Conflicting Notions of a Project:

The Battle Between Albert O. Hirschman and Bent Flyvbjerg

Author: Kristian Kreiner, Professor Emeritus, Copenhagen Business School

Abstract
The field of project management has erected an impressive edifice of knowledge that apparently
hinders us in learning anything from experience except what we already know. We will use the
recent controversy between Hirschman and Flyvbjerg to trace this academic imposition to a
narrow notion of a project and to find inspiration in a radically different notion for opening the
field to new types of issues and lessons.

Keywords
Hiding Hand, Providential Ignorance, practical judgment, project notions, project success

Introduction
The winner's curse is a celebrated existential paradox; also, in the world of projects, what we
strived for may not be what we want when we get it because our sacrifices proved to outweigh
the benefits (Thaler, 1992). Perhaps, there is also a risk of the "winner's curse" for project
management research; the winning paradigm may have won its dominant position by sacrificing
some of its intellectual curiosity. It seems that even when we try to learn from experience, we
tend to confirm what we already know. When we try to kill bad ideas with sound methodology,
often we reinvigorate the bad ideas. When we reach out to new disciplines or ideas, we tend to
reduce them to fit our presumptions. When we invite academic debate, we end up petrifying it.
What if, when we try to rethink the field of project studies, we risk killing the thinking?
In this essay, we will illustrate the risk of the winner's curse by reflecting on the reception of
Albert O. Hirschman's thinking in the field of project management. The least.of.the problem is
perhaps that his ideas have been ignored, by and large. A few scholars have acknowledged his
ideas and have portrayed him as "an early rethinker of PM [project management]" (Ika &
Söderlund, 2016), while other scholars boldly rejected his ideas as being both wrong and
deceptive (Flyvbjerg, 2016a; Flyvbjerg & Sunstein, 2016). It seems that Hirschman is an odd
bedfellow for project management.
The following reflections aim to learn from the ill fate of Hirschman's work. We do not assume
that Hirschman has already done the rethinking because we are the ones who are challenged to
do so. The point is not to accept or reject his ideas and concepts but to take inspiration from
them. It is the presumption of the following reflections that Hirschman is offering a refreshing
new view on central issues in project management that may allow us to imagine an alternative to
the awkward body of knowledge in which the field is currently entrapped, philosophically,
theoretically, and practically.
Let us begin by reviewing the remarkable academic controversy between Hirschman and
Flyvbjerg to show how a conventional paradigm in project management defends its dominance
to its detriment. This controversy may give us a hint about what we are up against if we want to
rethink project management.
We situate the controversy between Hirschman and Flyvbjerg at a safe distance from the
battlefields on which scholars currently fight fiercely over data, methodologies, and even the
proper rendering of Hirschman's ideas and intentions (Flyvbjerg, 2016a, 2018; Flyvbjerg et al.,
2018; Flyvbjerg et al., 2019; Flyvbjerg et al., 2002; Ika, 2018; Lepenies, 2018; Love, Ika, &
Ahiaga-Dagbui, 2019; Love, Sing, Ika, & Newton, 2019; Room, 2018). We maintain our
distance from these fights by insisting that, in our case, the controversy stems from conflicting
notions of a project, what it is, and what it should be. In our view, it is unlikely that rethinking
starts with more data and better methodologies; it probably starts with a critical reflection on
what it is we are thinking about.

Hirschman versus Flyvbjerg

In 1967, Hirschman published Development Projects Observed. One of the aims of this book was
to challenge the World Bank's notion of projects and their appraisal. He proposed to understand
projects also in terms of their side effects and developmental by-products, suggesting a different
rationale for project success than simple compliance with original business cases and cost-benefit
analyses (Hirschman, 2014). However, his ideas and observations failed to convince the World
Bank, never changed its practice, and never caught on in the rest of the field of project
management (Alacevich, 2014). With few exceptions (e.g., Ika & Söderlund, 2016), Hirschman's
seemingly unimpactful ideas about projects were left to rest in peace until now, 50 years later,
when Hirschman's once-upon-a-time heresy has suddenly been subject to academic fire and fury.
Having amassed much empirical evidence on the underperformance of large projects, Flyvbjerg
(2016b) felt urged to wage war not only on Hirschman's ideas but also on his intellectual persona
and legacy. From his vantage point, he saw Hirschman peddling wrong views, misrepresenting
his findings, and misleading his readers.
It is perhaps no big wonder that Hirschman and Flyvbjerg would come to look upon reality in
conflicting ways. After all, Hirschman was a "planner who really didn't believe in planning"
(Gladwell, 2013), realizing that some drivers of change and development went under the
planners' radar, while Flyvbjerg is a planner who strongly believes in the type of planning that
aims to get projects right from the outset" (2017b, p. 13). Hirschman and Flyvbjerg could also be
claimed to differ in their primary focus.
The former was impressed with the muddling-through character of projects (Lindblom 959) and
searched for ways to appraise their achievements retrospectively, while the latter focuses on the
premises of prospective capital investment decisions and aims to make them more realistic.
Likewise, Hirschman inclined toward a broader notion Of rationality, in the sense of changing
the world in a desirable direction, while Flyvbjerg inclines toward a thinner notion of rationality,
in the sense of making consistent choices (Elster, 2016).
Before reflecting further on the implications of this controversy between Hirschman and
Flyvbjerg, let us focus on the central point of contention, the principle of the Hiding Hand.

