Developing Government Policy Capability: Policy Work, Project Management, and Knowledge Practices

Developing Government Policy Capability

Policy Work, Project Management, and Knowledge Practices

Jill Owen, PhD

James Connor, PhD

Henry Linger, PhD

Vanessa McDermott, PhD

Chivonne Algeo, PhD

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Control Number: 2016054054

ISBN: 978-1-62825-177-7

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Dedication

Jill Owen died in 2013.

We remember her for her strength, her courage,

her warmth, and above all, her friendship.

Vale Jill

Acknowledgments

The research reported in this monograph was funded through a PMI Strategic Research Grant. We thank PMI for financial support and the Academic Members Advisory Group (AMAG) for seeing merit in our proposal and awarding the grant. Most of all, we thank Dr. Carla Messikomer, manager, Academic Resources at PMI, for her unfailing support, guidance, and understanding.

Contents

Abbreviations and Acronyms

Executive Summary

Chapter 1: Policy Work as a Context for Project Management

Project Management in Context

Rethinking Project Management

Policy Work

Project Management in a Policy Context

Chapter 2: Policy Work in Australia

Policy Work in Australia

The Role of the Federal Government Cabinet

The Reform Agenda to Build Policy Capability

Policy Work Through the Lens of Project Management

Fit for Purpose—Project Management for Policy Work?

Concluding Remarks—Policy Work in Australia

Chapter 3: Reconceptualizing Project Management for Policy Work

Policy Capability: Implications for Project Management

Soft Skills

Governance

Communication and Engagement

Managing Uncertainty

Planning for Contingencies

Structuring the Project

Controlling the Project

The Value Proposition of the Project

Dealing with Wicked Problems: A Knowledge-Based View of the Project Management Practice

Reflective Practice

Experiential Learning

Sense-Making

Remembering

Concluding Remarks: A Knowledge-Based View of Project Management

Chapter 4: The Tobacco Plain Packaging Bill 2011 Case Study

Research Method

Case Study: Tobacco Plain Packaging

Case Setting: Australian Effort on Tobacco Control in an International Context

Overview—Tobacco Plain Packaging Bill 2011 (TPP)

The TPP: A Project Management Perspective

Soft Skills

Governance

Communication and Engagement

Managing Uncertainty

Planning for Contingencies

Controlling the Project

The Value Proposition of the Project

Knowledge-Based Practices

Reflective Practice

Experiential Learning

Sense-Making

Remembering

Closing Remarks: The TPP Case Study

Chapter 5: Reflections on the TPP Case Study

The Project as a Way of Organizing Policy Work

Foundations for a Conceptual Framework for Project Management

Addressing Wicked Problems: A Conceptual Framework

Chapter 6: Implications for Policy Work and Project Management

Contributions of the Research

A Societal Dimension: Broadening the Project Management Landscape

Reorienting Project Management Practice: Valuing Knowledge, Experience, and Innovation

Expanding the Project Management Research Agenda

Concluding Remarks: Implications for Practice, Education, and Research

Appendices

Appendix 1: Cabinet Implementation Unit

Appendix 2: Reforms of Public Sector Management in Australia

The Three Phases of APS Reforms

Managerialism

New Public Management

Integrated Governance

Appendix 3: The WHO and the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control: Historical Background

Appendix 4: Historical Overview of Tobacco Control Initiatives in Australia

References

Contributors

Abbreviations and Acronyms

Executive Summary

In this book, we investigate how government policy work is conducted and the role project management plays to support this work. We use the term policy work to define the formulation, development, implementation, and delivery of government policy. From a project management perspective, policy work represents a wicked problem, as it is highly contested and characterized by diverse stakeholders with competing interests, with outcomes that evolve during the process of policy work. Moreover, government policy is an overtly political process that has abstract social and political objectives, elastic budgets, and indeterminate timelines.

To explore the relevance of project management in a policy context, we investigate how to effectively address the inherent complexity, uncertainty, and ambiguity of the wicked problem that is policy work. Our study examines Australia's tobacco control policy through the Tobacco Plain Packaging Bill 2011. Although it is based on Australian policy processes, we note that the lessons learned from our exploration can be adapted to the requirements of projects addressing any wicked problem.

The Research Question

The focus of our study was to understand policy work as a project and to critically examine project management practice in the context of wicked problems such as policy work.

Therefore, the central question addressed in this book is:

Can project management practices contribute to improving government policy development and implementation capability?

The objective of this book is to explore whether project management practices can be broadened appropriately to address complex activities that are primarily concerned with social and behavioral change. The specific aims are to:

•

determine whether government policy process can be characterized as a project;

•

identify project management practices that accommodate the policy process; and

•

identify the gaps in researcher and practitioner knowledge/practice in regard to policy work.

Context of the Research

Our research explores health policy development and implementation as a nontraditional domain for managing projects via project management methodologies. The introduction of the Australian Tobacco Plain Packaging Bill 2011 (TPP) legislation was a highly complex and deeply contested process. Though this case study reflects the Australian political context and approaches to policy work, it was introduced within the context of the international Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), in force since 2005. Given that tobacco control is a global issue that crosses political and geographical boundaries, we believe the results of our investigations are relevant to government policy and to project management practitioners internationally.

Policies around tobacco control in Australia fall under the health umbrella and focus on harm minimization as a means to reduce the significant economic and social costs, estimated at AUD$31.5 billion per year, that result from death and disease caused by the consumption of tobacco. The motivation for the TPP policy are multifaceted: to reduce tobacco consumption, reduce the burden on the health budget, drive social and behavioral change, improve societal well-being, meet international obligations, and address a political agenda. Although the policy studied is specific to tobacco control, the lessons can be applied to any behavioral change policy enacted by government.

