Overview

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.

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9781409437192

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Reviews

'As we circle around the elephant of innovation this valuable book helps take our blinders off and better understand the process of transition from the tri-partite model of industrial society (government-industry-labour) to the triple helix model of a knowledge- based society (university-industry-government) in which academic institutions play a key role in promoting entrepreneurship.' Henry Etzkowitz, Stanford University, Human Sciences and Technologies Advanced Research Institute (H-STAR), USA 'Goran Brulin's and Lennart Svensson's treatise stands out from the pack of management literature due to its unusual focus on long-term, large, government-funded programs for innovation in combination with the authors' indisputable experiences from such interventions at the Swedish as well as the multi-national and multi-cultural European level. Read it and learn!' Evert Vedung, Emeritus Professor of Political Science, Uppsala University, Sweden 'Based on a new analysis of why many large-scale publicly funded programmes prove unsustainable, Brulin and Svensson make a compelling case for projects for competence development to be embedded in the dynamics of real workplaces, with all their uncertainties, risks and creative potential. Active ownership of the learning processes is an essential ingredient if innovation to be energised and development sustained.' Karen Evans, Chair in Education, Institute of Education, University of London, UK 'The authors have strong background in understanding Swedish political, social environment and economics and development programs. While their focus is centralized towards their local studies, their suggested improvements to traditional program management by adding ownership, collaboration and development can be applied globally. Development in these areas can lead to innovation to improve success rates on any size project.' PM World Journal, vol. 1, no. 4 'The authors make a strong case for developing on-going evaluation programs as an integral part of every large project in order to measure the effects of the project on regional growth. Although this book is based on project/programme experience in the European Union...the recommendations are universal. All major stakeholders in large projects/programmes would benefit from the recommendations made in this book.' PM World Journal, vol. 3, no. 3

Author Information

Goran Brulin is a senior analyst at the Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth. He is also adjunct professor in local and regional innovations at the University of Linkoping, at the HELIX Excellence Center. Brulin is responsible for the on-going evaluation and interactive research of the Swedish Regional Structural programmes. Lennart Svensson is a professor in Sociology at the University of Linkoping, and a research leader at the HELIX Excellence Center. His research is about local and regional change, project work, learning evaluation, gender equality, workplace learning, and union work. Svensson is the author or co-author of over 30 books. Svensson and Brulin co-authored 'Learning Through On-going Evaluation' (Studentlitteratur 2009).

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