The Principle of the Hiding Hand

When evoking the controversy, Flyvbjerg targeted one of Hirschman's most central ideas, the
principle of the Hiding Hand, and the accompanying notion of Providential Ignorance, Here
follows a short, somewhat idiosyncratic account of these ideas.
Projects of any kind and size face inherent and genuine uncertainty because they project action
and outcomes into a future that cannot be known in advance, only forecasted. Forecasts imply "a
large component of judgment, intuition, and educated guesswork" (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979,
p. 33). Consequently, all projects are destined to face challenges and difficulties once they get
started, simply because the forecasts rendered the subsequently experienced reality incorrectly or
incompletely. However, since we initially thought and talked about projects as already
accomplished actions (Schutz, 1973), our forecasts may have taken on the genuine nature of
foreknowledge, which may further have fostered a feeling of being in control of the future by
means of our intentions and decisions. Time is conflated into discrete moments of before and
after, and one gets the sense that change will be implanted in the post-project reality simply by a
prior choice and design (O'Driscoll & Rizzo,1996/1985). When outcomes deviate from
anticipations, which they repeatedly do, it continues to come as a surprise and to create a sense
of betrayal. The Hiding Hand is Hirschman's metaphor for our ability to neglect such consistent
experiences and, therefore, to remain able to be surprised when history repeats itself.
Alternatively, we might have learned from such experience that, in practice, the future is
impossible to predict, let alone to choose, but we have not. We might have come p see future
outcomes as a case of macro behavior (Schelling,1978), that is, the aggregate and cumulative
outcome of multiple, parallel, and independent processes extended in real time, but we continue
to consider them a product of our own, sometimes bad, intentionsand choices.
The Hiding Hand helps us to maintain trust in our ability to foresee and choose the future. It does
so by enabling us to ignore all the reasons why this cannot be the case: "The Hiding Hand does
its work essentially through ignorance of ignorance, of uncertainties, and of difficulties"
(Hirschman, 2014, p. 27). Note that the Hiding Hand does not hide the specific challenges and
difficulties that will arise in the future because nobody knows (or can know) such things ahead of
time there is nothing to hide. It is the fact that we do not know, and cannot know, the future that
is hidden, implying that we believe we need to know less than we do to project our acts into the
future rationally. The Hiding Hand hides our ignorance about the future, saving us the worry that
we must act purposely without knowing the exact consequences of our actions- but, of course,
not saving us from the inevitable troubles in the future when stumbling into unforeseen
situations.
Thus, the Hiding Hand lures us into committing to a project on the false premise that we know
enough about the future to plan and to ensure the realization of our intended goals. Such false
premises imbue all projects with a dubious start, which seems likely to translate into the
significant underperformance that Flyvbjerg (2011) has uncovered It appears that the Hiding
Hand predestines projects to failure and subsequent regrets. Had the sponsors known the
uncertainties and difficulties that the Hiding Hand hid, they might well have decided against
starting the project in the first place.
However, Hirschman added a new dimension to the conventional narrative described above. In
his studies of significant development projects, he searched for and found surprising and salient
impacts that had neither been planned nor openly pursued Such side effects materialized, for
example, when projects suddenly faced unexpected obstacles that forced them to invent new
solutions or workarounds. They also materialized from the projects' gearing into the wider world,
where they left traces potentially aiding some wider developmental purpose or that possibly
established new premises for the projects' progress. If we retrospectively come to see such side
effects as valuable, we may also come to appreciate the falsely premised (and, in many other
respects, disappointing) projects for having occasioned something valuable, unintentionally and
sometimes unobtrusively. Hirschman dubbed this phenomenon Providential Ignorance,
suggesting that projects started on false premises may strike it lucky and accomplish something
good. Therefore, occasionally, they should be appreciated rather than regretted retrospectively.
In this vein, Hirschman:
made the nitch for the "centrality of side effects." This was an amplified earlier
recommendation to look out for unexpected rewards from projects. But the gist was,
more or less, the same: widen the lens when evaluating projects and look out for those
unplanned and hard-to-quantify dividends. (Adelman, 2013, pp. 401- 402)

