Page 205 - Global Project Management Handbook

9-10 COMPETENCY FACTORS IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT

varying and often conflicting interests. Infrastructure projects are particularly vulnerable
to emergent risks from stakeholder groups because of both their physical and social visi-
bility. Physical infrastructure projects attract a great deal of media and public attention
because of their size, impact, and visibility. In addition, infrastructure projects provide
services to which many constituents feel they have a right and can become the subject of
political debate and claims from diverse stakeholder groups. Major projects are particu-
larly vulnerable to being held hostage by pressure groups because beyond a certain point
the decision to invest in the creation of the artifact becomes irreversible. It is difficult to
halt or downsize the construction because when it is partially completed, it is worth very
little. Once it is completed, it can be used for little else than its intended purpose. For all
these reasons, large projects are vulnerable to both anticipated and emergent claims from
stakeholders, and infrastructure projects are particularly vulnerable.

Redefinition of Roles

Projects that redefine the role of the state and participants from the private sector, both
national and foreign, are even more vulnerable because they can provoke debates, claims,
and protests on a very wide number of issues. These projects can be the object of debates
and protests about privatization and globalization. It is difficult to anticipate all the issues
that the different stakeholders might evoke when logging a claim against the project.
Unforeseen claims are likely to emerge from the project environment despite the best
efforts toward stakeholder and risk management.

Opportunism

Project structures such as those that have been described in this chapter involve many
participants in networks of interdependent relations. Thus they are more vulnerable to
endemic emergent risks related to participant behavior. Multiple interdependencies are
both a cause and an effect of emergent risk. Interdependency and the increased number of
relations obviously increase vulnerability to endemic emergent events related to partici-
pant behavior. On the other hand, because of higher levels of emergent risk, it is not pos-
sible to specify everything in advance, and participants are forced to accept some degree

of indeterminacy and interdependency in order to maintain the flexibility that response to
emergent risk requires. Overall, large projects are vulnerable to exogenous emergent risks
related to stakeholder behavior. Projects that are organized as relational ventures are
more vulnerable to both endogenous and exogenous emergent risks related to stakeholder
behavior.

Interdependencies

A complex system is a system with many interdependent components. Large projects are
certainly complex systems. Projects organized as relational ventures are more complex
because they have more components that are more interdependent. All the project charac-
teristics described earlier contribute to complexity. Because of nonlinear interaction
effects, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to predict the behavior of complex systems.
The more complex the system, the more emergent events are likely to manifest them-
selves. In complex systems it is also more difficult to predict the chain of events that any
emergent event will produce. There is thus a nonlinear increase in emergent properties
as systems become more complex. Because of the large number of interdependencies,