interorganizational initiatives (Manning, 2017), tend to experience tremendous uncertainty and structural complexity (Bentahar & Ika, 2020; Gregory, 2020; Shenhar & Holzmann, 2017), enormous socio-political complexity, and thus high transactional and institutional costs (Ika, Söderlund, Munro, & Landoni, 2020; Lizarralde, Tomiyoshi, Bourgault, Malo, & Cardosi, 2013; Orr, Scott, Levitt, Artto, & Kujala, 2011). As a result, their performance is difficult to measure and controversial (Ika, 2018; McDermot, Agdas, Rodríguez Díaz, Rose, & Forccael, 2020). This is the case of the $4 billion Chad-Cameroon pipeline and the South African $ 14 billion Medupi, $ 5 billion Kusile and $ 2 billion Ingula coal plant projects which struggle to meet the beneficiaries' needs (Gregory, 2020; Ika, 2012). Part of the problem is that social inclusion and participation are too difficult to achieve as attested by projects such as the 1780km-long-BR-163 highway road and the $16 billion Belo Monte dam in Brazil, which benefitted more to the economic elites than the less powerful populations (Abers, Oliveira, & Pereira, 2017).
In these peculiar contexts, projects experience high non-completion and failure rates. In Nigeria, for projects of all types, it has been suggested that 19000 projects that start are not completed (Umoru & Erunke, 2016). Brazil also has its fair share of abandoned construction projects (Samuels, 2002). Clientelism, collusion, and corruption remain silent killers to these projects (see Williams, 2017 and Damoah, Akwei, Amoak, & Botchie, 2018 for the case of Ghana). For example, the World Bank claims that collusion may cost up to $2 trillion dollar per year in global procurement (see Signor, Love, & Ika, In Press about Operação Lava Jato or Operation Car Wash in Brazil). Adding to the above failure factors is collective choice failure or the failure of the shifting and unpredictable local politicians bargains to reach a consensus on the target locations for projects, which may lead to spend the money earmarked for an ongoing project to start another one (Williams, 2017).
In Africa, for example, the International Finance Corporation, the private arm of the World Bank, estimates that half of its projects fail due to a number of problems and traps (Ika, 2012). Notably projects confront structural (e.g., economic), institutional (e.g., governance) and managerial (e.g., monitoring) problems. They also fall foul to what Ika (2012) coins a one size-fits-all-technical trap (e.g., the misconception that a project is a project is a project), an accountability-for-results trap (e.g., too much emphasis on keeping track of results and little on their delivery), a-lack-of-project-management-capacity trap (e.g., shortage of project management skills), and a cultural trap (e.g., underplaying local context and culture). Not all governments in developing and emerging countries face the same challenges however. While middle-income countries such as Brazil, China, and India can finance their infrastructure projects through their national budgets or through public private partnerships, this is not the case for countries such as Afghanistan, Columbia, Haiti, Laos, Liberia, South Sudan, and Niger who find it rather difficult to attract private money for infrastructure (Moore, 2018). In light of these contextual specificities (Furtado, 1971; Ika et al., 2020) there is no one-size-fits-all approach to the delivery of infrastructure, which requires specific ways of planning and managing projects in places like China (Li, Sun, Shou, & Sun, 2020), Brazil (Ramos, Mota, & Corrêa, 2016), and Africa (Gil et al., 2019).
What is more, large-scale infrastructure projects, whether they are of a redemptive, missionary, annihilator, heroic, or illusory nature from a symbolic standpoint (Rego, Irigaray, & Chavez, 2018), do not always lead to prosperity, that is foster long-term economic growth and poverty-reduction as expected. Not only they tend to succumb to cost blowouts and benefit shortfalls in developing and emerging economies much like in advanced economies (see Flyvbjerg, 2014; Love, Ika, & Sing, In Press), but they may generate unintended social and environmental impacts (Gellert & Lynch, 2003; Hirschman, 1967; Schindler & Kanai, 2018). The Three Gorges dam in China and the Brazilian Amazon projects are good illustrations (Abers et al., 2017; Shenhar & Holzmann, 2017).