While occasionally providential, ignorance is not, of course, the cause of positive side effects.
Also, ignorance is not the cause of projects getting started. Projects start because somebody
chooses to pursue a purpose or goal that is considered important and worthwhile. In a complex
and unpredictable reality, there is an inherent risk that the project will not fulfil that purpose, at
least not at a reasonable cost. Ignorance of such risks makes it easier to muster commitment to
the designed project with the fulfillment of the purpose as the projected and promised outcome.
Thus, projects are predestined to run, sooner or later, into dead ends, on which occasions those
being held accountable for the project will be forced to improvise, that is, to think and act
creatively by doing things that were neither planned nor preconceived but that, hopefully, will
prove appropriate and useful. While far from guaranteeing the ultimate success in any traditional
sense, such improvisation in the face of unforeseen situations may cause something new and
valuable to be discovered and achieved. Since no planned situation will ever be planned in
enough detail, all projects will repeatedly depend`6n some measure of improvisation and
creativity to get ahead and reach completion. If success were considered dependent on such
uncontrollable and unspecifiable future action, the whole venture might easily appear too risky.
Thus, the projects would not likely be started. Therefore, they would also not run into situations
that force somebody to improvise and to create new dividends, an aspect that Hirschman advised
us to look out for. In this sense, we would have lost the opportunity for discovering and
demonstrating new types of possibilities, values, and meanings, but also for developing
capabilities to act constructively in uncharted situations.
Again, none of this suggests that projects start because of ignorance; it is also not suggested that
learning from experience should enable us to count on and plan for such side effects in the
future. Logically, if side effects were planned and intended, they would no longer be side effects
(Elster, 2016).
In preparation for the discussion below, we will highlight the following points drawn from our
reflections Oon Hirschman's ideas:
1. Ignorance about. the future is an existential condition for projects, not a planning fallacy.
Projects will necessarily be started on false premises because, in committing to do them,
we presume to know enough about the future to act rationally and purposively. Thus, the
alternative to falsely premised projects is not validly premised projects but no projects.
2. Committing to invalidly premised projects will serve us better than committing to no
projects. This is true in general, even if we cannot know if it is true in any particular case.
We cannot know how and why our commitment to invalidly premised projects did, in
fact, benefit us until after the project has been completed. All projects must rely on the
ability to improvise when the envisioned next step is unspecified, unfeasible, or
 unreasonable. All achievements hinge on such an ability. Without improvisation, few
projects would reach a stage where it would make sense to evaluate their achievements.
3. While the "start digging" syndrome is cynical and disdainful (Flyvbjerg, 2016a), there
may exist a need for a simplified and unreflective form of decision making that enables
people to commit to projects on insufficient and narrow premises- and, thus, for some
form of Hiding Hand to make us disregard our lack of knowledge about and control over
the future. With luck, we may eventually come to encounter achievements that are due
not to the design of the project but to efforts and happenstance during the implementation
of the project. How such achievements count in the appraisal of the project is subject to
practical judgment in particular cases. When success is no longer a simple measure of the
distance between promise and achievement, project success becomes ambiguous and
negotiable.
4. Inherently, projects entail risks, and ignorance of uncertainties and difficulties in the
future makes people take more significant risks than they intend. No experiential learning
can take away the fundamental unpredictability of the future, also because circumstances
and contingencies are, to a large extent, situation and project specific. Hirschman
contended that people may learn to accept higher risks, suggesting that somehow future
projects may be started with less ignorance of the inmate ignorance, His ideas have been
criticized by some for being elusive (Schön, 1994) and (improperly) construed by others
as suggesting a reduction of the risk (Flyvbjerg & Sunstein, 2016):
While the field of project management aims to lear how to plan and select projects
rationally, Hirschman aimed to learn how to accept the innate risk of projects without
shunning the responsibility for their performance and accomplishments. It seems that a
rethinking of project management also implies a rethinking of what we can learn from
experience.
On this backdrop, let us now present a more conventional view on the reality of projects, that is,
Flyvbjerg's view, that seemingly annuls most of Hirschman's ideas and observations.

Slapping the Hiding Hand

In Flyvbjerg's view, the principle of the Hiding Hand is wrong, misleading, and irresponsible.
Ignorance is bad, not providential. Hirschman's rehabilitation of it is immoral because it
legitimizes irrational and undemocratic decisions primed by project peddlers. In short, it "leads
to starting projects that should not have been started. (Flyvbjerg, 2016a, p. 176) Flyvbjerg
considers Hirschman's deliberate search for a silver lining to unsuccessful projects unscholarly
and methodologically unsound. In effect, celebrating side effects is an ex post facto
rationalization of poor decision making and project planning, Flyvbjerg seems to claim. He
shares the perspective of Lovallo and Kahneman (2003) when ascribing the predominance of
failures in his study of large projects to flawed decision making caused by delusional' optimism
and deliberate deception (Flyvbjerg, 2003).
Flyvbjerg enlists behavioral science as a whole in his war on Hirschman's heresy.
He declares that a "'Kuhnian paradigm shif" has occurred in the field of project management
(FIvvhiero et al. 201R: 183: FIvvhiere. 2017a)a shift that Hirschman (like many others) missed.
While some have considered Hirschman an an early student of cognitive biases, Flyvbjerg
(2016a) diagnoses him as a victim of such biases. Repeatedly, he aligns Hirschman with the most
unscrupulous politicians, like Mayor Willie Brown, known for his blunt "start digging" mantra.
The Hiding Hand principle 1S claimed to serve as a legitimization of such opportunism. Like
many others (e.g., Love & Ahiaga- Dagbui, 2018), Hirschman overlooked the "root causes" of
project underperformance:
The root cause of cost overrun, according to behavioral science, is the well- documented
fact that planners and managers keep underestimating scope changes and complexity in
project after project ... It is not scope changes, complexity, etc. in themselves that are the
main problem; it is how human beings misconceive and underestimate these phenomena,
through overconfidence bias, the planning fallacy, etc. (Flyvbjerg et al., 2018, p. 183)

