Making the Non-discussable Discussable

Magazine article, 2004

The school of project management has produced many aids that support the implementation phase of projects, but support for the design phase is still lacking. This article is an exploratory study of an application of a new method of supporting projects during the indistinct design phase. The method assumes that a ‘can-do’ attitude of project managers make them tend to manipulate any formal review system during times of great uncertainty, and deals with this through deploying confidential reviews aiming at a model of reasoning proposed by Argyris and Schön (1978). Findings of this study confirms that project managers are aware of the power system in which their projects operate and that they are unwilling to share important but embarrassing information, such as their own lack of knowledge, to control systems and power holders. The implications of this management of impressions for knowledge sharing are discussed.