The use of "soft" and "hard" approach in the management of educational research projects

Abstract

The academicians and practitioners in the field of Project Management are beginning to

recognize that there are certain types of projects that are more than just difficult to

manage and control. And one type of these projects is research project.

In fact, management of research works is found to be in many aspects different from

the traditional or conventional approach. One of the root causes of these differences can

be said to be due to project complexity in the form of outcomes uncertainty commonly

associated with research domain. Given this issue, it is believed that applying

traditional project management approach will only lead to failure.

Proponents of this belief argue that the traditional discipline itself was initially

developed for more effective management of "hard" projects such as those seen in the

construction and engineering industries. Due to the natures of these projects, the

management style has evolved into command and control management based. Such

management style assumes that it is possible to obtain the clarity of outcomes at the

very beginning of the projects. In addition, it assumes that the team members are also

receptive to being controlled. These assumptions do not apply to "soft" projects like

research projects, setting them apart from the rest so much so that adopting "hard"

approaches can lead to failure.

Yet, there are some who believe that not all of those "hard" approaches are useless in

the "soft" domain. In this regards, this study attempts to look at the challenges and

issues faced when one uses the traditional approach of project management in the

management of research projects. Using the setting of educational research domain as

an example of research projects, and adopting soft system methodology (SSM), this

study proposes that it is possible to overcome the issues and challenges by adopting the

appropriate "soft" and "hard" approaches.