In a sense, Flyvbjerg's root cause (ignorance of cognitive biases) resonates well with the
notion of ignorance of ignorance, but he rejects Hirschman's tolerance for such ignorance
on empirical and methodological grounds. What follows is our shorthand version of his
indictment of Hirschman and his heretical ideas (Flyvþjerg 2016a, p. 185):
1., Actively looking for unplanned successes, Hirschman overlooked or hid the
predominance of failures. A few case studies provide no proof that, as a general law,
projects will typically compensate for a false start by discovering Or inventing recovering
action further downstream.
2. Playing with ideas concerning the centrality of side effects and silver linings is a poor
substitute for methodical testing of empirical propositions. The aim to provoke
(Hirschman, 1995, p. 129) is not a sound academic agenda.
3. Learning from Hirschman would undermine progress by legitimizing his openly
admitted effort to give cognitive biases a positive connotation, as in his expression "a bias
for hope (Hirschman, 2001, p. 102). Being the root cause of underperformance, biases of
all kinds should be debiased, not legitimized.

The ideas and findings that Flyvbjerg attributes to Hirschman are commonly disowned in
the literature: "We now know that the Hiding Hand principle is overly optimistic about
the downstream innovative capacity of megaprojects to solve the problems overlooked by
upstream planners." (Davies, 2017, p. 37)

Flyvbjerg's takeaway from Hirschman's work tums out to be little more than a
reaffirmation of’ his position, namely that the projects that failed to deliver according to
plan should not have been started and since they were started regardless, that the decision
to start them must have been the unfortunate result of incorrect and manipulated forecasts
of costs and benefits. Hirschman diverts efforts to improve project performance when he
rationalizes_achievements Ca pointing to side effects and hard-to-quantify dividends. The
remedy to the alarmingly poor performance of projects is better informed decision
making.

Facts and Their Implications

In another context, Flyvbjerg acknowledges "the richness and originality of Hirschman's work
and that he was a leading 20th-century intellectual and economist, well worth reading today"
(2018, p. 383). If so, how is it possible for Hirschman to misconceive reality so thoroughly that
his entire work on project management deserves bold rejection? Why are there no lessons or
inspiration to be drawn from the richness and originality of Hirschman's work on development
projects?
It may come as a surprise hat Hirschman and Flyvbjerg do not disagree much about the empirical
facts. Even Hirschman considers many of the propositions that Flyvbjerg attributes to him as
"silly" (Hirschman 2014, p. 10). If we did not know better, we would think that the following
quote came from Flyvbjerg:
Exaggeration of prospective benefits is at least as common a device to elicit action as
underestimation of costs. This error, specially when combined with ar underestimate of
costs, has of course often led to disaster- history abounds with examples, from
bankruptcies and white elephants to lost or ruinously won wars. (Firschman 2014, p. 22)

If not the facts, what is the bone of contention? Arguably, it is the implications we should draw
from these facts which, as we shall argue below, depend on the notion of a project to which one
subscribes. When introducing the notion of root causes, Flyvbjerg acknowledges both the fact of
ignorance about the future and the possibility of an initial ignorance of such ignorance as an
empirical phenomenon. He only objects to Hirschman's suggestion that such ignorance of
ignorance may be an acceptable premise for project planning. The issue is the neglect of the
common experience that unknowable contingencies are impending, and he aims to bring such
experience to the attention of decision makers by proposing, for example, an "outside view"
(Lovallo &Kahneman, 2003) and "reference class forecasting" (Flyvbjerg et al, 2018). In this
manner, biased premises for decision making are debiased, promising more successful projects
from the outset.

What we s should do differently in t the future is not so much a matter of facts as a matter of
practical (or value). Judgment. According to Dewey, these judgments also imply judgment of
what and how to judge-oft the weight to be assigned t to various factors in the determination of
judgment" (1915, p. S17). Hypothetically, Hirschman and Flyvbjerg might agree that many
projects have constructive side effects and still differ in their appreciation of this fact. Flyvbjerg
would consider them a planning failure and therefore call for more and better planning:
Hirschman would see them as unexpected opportunities and seek ways to take advantage of
them. Flyvbjerg would define ignorance as a problem and seek to reduce it by sourcing more
and_ better knowledge; Hirschman would consider ignorance a fundamental human condition
and seek ways of e escaping the looming fate foolishness or inaction. Flyvbjerg would be
concerned with. The risk of s starting projects that should not have been started; Hirschman
would be concerned with the risk of missed opportunities, that i is, projects that: should have
been started but were not. Flyvbjerg would be committed O banning unrealistic planning and
undemocratic decision making, thereby making projects more beneficial prospectively:
Hirschman would he committed to searching for examples of the ways agency, improvisation,
and serendipity have made projects valuable in retrospect, which, in Flyvbjerg's view, is an
invitation to ex post facto rationalizations of wrong decisions.
Conflicting Notions of a Project

On several occasions, we have referred to underlying notions of a project as the key to

understanding the controversy between Hirschman and Flyvbjerg. Such notions cannot be tested
empirically against data and evidence because it is the notion that determines how we judge the
data and where we search for evidence. Therefore, choosing between such notions is difficult, as
we shall see below.
Projects as Leaps into a Designed Future

