One morning in the early 1990s, at the Lutheran Uhuru Hostel at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro, my colleagues Tumsifu Nnkya and Fred Lerise were getting ready, after months of preparation, to go out to begin fieldwork for case studies for their doctoral dissertations. As their supervisor, I asked...

The Supplementary Green Book Guidance on Optimism Bias (HM Treasury 2003) with reference to the Review of Large Public Procurement in the UK (Mott MacDonald 2002) notes that there is a demonstrated, systematic tendency for project appraisers to be overly optimistic; and that to redress this...

Vilka stora projekt börjar verkligen byggas? Mina medarbetare och jag fann att det inte nödvändigtvis är de bästa, utan snarare de där projektets tillskyndare lyckats bäst med att – medvetet eller ej – skapa en ren fantasivärld av för lågt beräknade kostnader, överdrivna...

Phronetic organizational research is an approach to the study of management and organizations focusing on ethics and power. It is based on a contemporary interpretation of the Aristotelian concept phronesis, usually as ‘prudence’. Phronesis is the ability to think and act in relation to...

Large infrastructure projects are being planned and designed all over the world. As these projects require state funding and have a strong spatial and environmental impact, they tend to figure prominently in all parts of the national political ball game. Though the physical results of...

Lock-in, the escalating commitment of decision makers to an ineffective course of action, has the potential to explain the large cost overruns in large-scale transportation infrastructure projects. Lock-in can occur both at the decision-making level (before the decision to build) and at the...

The article first describes characteristics of major infrastructure projects. Second, it documents a much neglected topic in economics: that ex ante estimates of costs and benefits are often very different from actual ex post costs and benefits. For large infrastructure projects the consequences...

Albert O. Hirschman's principle of the Hiding Hand stands stronger and more celebrated today than ever. The principle states that ignorance is good in planning, because if decision makers knew the real costs and difficulties of projects, few ventures would ever get started. The paper presents...

This paper asks and answers the question of whether Kahneman's planning fallacy or Hirschman's Hiding Hand best explain performance in capital investment projects. I agree with my critics that the Hiding Hand exists, i.e., sometimes benefit overruns outweigh cost overruns in project planning and...