The threshold of action. Preliminary decision-making in projects’ history

Résumé 0

Social scientists have produced an ambiguous understanding of decision making in their studies of the history of projects. Projects are viewed as spaces for decision-making, yet the process of decision-making is widely absent from the history of projects. Decision-making is diluted into a series of small more or less inconsequential choices that combine to create what the project becomes. We show that this ambiguity is a result of the development of processual approaches to the study of projects. These approaches emphasize the execution phase and exclude choices that are not made between predefined alternatives or that are not based on calculations or existing standards. On the other hand, when decision-making is actually addressed in studies of the history of projects, too much emphasis is placed on the role of individuals, such the entrepreneur who launches the project. We argue that it is necessary to take into account another type of decision: the preliminary decision through which certain entities, in particular financial and administrative ones, authorize and in so doing shape the contours of projects. The study of this preliminary decision-making phase uncovers an entirely different history of projects and avoids broad narratives about different types of projects in different eras. Instead a multiplicity of project forms emerges whose existence and temporary stability is linked to specific social and historical contexts.