The implications that Flyvbjerg draws from his data and experience make good sense when a
project is considered a consciously designed and planned leap into a designed and desired future.
It is the pre-existing design that allows us to see if subsequent events fit and, if not, to take
corrective action. Thus, there is no denial of the fact that the implementation of projects may be
as riddled with contingencies and difficulties, as Hirschman suggested. However, ideally, such
contingencies and difficulties should have no impact on the realization of the projected outcome.
The specific route a project takes toward its consummation may be erratic and oblique, but the
destination initially given by human choice and purpose. The common distinction between
project success and project management success (Ika, 2009) seems to codify the ambition to
make performance in terms of outcomes independent of that is, causally insulated from, the
travail and turmoil of performance in terms of process. By implication, the primary task of
project management is to ensure that the project process remains inconsequential for the project
achievements, as originally designed and decided. In tum, project governance will keep an eye
on how the project managers handle this task:
the core purpose of g project governance is to evaluate and: shape the development of the
project throughout its life cycle in such a way that its outcomes remain safe, strategically
aligned and beneficial t to the s stakeholders, as agreed at the time of approval. (Cicmil &
Braddon, 2012, p. 222)

Ideally, from approval to completion, nothing of substantive significance for the project's
achievements should occur. In spite of accumulated knowledge on how to manage projects to
such an effect, experience tells us that the task of making the implementation process
inconsequential is not a trivial one. "Over budget, over time, over and over again" is Flyvbjerg's
(2011) short summary of the performance record of major projects. A high frequency of project
fiasco is true in most sectors of society (Cicmil & Hodgson, 2006). When projects fail to deliver
as promised, project management must have failed to make the implementation process
inconsequential. While project managers are commonly held accountable for such failures,
Flyvbjerg points out that they may also have been given an impossible task. As mentioned
above, the root cause of underperformance is biased and manipulated decisions that send projects
off on a disastrous course-a death march (Yourdon, 2004) ---in the sense that their ill fate is
already sealed by the design. Less unrealistic estimates and forecasts would give project
managers a fairer chance of surviving and reaching their destination by providing more slack
resources in the fight against contingencies and difficulties. The poor track record of projects is
no reason to renounce the ideal. The challenge is to bring practice closer to the ideal, not vice
versa.
By honoring the ideal of making projects right from the outset, project management aligns itself
with the central values and tenets of modern society. Decisions should be made rationally and
governed by a logic of consequences (March, 1994). When projects are decided rationally, they
become the collective embodiment of purposive human action. This constructs an image of
projects as the most legitimate organizational form, and its popularity is testified by the
proclaimed ‘projectification’ of firms and society (Lundin & Söderholm, 1998; Midler, 1995),
promising a welcome escape from mindless bureaucracy and unscrupulous politics.
Hirschman's notion of projects is different, if mainly implicit. It derives from his general
approach to the social world. Focusing on "the unique rather than the general, the unexpected
rather than the expected and the possible rather than the probable" (2013, P. 22). Every project
represents ongoing experimentation. There is no leap into a preconceived future since the future
is accomplished in numerous small steps, that is, in moments of action. The projected future may
set the project in motion and may well guide and inform action, serving as a "supra-act" (Ryle,
2000b). However, it will not reduce the need for agency in the face of contingencies, difficulties,
and uncertainties. Presumably, such situations present actors with alternative routes, and the
chosen routes will determine which destination the project may and will reach. Without such
consequential agency, the project would come to a premature end.
Projects that are conceived as processes of pursuit and discovery must necessarily unfold in
“disorderly and circuitous ways” (Offe, 2014, p.591). Giving side effects and unplanned and
hard-to-quantify dividends much emphasis, Hirschman rejected the pre-existing project design as
the ultimate criterion for what fits and what counts. What is possible and appropriate to do is
determined by the specific situation at hand, not the situation designed and expected. Situated
judgment is required, and since such judgment is not preordained, each moment holds some
significance for the fate of the project. The original design and promises are not (at least not
necessarily) ignored but necessarily made subject to such situated judgment. Considering all the
other matters of concern at some specific moment, how much weight these prior goals and plans
should be given is part and parcel of the judgment of what to do next.
Hirschman's inspiration for seeing projects more in terms of pursuit than accomplishment should
probably be sought far from the fields of e economics and management, where conventional
project management finds its inspiration. Being "lifelong admirer of the Russian's spiritualist
prose" (Adelman, 2013, P. 24), Hirschman recognized contingencies as not only a fact of life but
also as a driver of history. In the words of Morson (2013, p. 68) the future 2 not simply the*
"past to be." All contingencies imply fork in the road that requires small but consequential
choices. In retrospect; such a multiplicity of choices will have ruined every preconception of
being in control of events, of the future being decidable. Rather, since each moment holds
contingency, tnO moment has pastness until it is past" (Morson, 2013, P: 68).
If project implementation is such muddle, Hirschman must find a role for project management
that is more sophisticated (and demanding) than policing the integrity of the original design.
Learning from Tolstoy, what is needed to manage projects (and conduct war) is to attend wisely
to what is happening, relying more on the presence of mind than on plans, and learning from
multiplicity of experience without reducing it to simple lessons and prescripts (Morson, 2013, P.
39-40). One of the challenges to management is the fact that every moment or event is enacted
by real actors with “heterogeneous and often conflicting needs [ that cannot] be reduced so as to
"optimize' demands and tactic" (Offe & Wiesenthal, 1980: 75). Were managers to treat
participants as mere "factors of production" -as they appear in the Plans and designs- moments of
contingency, difficulty and uncertainty would likely be turned against them. Taking inspiration
from Offe and Wiesenthal (1980), we suggest that it is necessary to resolve these moments of
potential conflict when things cannot happen according to plan by some form of collective
deliberation, also implying that the resolution will simultaneously express and define the
interests of the participants in the particular moment--and simultaneously express and redefine
the identity and destiny of the project. For project managers, the challenge is to recognize (or
construct) the forks. in the road that the beaten track lures us into ignoring and to exercise the
necessary pragmatic judgment in choosing between alternative routes, hoping to escape the
predestined fate of projects managed according to conventional project management wisdom.