Traditional project management approaches are based on a control orientation with assumptions of rational action. Conversely, policy work is complex and contested, uncertain and nonlinear, aimed at social benefits without clearly quantified outcomes, and subject to changes and challenges in terms of its social, political, commercial, and industrial impacts. This context provides an opportunity to critically examine the assumptions underlying project management practices and to explore a broader conceptualization of project management that includes knowledge-based practices (KBPs) in order to navigate complex and wicked problems such as policy work.

Brief Overview of Methodology

Our research focused on theorizing project management practices within the complex domain of healthcare sector policy designed to create social and behavioral change. Our study of policy work through the TPP legislation was carefully chosen because it has implications globally for a large range of stakeholders, involves numerous organizational units, and involves a broad range of lobby groups and diverse industry actors. The TPP policy work is representative of wicked problems and allows us to study phenomena that are not limited to the usual problems of managing projects.

Our research is based on a single case study: the introduction of the Australian Tobacco Plain Packaging Bill 2011 (TPP) legislation. This approach has the flexibility to explore issues and provide insight into project management practices that are specific to the context of that practice. We made a deliberate decision to limit our investigations to secondary data sources on the public record and published literature. In government policy work, much of the process is conducted in the public domain and is well documented in government materials. Additionally, healthcare policy in general, and the TPP policy in particular, is often controversial, so extensive data are available. To identify the documentary materials, we used keyword(s) searches against databases of academic publications, and standardized Google Alerts with combinations of search strings to capture a diversity of stakeholder views that may not be discussed in more academic forums.

The analysis of the data was an iterative process that moved between the public record of the TPP case and the literature review in order to draw out relevant themes to guide our conceptualization of both policy work and project management. This process characterizes policy work in terms that highlight the implications for project management. We do not claim they are exhaustive; rather, they provide the underpinning of the conceptual framework of a knowledge-based view of project management.

Project Findings

Our development of a conceptual framework for a knowledge-based view of project management represents theory as explanation of phenomena (see Figure 1). It does not aim to put forward predictions or propositions, but provides constructs that accommodate an expanded understanding of project management. The framework also works as a means to sensitize readers to view project management as a knowledge-based practice. Our findings can be broadly summarized in three areas: work practices, project management practices, and the nature of work activities. But it is how these areas combine that characterizes the knowledge-based view of project management. Our study emphasizes that a traditional, control-oriented conceptualization of project management is ineffective in managing policy work.

We have extended Morris and Geraldi's (2011) conceptual framework to represent a knowledge-based approach to project management practice. Our framework conceptualizes project management at four levels: (1) the technocratic core that addresses the iron triangle of budgets, time, and scope; (2) the strategic level that deals with the organizational definition of the project, including its value and effectiveness; (3) the institutional level that manages the context (internal and external) and the support infrastructure for the project; and (4) the societal level. We include the societal level to explicitly incorporate project management practices that address the need to manage a project's transformational affects across social, organizational, economic, and industrial sectors of society as well as issues around community engagement and politics.

Our framework incorporates two further elements: the concept of cascading contexts to emphasize the complexity of the project life span, and the entanglement of formal and informal processes to highlight engagement and KBPs. Cascading contexts capture the interdependency between the levels of the framework and an understanding that the project exists in multiple contexts at the same time. This means that an activity in any level will have an impact in all other levels. The nonlinearity of this conceptualization of projects means that changes are emergent and can occur at any time in the life span and cannot be planned for in advance. This requires tools to monitor and assess the multiple contexts, make sense of changes in those contexts, and be able to respond flexibly to emergent events.

Formal and informal activities are not categorical distinctions; rather, they are defined by the context and the situation in which the activity is performed. Informal activities represent so-called invisible work, or immaterial labor, that is necessary to sustain overt, formal project activities. Including informal activities broadens the scope of project work and the conceptualization of projects. The distinction between formal and informal activities is dependent on the knowledge, ability, and experience of the people performing the activity. This understanding underpins the knowledge-based view of project management in that the performance of an activity relies on how it is understood by the actors (sense-making), their ability to exploit what they have done previously (remembering), and what knowledge they have gained from such previous experience (learning). This represents our conceptualization of KBPs, which form the core of an expanding repertoire of project management practices. The significance of broadening the conceptualization of projects to include informal activities is that the combination of formal and informal activities is a necessary condition to achieve the stated outcome of the project.

Our proposed expansion of project management practice is not limited to policy work like the case study reported in this book. Our findings have relevance to projects that have social ramifications, involve behavioral change, and are intrinsically complex. The study contributes to three dimensions of managing projects:

•

Societal: broadening the project management landscape;

•

Orientation: valuing knowledge, experience, and innovation in project management practice; and

•

Research: expanding the theoretical base of project management practice.

Summary Remarks

Our study has shown that policy work as a whole is not amenable to traditional project management approaches based on a control orientation and assumptions of rational action. Policy work is complex, contested, nonlinear, uncertain, and subject to constant change and challenge. But most important, it is aimed at social benefits without clearly quantified outcomes that involve intricate interactions among a very broad range of stakeholders. Addressing such complexity requires KBPs that privilege knowledge and experience to perform the formal, and especially the informal, aspects of project activities.

Our study also focuses on a seeming contradiction: The findings from the case could be interpreted as merely representing aspects of A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) – Fifth Edition (Project Management Institute [PMI], 2013). However, the distinction we make is that practice needs to be understood from a knowledge perspective rather than limited to the control orientation implicit in the PMBOK® Guide. This is an important facet of our work, as it contributes to our argument that complexity requires a broad range of tools, techniques, and methods that combine traditional approaches with KBPs.

We