Conflicting Notions of a Project: The Battle Between Albert O. Hirschman and Bent Flyvbjerg

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.