The Morality of Project Management

 

In Tom G. Palmer’s book The Morality of Capitalism[i], among the many, strong arguments supporting the title’s assertion is the idea that capitalism is morally superior to other economic systems in that it rewards those who are of service to others. We’re not talking about how, since capitalist societies tend to be more successful than controlled economies, they leave participants with more resources that can be devoted to charity. Rather, in order to attain those resources in the first place, the participant in a free-market economy must provide a service or good that others desire, and for which they are willing to pay money. Indeed, those who refuse to be of service in some way will either suffer economically, or else have been made materially well-off by others who were previously (in the case of inherited wealth), or are currently, being of service to others.

In last week’s blog I made the case against the idea that price gouging was immoral. Now I want to go a step further, and argue that Project Management, like capitalism in general, is an inherently more moral pursuit than its cousins, Asset Management and Strategic Management. I’m not doing this to blow sunshine at my readers (much as they deserve it), but to try and inject a novel sense of proportion regarding Project Management’s role in the universe of management science.

Corner Cube theory[ii] explores the purposes of the three types of management. For example, the Asset Managers are extremely direct and simple in stating their purpose: it’s to maximize shareholder wealth. Indeed, they go so far as to assert that those three words represent the purpose of all management, which this blog has debunked on several occasions. For today, though, I would like to direct the reader’s attention to a comparison between the idea that people and organizations flourish in a free-market economy by being of service to others, and the notion that the purpose of (asset) management is to maximize shareholder wealth. Even if there’s not a direct denotative contradiction between the two ideas, it’s readily apparent that, at the very least, a connotative inconsistency exists. Add to this the fact that common things are typically less valuable than rare things, then ask yourself: is there really any kind of shortage of people or organizations who are looking to enrich themselves (i.e., “shareholders”)?

Next up are the Strategic Managers, whose purpose is to maximize their organizations’ market share. Incidentally, by employing the other two types of management in advancing this goal, we have yet another example of why Project Management tends towards the inherently moral. What organization has ever gained market share by pushing resources to their shareholders? Conversely, relatively few organizations fail to gain market share by delivering their projects (goods, services) to their customers better, faster, cheaper. But I digress…

Although the popular television series Mad Men, set in New York City’s Madison Avenue advertising agency district in the 1960s, often alluded to the seedy goings-on in the high-end marketing industry, the act of acquiring market share itself is essentially morality-neutral, since it is focused on the competition among organizations, as opposed to internally-focused (shareholders) or the customer-centric. And, while the tactic of engaging in a hostile takeover of a competitor’s business has received a lot of bad press, this tactic is also morally neutral. Indeed, if we go by the “maximize shareholder wealth” mantra, it’s good, since pre-takeover the target organization’s stock prices tend to increase significantly, meaning that the target’s shareholders see their wealth increase in exchange for surrendering market share.

Which brings us to Project Management. The codex of PM practices, strategies, and techniques are directed towards delivering any given project’s scope within the constraints of cost and schedule. Who sets these constraints? The customer, of course. In essence, Project Management theory is dedicated towards introducing and socializing methods that enable managers to be better servants to their customers. Put another way, Project Management is an avenue for developing management science to advance superior servitude, which represents more moral business behavior in addition to providing a better economic payoff.

Of course, I’m not advocating that all project managers should be automatically considered the moral superior of other types of managers (better dressed, of course, but not necessarily morally superior). We just have better attitudes.

[i] Retrieved from https://www.atlasnetwork.org/assets/uploads/misc/The-Morality-of-Capitalism-PDF.pdf on September 9, 2017, 1400 MDT.

[ii] “Managing to the Corner Cube,” Project Management Journal, 1995, available at https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/three-dimensional-management-world-5329.