Managing Sustainable Development Programmes

A Learning Approach to Change

Gran Brulin, Lennart Svensson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781032836928
• eBook ISBN: 9781317101406
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Technology & Engineering

Project work, driven by competent project leaders drives positive outcomes. Unfortunately these optimistic initial results are often short-sighted with few evaluations of their long-term impact. The research contained in Managing Sustainable Development Programmes reveals an extraordinary level of failure in the durability of large change programmes and projects in both the private and public sectors. In this book the authors question whether sustainable development be achieved within the framework of large publicly financed programmes. This strong critique of traditional programme implementation overturns much of our current thinking about project delivery and governance. The authors focus instead on sustainable change and development. They show how active ownership and collaboration between different actors and the dynamics of developmental learning can be used to create programmes and projects that contribute to innovation, employment and growth in a way that favours companies, employees, customers and society in a broader sense. The message at its heart is 'don't blame the project leader' but rather look for dynamic possession of projects, joint knowledge management and sharing with external stakeholders that will secure long-term effects.

1
Running Programmes for Sustainable Development

What Is the Book About?

Large amounts of resources are put into different programmes to create greater innovation capacity, entrepreneurship, new jobs and competence enhancement. How should these programmes, aiming at new routes, be organized to achieve lasting effects? This book aims to show how public programmes in regional growth and sustainable development should be designed, steered and evaluated in order to produce a return from the initiatives taken. The starting point is primarily the experiences gained from the EU Structural Fund programmes in Sweden, both the Regional Fund and the Social Fund. During the programming period 2007–2013, several thousand projects have been implemented, an investment amounting to more than 3 billion Euros in Sweden, 83 billion in Europe. Our firm conviction is that the Swedish way to manage and evaluate these programmes should work as a starting point for a discussion about a more rational and effective implementation of programmes. There is an urgent need to critically examine how to conduct public development programmes (see European Commission 2007a).

The book and its conclusions are based on a strong critique of traditional programme implementation, the belief in the all-powerful project manager, a linear programme logic, as well as strong focus on planning, activities and short-term results. We take instead an approach where we show how active ownership and steering, collaboration between different actors and the dynamics of developmental learning can be used to provide multiplier effects. Learning through ongoing evaluation is regarded as the binding element enabling continuous improvements and above all knowledge formation gained from previous experiences. We wish to explain the mechanisms leading to sustainable development work, that is to say, what is it that enables activities in programmes and projects to continue after financing has ceased and project management has completed its work.¹

A programme consists of a group of related projects with different stakeholders. The ambition is often to achieve strategic change. Goals often include different values – economic, political, social and environmental (Maylor 2010: 60). Projects grow in scale, cost and complexity (Stokes 2009). The complexity of a project has to do with size, technical difficulties, conflicting environmental and political constraints, a large number of stakeholders, and so on (Remington and Pollack 2008). Second order project management deals with large and highly complex projects, which are often organized as a programme. What does it mean to be a project leader in such a programme – in terms of competencies, position in the project organization, mandate, and so on? These questions will be dealt with in this book.

The programmes we have studied aim to combine growth and innovation² with individual development and employability. This combination of growth and welfare is part of a strategy for sustainable change. Changes at different ‘levels’ – the individual, organizational and societal – are seen as necessary and mutually reinforcing to accomplish a sustainable change. A system perspective is necessary and this involves a large number of stakeholders (Cavanagh 2012).

This book is not about Sweden. It is about the organization of large and complex projects that are publicly funded and is illustrated by what we consider to be interesting examples from Sweden which are of general theoretical and practical interest. We think it important to get a better understanding of which strategies and approaches enable outcomes and values from projects to become sustainable (cf. Thomas and Mullaly 2008: 365). The examples we use originate mainly from the EU Structural Funds for regional growth (the European Regional Development Fund – ERDF) and employment (the European Social Fund – ESF). There are 27 member states running thousands of programmes and projects in EU Structural Funds in order to improve the labour market, innovation and growth.