While infrastructure matters, little has been written, however, on the planning, delivery, and performance of large-scale infrastructure in developing and emerging countries (Gil et al., 2019; Gregory, 2020; Ika, 2018; McDermot et al., 2020). Against this backdrop, this call for papers seeks to explore infrastructure delivery and project management in developing and emerging economies. We are inspired by the idea that much like the developing and emerging countries have contributed to the emergence and shaping of sustainable development goals (Fukuda-Parr & Muchhala, 2020), they can also shape the theory and practice of project management (Hirschman, 1967; Ika et al., 2020). Research questions of particular attention are as follows:
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1) What makes the delivery of large-scale infrastructure projects specific, challenging,
and complex to manage in developing and emerging countries?
2) What is the state of the art of research on infrastructure delivery and project
management in developing and emerging countries?
3) What explains time and cost overruns in large-scale infrastructure projects in
developing and emerging countries?
4) Why do large-scale infrastructure projects in developing and emerging countries fail
to meet their strategic objectives?
5) What makes the governance of large-scale infrastructure projects different between
developed and less-developed countries?
6) What specific roles do project sponsors and managers play in the particular contexts
surrounding the delivery of projects in the developing and emerging countries?
7) How does clientelism, collusion or corruption influence project performance in
developing and emerging countries?
8) What are the stories that stakeholders tell about the initiation, planning,
implementation and performance of these projects and what they symbolically
represent for them in developing and emerging countries?
9) How does internationalization or multiculturalism impact delivery of large-scale
infrastructure in developing and emerging countries?
10) How do large-scale infrastructure projects in developing and emerging countries
respond to sustainable development goals?
This special issue remains however open to any other related research questions as long as they shed light on infrastructure delivery and project management in developing and emerging economies. We welcome both theoretical and empirical papers that would contribute significantly to theory and practice in infrastructure delivery and project management. |
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GUIDELINES FOR PAPER SUBMISSION
Papers submitted in Portuguese, if accepted for publication, must be translated into English under the responsibility of the authors.
For author guidelines and submission, please visit the website of the journal and online submission system at:
http://bibliotecadigital.fgv.br/ojs/index.php/cadernosebape/normas
https://mc04.manuscriptcentral.com/cebape-scielo
For any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the guest editors.
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REFERENCES
Abers, R. N., 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.
Bentahar, O., & Ika, L. A. (2020). Matching the project manager's roles to project types: Evidence from large dam projects in Africa. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, 67(3), 830-845.
Damoah, I. S., Akwei, C. A., Amoak, I. O., & Botchie, D. (2018). Corruption as a source of government project failure in developing countries. Project Management Journal, 49(3), 17-33.
Flyvbjerg, B. (2014). What you should know about megaprojects and why: An overview. Project Management Journal, 45(2), 6-19.
Fukuda-Parr, S., & Muchhala, B. (2020). The Southern origins of sustainable development goals: Ideas, actors, aspirations. World Development, 126, 104706.
Furtado, C. (2016). Development and underdevelopment. In R. Bielchowsky (Ed.), ECLAC Thinking: Selected Texts. New York, NY: United Nations.
Gellert, P. K., & Lynch, B. D. (2003). Mega-projects as displacements. International Social Science Journal, 55(175), 15-25.
Gil, N. A. P., Stafford, A., & Musonda, I. (2019). Duality by Design: The Global Race to Build Africa's Infrastructure. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Gregory, J. (2020). Governance, scale, scope: A review of six South African electricty generation infrastructure megaprojects. Utilities Policy, 66, 101103.
Hirschman, A. O. (1958). The Strategy of Economic Development. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Hirschman, A. O. (1967). Development Projects Observed. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.
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. (2018). Beneficial or detrimental ignorance: The straw man Fallacy of Flyvbjerg's test of Hirschman's Hiding Hand. World Development, 103, 369-382.
Ika, L. A., & Saint-Macary, J. (2014). Why do projects fail in Africa? Journal of African Business, 15(3), 151-155.
