A Philosophical Approach to Project Management: Project as a Phenomenon and the Case of Incheon Bridge

Abstract

Project as an object of project management inevitably conceives a certain end goal to attain, which represents human dreams, hopes, and visions for the future. This paper attempts to offer a philosophical interpretation of project as a phenomenon that is open toward changeable and uncertain time and space that allows creative human intervention from the moment of its conception through its realization. A case study of Incheon Bridge, a national project in Incheon, South Korea, will elucidate how the phenomenal understanding of project can help project management create a sustainable source of future profits.In the first half of the paper, I will articulate a philosophical interpretation of project as a phenomenon. First, project will be conceived and situated within the world of phenomena that originate from the human mind. Secondly, the benefits of interchange between philosophy and project management studies will be shown to extend our understanding of various realms of human life including politics, economics, society, culture, diplomacy, and education. Ultimately, recasting project as a phenomenon will help broaden the conceptual reach of project management as a general process of realizing human dreams.In the second half of the paper, I will substantiate my conceptual argument with a case study of Incheon Bridge, an internationally acclaimed PM case. The success of Incheon Bridge project owes to the mechanism of translating a philosophical understanding of project as a phenomenon into a concrete matrix of numeric, which helped transparently visualize the whole PM process and further transform Incheon Bridge as a sustainable source of future profits.