One reason for mainly using projects in the Regional and Social Funds in Sweden as an empirical base for our research is that Sweden is promoting and developing a model for learning through ongoing evaluation. It is an approach for securing higher quality in projects and a mechanism for creating strategic change. This attempt from Sweden is unique with respect to the other 26 member states of the EU, but there is growing interest from other countries in Europe. Sweden has also been able to deal with the financial and economic crisis successfully through a partnership approach between the unions, employers and the state. This strategy for finding a joint solution to the crisis in Nordic countries can explain the positive economic development in these countries, increasingly referred to as ‘Tiger economies’. Scandinavian countries are well-known examples of mixed and pluralistic economies in which the state plays a major role in regulating the economy. These countries are also characterized by a high degree of participation and public–private cooperation between different actors (Gustavsen 2010). The Scandinavian ‘tripartism’ (between the state, companies and unions) can be seen as an important element in a strategy for sustainable change.

But the book does not deal with country-specific conditions for change and innovation. Instead, we have studied how large and complex projects can be more effective and sustainable in order to find more generic answers (cf. Thomas and Mullaly 2008: 364).

What Do We Want to Analyse?

In order to specify in greater detail this question, we must clarify the starting points, our perspective on development and the goals for such types of public programmes. In order to be able to examine the complex problem of how programmes and projects can be run more or less well, we need to discuss different theoretical approaches and some important concepts. To do this, we report a number of conclusions based on research from different programmes from the two funds. In later chapters, we will return to this and build on these conclusions.

For Sweden, entry to the EU means that responsibility for growth and employment has been regionalized. Increasingly it is the regions that should drive growth, innovation, competence and employment questions. The rationale of the EU Structural Funds is that they should work as an additional ‘lubricant’ in relation to regular initiatives. Both the Regional Fund and the Social Fund should change, improve and strengthen different regional growth and employment policies. The programmes and projects should be innovative and ‘additional’ in terms of supplementing regular activities. For this reason, it is particularly important that they are as development oriented as possible. In other words, it is not the initiatives themselves which are the main goal of the Structural Funds, but rather the long-term effects which the programmes should achieve.

The visions and goals of the Structural Funds are set at a high level. Programmes and projects should increase innovation capacity, create a more inclusive working life and lead to greater growth, as set out in the EU strategy for Europe 2020. They are a part of the Union’s cohesion policy and they should provide a social corrective to the negative effects of the internal market (Tarschy 2003). At the same time as programmes should facilitate structural transformation, they should also support renewal and the creation of better jobs, with increased skill content, good working and employment conditions, as well as a labour market that does not exclude specific groups and where environmental factors are taken into account. In this way our questions come within the scope of what is usually defined as sustainable growth and sustainable working life, namely working life and growth where different interests are balanced and where human resources and the physical environment are not consumed. The terms ‘sustainable growth’ and ‘sustainable working life’ provide a reference framework for our analysis, but the focus is on the conditions for sustainable development in programmes and projects. So what does this mean?

A distinguishing characteristic of sustainable development work is not that it focuses primarily on activities and short-term results. Quite the contrary: long-term multiplier effects, not least in other development activities, are of special importance. We should step back and clarify how we view these concepts and how they are linked together.

What Is Sustainable Development Work?

Distinctions between activities, results and effects in development work or in a project are often made in programme theory (Brulin and Svensson 2011). The usefulness or the value of development work can be assessed from different starting points. This can cover the following:

1. number and types of activities implemented and their results;

2. short-term results of activities;

3. long-term effects, that is, if results are applied and become an integrated part of an activity or contribute to strategic impact (of agreements, rules, laws, policies, steering documents or public debate). If programmes and projects kick-start learning processes and knowledge formation in other development activities, then we can speak of long-term multiplier effects, that is, where effects are formed, value added and leveraged obtained.

