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

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.Master of Science (Systems & Project Management