In conclusion, this notion of a project would seem consistent with a Deweyan projects-as-
practice perspective (Buchan & Simpson, 2020), which in Hirschman's case shows in his:
deep and persistent aversion to "teleology and historical laws" that allow for strong
predictions. Everything is possible, hopes may fail, and all depends on the right agency,
which in turn depends on situational contexts, both favorable and unfavorable. (Offe,
2014, p. 585)
There is a complete reversal of roles for project design and project management.

Hirschman directed attention to the critical role of project management in understanding project
achievements. Project management is the never-ending task of exercising the right agency,
attending wisely to what is happening, and of drawing on accumulated experience in a casuistic
manner-in "the root sense of the word* (Morson, 2013, p. 40). Thus, Hirschman was looking for
project managers to strive to contribute constructively, but from a weak position, as actual
outcomes are beyond the control of everyone, including the project management. Consequently,
the eventual outcome should never be misconstrued as an easy indicator of the quality of the
effort (Ryle, 2000a).

Knowing and Learning

Projects understood as leaps into a predesigned future and as processes of pursuit and discovery
direct our attention to different aspects of reality and to pursuing different ideals of
successfulness. Being incommensurable, they represent an impossible choice that we might feel
forced to make. However, the spirit of our reflections is to seek ways of making them
supplementary, not competing, notions. Where in the academic edifice of Flyvbjerg and project
management could we find (or make) room for the insight and wisdom that Hirschman offers?
Let us first examine the walls of the edifice a little closer.
The stronghold of Flyvbjerg and project management is the alignment with the idea of purposive
human action. Unquestionably, we should aim to do only the things that will benefit us in the
future. When rationally choosing to start projects, we should know what it requires to take us
safely to the designated future. However, ‘as Loasby (2000, p. 4) has cleverly suggested, the only
way we can know such things is "by setting bounds to what we seek to know, and ignoring ...
what lies beyond." What we ignore because it lies beyond what we seek to know is the practices
of pursuit and discovery that Hirschman chose to address. Acknowledging such concerns might
risk undermining the very foundation of the body of knowledge in project management.
Setting bounds to what we seek to know might further explain why we seem to have exhausted
the possibilities for learning from experience. We know how to ensure the success of projects by
proper design, planning, and management; otherwise we would give up the idea of purposive
human action. When repeatedly experiencing projects that fail, we infer that the practice must
have violated the established knowledge otherwise, they would have succeeded! Following
Loasby's reasoning. O know how to design and plan projects, we must necessarily ignore the
complexities and difficulties of bringing projects to success--the same complexities and
difficulties that we retrospectively scorn practice for having underestimated or mishandled. We
protect our knowledge about how to rationally manage projects by framing experience in such a
way that the recurrent failures do not change what we know. Constant failure is a queer name for
progress," says Dewey (1915, p. $22). Thus, we may have entrapped ourselves in an awkward
body of knowledge that allows us to learn only the things we know already. Academically, this
could be considered the winner's curse but it could also be appreciated as a safeguard against
heresy. Thus, Flyvbjerg can safely add to the body of knowledge by arguing that reference class
forecasting is the solution to the root problem of underperformance but only because future
underperformances will tell us that a stupid or unscrupulous underestimation must have occurred
months or even years before, First, making attributions based on performance and then treating
these attributions as the cause of the performance (Rosenzweig, 2014) make us unable to learn
new things from experience. Since ignorance (or inattention) is, according to Loasby (quoted
above), constitutive of the kind of knowledge that is required for us to imagine human action to
be rational and purposive, the Hiding Hand may be gloved in new procedures for making
decisions but still empowers people to start projects on the wrong premise that they know
enough to control the future.

It is this academic edifice of project management that we want to open to learning, with
inspiration from Hirschman. We do not suggest that he has an alternative edifice that should
replace the current one. Hirschman's aversion to knowledge in the form of historical laws and his
pitch for casuistry would seem to allow him to collect stories with little operational usefulness,
holding no. "Immediately applicable, 'practical lesson" (Hirschman, 1995, p. 129). Without
regrets, he prioritizes staying open to learning new aspects of reality over the building of a body
of knowledge.