To be more concrete, we can apply the reasoning above on the usefulness of a project to the two programme areas in the Social Fund. In programme area 1, namely competence development for employees and business owners, outcomes usually involve participation in education and the experiences and usefulness that participants find in these initiatives. It is relatively easy to report the number of participants and how many were satisfied with the activities. Participating in education, however, does not itself guarantee learning that leads to results. In order to be able to discuss the results of an education, an individual should have learned something – not just theoretically, but also something that can be applied, that is, the individual should have enhanced their competence. Nor is learning any guarantee of long-term effects. If participants are not able to use their knowledge and if the workplace does not function as a learning environment, then results (learning) will not be transformed into long-term effects (more effective activities). Ideally, education (an activity) should lead to learning which provides broader and more responsible work tasks (a result), which in its turn contributes to developing the activity, that is, by it becoming more innovative and competitive (an effect).

We can apply similar reasoning to the Social Fund’s programme area for initiatives for social cohesion and inclusion, called Priority 1. The target groups in Priority 1 are those who are furthest from entering the labour market. The activities arranged by the projects for these groups can deal with education and other support measures for vulnerable individuals. The outcome of activities can be assessed by the proportion who complete the programme, and the proportion who are satisfied with the measures. Results deal with the actual usefulness for participants, that is, in terms of increased competence and employability, but also strengthened resources such as increased self-confidence, increased ambitions and access to networks. Long-term effects in this context mean that participants have got a firmer footing on the labour market such as work of a particular kind or running their own business.

Long-term multiplier effects in other development activities are particularly important for projects in the Regional Fund. Prioritized projects in the areas of regional innovation environments and entrepreneurship/ business development are expected to initiate learning and development processes that lead to greater capacity to innovate and also entrepreneurship. Similar to ‘ripples on the pond’, experiences and knowledge from projects are disseminated to contribute to greater dynamics in regional growth processes. Evaluating multiplier effects is difficult since causal relationships are often unclear.

How, for example, does one value the fact that the Mid Sweden University, through a Regional Fund project, succeeded in acquiring primary responsibility for the government’s special initiatives in innovation offices at four universities? Together with two municipalities and a co-financier, the Mid Sweden University built up an innovation project with the aim of providing coaching on research-based ideas for innovations. The idea of the project was to get researchers, students and other personnel to change attitudes, cultures and approaches to the creation of innovation. As a result of the government launching seven innovation offices in its bill on research and innovation, the Mid Sweden University could, on the basis of the knowledge base and organization built up in the Regional Fund project, implement and take primary responsibility for the innovation offices in three universities. Investing programme funds to kick start such multiplier effects involves high risks. There was an obvious risk that the innovation project would not have any long-term effects. When the project was launched, nothing was known about the initiative at the innovation offices. Success in contributing to long-term multiplier effects in many respects involves timing, policy intelligence about the surrounding world and, quite simply, luck!

The problem in evaluation contexts is that it is very difficult to really pinpoint the contribution that a project makes in creating a multiplier effect. The project ‘Establishment of a node for outdoor educational activities in a municipality’ was based on research into educational methodology, which was implemented in conjunction with a university. The goal of the project was to increase entrepreneurship and the number of businesses in the area of games and outdoor educational activities. This involved determining whether business could be created on the basis of a cultural heritage of games and outdoor educational pedagogy that Vimmerby, after the author Astrid Lindgren, is associated with. However, it turned out to be difficult to mobilize companies in Vimmerby to contribute to greater entrepreneurship in outdoor pedagogy. On the other hand, the project has had a clear effect on Linköping University’s successful initiative in exporting pre-school education around the world – from Peking to Los Angeles. The association with Astrid Lindgren through this project has helped the university to embark on the export of pre-school teacher training. In similar ways, different pre-school companies hope that the project will enable them to export their pedagogical approaches. Evidently the project has contributed to entrepreneurship, but possibly not in the way intended from the beginning. Running such types of projects is to some extent similar to how venture capitalists operate. The financier is involved in a number of processes based on creating value from a knowledge base or an idea – and it is not possible to state in advance if this can be created, as goals and instruments change during the process of adding value. It is important that venture capitalists continue to take care of the ‘companies’ as well as possible. This involves continuously evaluating activities and initiatives to determine whether they lead towards goals that will fulfil expectations for creating value-added.