Ika, L. A., Love, P. E. D., Matthews, J., & Weili, F. (2020, June 01). Coronavirus: A game changer for project delivery? The Pearson Centre For Progressive Policy. Retrieved from http://thepearsoncentre.ca/platform/coronavirus-a-game-changer-for-project-delivery-ika-et-al/
Ika, L. A., Söderlund, J., Munro, L. T., & Landoni, P. (2020). Cross-learning between project management and international development: analysis and research agenda. International Journal of Project Management.
Li, Y., Sun, T., Shou, Y., & Sun, H. (2020). What makes a competent international project manager in emerging and developing countries? Project Management Journal, 51(2), 181-198.
Lizarralde, G., Tomiyoshi, S., Bourgault, M., Malo, J., & Cardosi, G. (2013). Understanding differences in construction project governance between developed and developing countries. Construction Management and Economics, 31(7), 711-730.
Love, P. E. D., Ika, L. A., & Sing, M. C. P. (In Press). Does the planning fallacy prevail in social infrastructure projects? Empirical evidence and competing explanations. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management.
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.
McDermot, E., Agdas, D., Rodríguez Díaz, C. R., Rose, T., & Forcael, E. (2020). Improving performance of infrastructure projects in developing countries: an Ecuadorian case study. International Journal of Construction Management. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1080/15623599.2020.1797985
Moore, W. G. (2018, May 16). Rethinking the infrastructure gap in the poorest countries. Center for Global Development. Retrieved from https://www.cgdev.org/blog/rethinking-infrastructure-gap-poorest-countries
Orr, R. J., Scott, W. R., Levitt, R. E., Artto, K., & Kujala, J. (2011). Global projects: Distinguishing 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, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Ramos, P., Mota, C., & Corrêa, L. (2016). Exploring the management style of Brazillians project managers. International Journal of Project Management, 34(6), 902-913.
Rego, M. L., Irigaray, H. A., & Chaves, R. C. (2017). Symbolic Megaprojects: Historical Evidence of a Forgotten Dimension. Project Management Journal, 48(6), 17-28.
Rondinelli, D. A. (1979). Planning Development Projects: Lessons From Developing Countries. Long Range Planning, 12(3), 48-56.
Samuels, D. (2002). Pork barreling is not credit claiming or advertising: Campaign finance and the sources of the personal vote in Brazil. Journal of Politics, 64(3), 45-863.
Schindler, S., & Kanai, J. M. (2019). Getting the territory right: Infrastructure-led development and the re-emergence of spatial planning strategies. Regional Studies. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2019.1661984
Shenhar, A., & Holzmann, V. (2017). The three secrets of megaproject success: Clear strategic vision, total alignment, and adapting to complexity. Project Management Journal, 48(6), 29-46.
Signor, R., Love, P. E. D., & Ika, L. A. (In Press). White collar crime: Unearthing collusion in the procurement of infrastructure projects. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management.
Umoru, H., & Erunke, J. (2016, May 27). 19,000 projects abandoned in Nigeria, ex-BPP DG tells Senate. Vanguard News. Retrieved from https://www.vanguardngr.com/2016/05/19000-projects-abandoned-nigeria-ex-bpp-dg-tells-senate/
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. (2018). Trade and development: Report 2018. Power, platforms and the free trade delusion. New York, NY: United Nations.
Williams, M. J. (2017). The political economy of unfinished development projects: Corruption, clientelism, or collective choice? American Political Science Review, 111(4), 705-723.
Woetzel, J., Garemo, N., Mischke, J., Hjerpe, M., & Palter, R. (2016, June 14). Bridging global infrastructure gaps. McKinsey Global Institute. Retrieved from https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/ capital-projects-and-infrastructure/our-insights/bridging-global-infrastructure-gaps
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EDITORIAL BOARD
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PhD. Hélio Arthur Reis Irigaray
Editor-in-Chief
Fabiana Braga Leal
Editorial Assistant
Jackelyne de Oliveira da Silva
Editorial Assist
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Cadernos EBAPE.BR
Rua Jornalista Orlando Dantas, 30 - Botafogo
Rio de Janeiro/RJ | Brasil
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ISSN 1679 3951
PAPERS SUBMISSIONS
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