Conclusions

To reiterate, in project management, we seem to learn the same lessons from experience over and
over again: that projects end "over budget, over time, over and over again," that project design
and plans are biased and that the decision to start the project is commonly manipulated by
strategically miscalculated costs and benefits (Flyybjerg, 2011). By way of conclusion, we ask if
we might possibly learn something more?
For example, might we learn what makes projects successful. If by axiom, we treat the right
forecasts as the way to success, there is nothing much we can learn, except more ways that a
project can fail. However, following Hirschman, we might think of success criteria as partly
endogenously established, thus functioning as a premise for and as an outcome of the project
process. Sometimes, projects achieve things that render the formal criteria irrelevant at the end.
Budget overruns may possibly even serve as an indicator of worth in the valuation of such
achievements (Kreiner, 2017; Kreiner, in press). Not that they necessarily will, but that they
possibly can, and that they occasionally will send such a signal. Rather than presuming we
already know what success is and the criteria upon which to measure it, we might possibly pose
the question and nuance the understanding of this central aspect of projects by discovering
multiple and contingent ways for projects to succeed (Kreiner, 2014).
The notion of side effects suggests that there are concerns and interests besides he project
makers' that will, for one or the other reason, come to count. It has been suggested that "the
project's object-[e.g.] the infrastructure object-will continue to mobilize new actors and concerns.
The concerns around the object ... formulate and reformulate decisions on how to manage [the
project)" (Revellino & Mouritsen, 2017, p. 298). In moments of contingency, project managers
will have to negotiate a way forward and make judgments about the relative weight of multiple
concerns to reach a judgment of what to do next. To understand how such consequential,
practical judgments are made, we need to identify with the project managers and understand the
dilemmas faced in practice. This would also imply that we need to construe of the project, not in
the abstract terms of the project design, but with regard to the concrete also material, terms of
specific moments calling for inquiry and action (Buchan & Simpson, 2020).
Furthermore, it is easy to imagine that the project manager might act in the best interests of the
project (and ultimately the client) by compromising the promises that premised the decision to
engage in the project, simply because any other judgment might result in even bigger sacrifices.
Including the potential discontinuation of the project. Thus, the prevalence of fiascoes based on
the traditional criteria may indicate that the probability of discovering, along the way, more
salient values, concerns, and interests than keeping the original promises is very high. Therefore,
an apparent project fiasco might also be investigated as a potential case of successful project
management. Ultimately, not any overrun or shortage will come to be seen as a success, but,
possibly, if we actively look for reasons to consider them successful, many of them would be
valuated constructively, as Hirschman suggested.
Such ideas may seem heretic and would seem to violate cultural norms about keeping one's
promises. The design of the project has been conceived to imply the translation of the
notoriously uncertain predictions and anticipations of achievements into specific, often
contractually binding promises (Mouritsen & Kreiner, 2016). Conventionally, a promise is
supposedly only valid if the promisors are trusted to be able to keep their promises (Brandes,
2010). In terms of the project context with a poor track record, such trust seems plucked out of
the air. However, we may see these promises as founded on contracts rather than interpersonal
trust, making the promisors accountable and culpable if things should go wrong. Thus, in
practice, the role of trust may be ambiguous. If we trust that we can contain the consequences of
the betrayed promises, we need perhaps not wholly trust the promisor before moving ahead. The
promise becomes an issue of negotiation between parties, none of whom are much concerned
with the realism of the promise and who are possibly driven merely by opportunistic interests.
Furthermore, G seems likely that such negotiations are not between equals. Project makers may
often possess a monopolist’s power to extract potentially unreasonable promises from
participants and suppliers of knowledge and economic resources to the project (Winch, 2013;
Winch & Kreiner, 2011). Thus, the moral issue concerning projects and promises has two sides.
First, there is the standard issue of project peddlers making false promises. Second, however,
there is the issue of project makers exploiting their superior power to extract promises that the
promisor is unable to keep. New issues would emerge if we allow the moral issues concerning
promises to include both the making of unrealistic promises and the extraction of unfair ones.
Academically, we might support Flyvbjerg in scorning Hirschman for making a virtue of his bias
for hope. Yet, such a bias may exemplify the mechanisms for creating a commitment to action in
the face of risk and uncertainty. In Schelling's (2006, p. 1) conception, commitment implies
"'becoming committed to a course of action," ""relinquishing some choice" (e.g., exit in the face
of contingencies), and "surrendering some control over one's future behavior." When we accept
that the achievement of the project is not independent of the effort and agency during the project
process, nobody would doubt the need for creating a commitment to the project beyond
contractual obligations. The source of such commitment is an empirical question. But the design
of the project, narrating its purpose and goal, would seem to offer an opportunity for nurturing
commitment by placing the project in a grander scheme of things than can realistically be
justified. Thus, creating commitment and thereby seeking to make projects successful works
against Flyvbjerg's concern for the rationality of starting projects. Combining the two concerns,
we might come to appreciate the notion of "action rationality" (Brunsson, 1985), which implies a
simplified and less reflective form of decisions that goads people to action, causing us to realize
that more elaborated decision procedures will not necessarily produce more valid decision
premises in a notoriously uncertain and complex reality.
Opening the notion of a project t incorporate more concerns and interests might potentially also
change the facts from which we try to learn. Conventionally, the costs that determine success and
failure are the costs to the client only. Including the costs to all involved parties would change
the measures of the project performance. We know that the distribution of costs is recurrently
negotiated during implementation and often continued in legal litigation after completion. Such
observations should add to our understanding of cost performance, causing us to consider it not
merely a matter of forecasting but also a game of passing the buck.
Finally, if we refrain from presuming that success is the absence of failure, we might come to
learn the multiple ways a project may succeed in practice. 'The context- specific valuation of
projects and their achievements involves multiple judgments and interest-driven negotiations
between stakeholders. Rather than defining the value and success of projects, project
management might study the processes by which such valuations are reached. We may still claim
to know a great deal about projects, even if we allow ourselves to play with the implications that
we can draw from such knowledge.
There is more life and strife in the edifice of project management than we have suggested in this
essay, and Hirschman is also far from the only one chiseling cracks in its walls (e.g., Drouin et
al., 2013; Geraldi & Söderlund, 2018; Hodgson & Cicmil, 2006; Lundin & Hallgreen, 2014;
Lundin & Midler, 1998; Sergi et al., 2020). There are more nuances to both Flyvbjerg's and
Hirschman's positions than we have covered. Thus, there will be ample opportunities for
rejecting our ideas and killing the underlying thinking. However, next time we get surprised and
morally offended by the poor performance of some major project, we should send Hirschman a
thought, asking ourselves how we manage to get surprised and provoked when history repeats
itself` and conforms to our theory about it. And, next time we happen to review projects in
action, we might strive to learn something new, for example, by contemplating the possibility
that innocence (March, 1999), that is, not attending to the way we know projects normally are, is
wiser strategy than taking all imaginable precautions against what will generally, expectedly, and
probably happen. It is well to know what an outside view might reveal, but we lose something
essential about projects if we do not pursue them as unique, as experiments, thereby allowing
ourselves to explore and to appreciate the unexpected and improbable, to discover new
possibilities
Term paper title:
"Conflicting notions in project management and its practical applicability"
Start with objective of term paper, introduction of group before addressing the following
questions:
Q1.What is your group's understanding about Hirschman's principle of Hiding Hand? Do you
think this principle is practically applicable in any type of project?