With the help of the concepts above, we have formulated the question more precisely as to what sustainable development work is, and pointed out some of the dilemmas and challenges it entails. Sustainable development is something that can lead to joint learning and long-term effects, where activities or results are regarded as instruments for achieving this, and not as goals in themselves. It can be said that sustainability depends on how these different components of development work are linked together. Activities such as undertaking experiments and trying out new approaches are crucial in development processes. Since most activities in a project cannot be successful, a large number of attempts and experiments are required to achieve innovative solutions. The results which are the consequence of successful activities show what is successful in the short term in development work. At the same time we know that short-term results do not automatically lead to long-term effects.

This applies particularly to multiplier effects which often occur in unexpected and surprising ways. Experiences and results from projects must be transformed and applied to new contexts if they are to develop their own life and become autonomous. For results to be sustainable when projects have been completed, they must survive adaptation to new (internal and external) conditions and requirements. Our analysis of the sustainability chain concentrates on the relationship between results and effects. We make this restriction as the lack of knowledge is greatest within this area. What the linkages between results and effects look like, and how they are organized, are questions we will take up later in the chapter.

Using the concepts above, we have shown that projects can lead to results and long-term effects in the most surprising ways. At the same time we can also find an explanation as to why different kinds of development work, especially when run in project form, are seldom sustainable. An important explanation is the dominance of the kind of project logic that focuses on isolated activities and short-term results. In a project application, an undertaking may have been given to carry out 40 company visits in a project, and after 20 visits project participants already realize that they have what they need to be able to work towards long-term sustainable development. Despite this, there is a feeling of having to complete the company visits in order to fulfil the undertaking. Since public funds are used to finance programmes and projects, the managing authorities and the EU Commission have set up a number of indicators and rules to ensure that projects are carried out correctly. The problem arises from overloaded indicators and steering by rules that often lead the project in the wrong direction, that is, towards short-term results and a large number of activities. It is in this context that learning through ongoing evaluation plays an important role – right in the middle of this ‘jungle’ of short-term requirements – by continuously evaluating projects to ensure that they are steered in the direction of the overarching goals and provide learning and long-term effects.

In the following sections, we will present some explanations as to why development work is seldom sustainable. This is a question which has often occurred in our contacts with those responsible for programmes, coordinators, project managers and evaluators. We do not claim to have ready or complete answers, but we satisfy ourselves with two of the more common ones, the dominance of project logic and the focus on short-term aspects.

PROJECT LOGIC DOMINATES

In publicly funded projects and programmes, there is a great risk of focusing on planning, implementing activities and reporting their outcomes. The primary motive is to implement the programme, allocate funds, administer projects, and control and report what has been done. Long-term sustainability and multiplier effects can easily fade into the background. Why does this happen so often?

In externally financed development work, projects and their reporting logic are often developed to cover economic and administrative responsibility and to rapidly distribute funds. Funds are to be used and correctly accounted for. Those responsible, together with project case handlers, are forced to focus on immediacy and necessity, and not on the long-term and strategic aspects of a programme. Managing project funds in a correct way is a necessity, but when this becomes excessive there is a risk that the fundamental aim, that is, creating results and long-term effects that represent a part of sustainable development work, is not achieved. A project manager in an EU project referred to the risk of ending up in the ‘activity trap’ where short-term requirements for implementing activities in line with the project plan replace the ambition of creating long-term effects in terms of new jobs. He was referring to activities that can easily become ends in themselves and which are not clearly linked to long-term effects.

How have the Regional Fund and Social Fund handled this dilemma between outcome and effects in a project? There is no simple answer to the question, and the answers, of course, can vary between regions and over time. The ambitions in the formulations of the programmes have, however, been clear. The focu...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures and Table
• Foreword
• About the Authors
• Chapter 1 Running Programmes for Sustainable Development
• Chapter 2 Models of Change and Evaluation
• Chapter 3 Key Research Findings
• Chapter 4 Evaluation for Sustainable Development
• Chapter 5 Lessons from Earlier Programme Initiatives
• Chapter 6 Lessons from Competence Initiatives
• Chapter 7 Innovation and the Regional Fund
• Chapter 8 Owning, Steering and Evaluating Large Programmes
• Afterword
• References
• Index