MANAGING LARGE-SCALE PROGRAMS - THE MANAGERIAL DILEMMA

Modern large-scale programs create new challenges for management. During the 1960s and 1970s, the whole field of macro-projects experienced a fundamental transformation that made many of the traditional approaches, methods and tools for administering large-scale programs no longer completely appropriate. Instead, successful implementation now requires the convergence of at least four elements: a positive societal cost/benefit calculation; a supportive bureaucratic-political context; appropriately broad managerial capabilities; and a favorable corporate strategic environment. The American synfuels experience exhibits a pattern of implementation failure that can take place when such a convergence does not exist. Modern macro- projects need a set of top-level managers who are comfortable with the traditional set of project management skills and with purely technological and economic matters, while also being at least equally as strong in the other more ambiguous domains of politics, bureaucracy, general management, and corporate strategy.