Q2.How do you differentiate project success with project management success? Is the
implementation team responsible for both?

Q3.Did you notice any area where Hirschman and Flyvbjerg would agree to each other?

Q4.What is your critical comment on Hirschman's rejection of the pre-existing project design as
the ultimate criterion for what fits and what counts?

You should have searched in the web and cited at least three additional reference articles to
answer the above questions.
Summary of the article "Conflicting Notions of a Project: The Battle Between Albert O. Hirschman and
Bent Flyvbjerg"

This article explores the contrasting viewpoints of Albert O. Hirschman and Bent Flyvbjerg on projects
and project management. While both acknowledge the inherent difficulties and uncertainties associated
with projects, their differing perspectives on knowledge, learning, and success lead to contrasting
approaches.

Hirschman's View:

 Sees projects as experiments and processes of pursuit and discovery. The future is not
predetermined, and each moment presents opportunities for agency and improvisation.
 Emphasizes the role of situational judgment and learning from experience in adapting to
unforeseen circumstances.
 Recognizes the potential for serendipity and unintended consequences to contribute to project
success.
 Views promises and goals as flexible, adapting to the evolving project context.

Flyvbjerg's View:

 Considers projects as leaps into a pre-designed future. Success depends on accurate planning,
forecasting, and control.
 Advocates for rigorous upfront planning and realistic estimates to minimize deviations from the
initial design.
 Views project failures as primarily due to biased and manipulated decisions during the planning
stage.
 Emphasizes the importance of rationality and adherence to established project management
principles.

Key Issues of Contention:

 Role of knowledge: Hirschman values casuistry and learning from unique experiences, while
Flyvbjerg emphasizes established knowledge and best practices.
 Definition of success: Hirschman considers multiple factors and unexpected outcomes, while
Flyvbjerg focuses on adherence to the initial design and planned outcomes.
 Making promises: Hirschman acknowledges the need to adapt promises, while Flyvbjerg
emphasizes commitment to initial promises.
 Learning from experience: Hirschman encourages learning from successes and failures, while
Flyvbjerg focuses on learning to avoid past mistakes.

The Author's Perspective:

The author argues for incorporating aspects of both viewpoints. While acknowledging the value of
Flyvbjerg's emphasis on planning and risk mitigation, they suggest that learning from Hirschman's ideas
could enrich project management by:

 Recognizing the limitations of traditional forecasting methods and embracing the unexpected.
 Considering the role of agency and judgment in navigating unforeseen challenges.
  Appreciating the potential for serendipity and unintended consequences to contribute to
success.
 Expanding the definition of "success" beyond adherence to the original design.
 The author concludes by calling for a more open and nuanced approach to project management,
one that embraces learning from diverse perspectives and experiences.

Additional Notes

This summary does not cover all the nuances of the original article.

The author acknowledges the limitations of their own argument and welcomes further discussion and
debate.