Managing Mega technological projects: The case of the defence industry and Network Centric Warfare projects.

Thesis  defended on the 8th September 2020 at IP Paris

Abstract:

This thesis project consists of a comparative work on three different military megaprojects regarding Network Centric Warfare, in three different countries: the United States, France and Sweden. The aim of the comparison is to find similarities and differences with respect to why, and if, the projects failed, or are failing, and if they failed - to what extent. The objectives of the military megaprojects were ambitious and a great deal of the involved technology was not yet developed at the time and the technical requirements were incongruous. For the comparative study a narrative case study methodology has been employed, structuring and analysing the different military megaprojects.The result is three different descriptions of the military megaprojects reproducing the internal and external dynamics of two of the three projects. One project, the French one, has been reproduced up to its present stage because it is planned to continue to the 2030s. The result of the comparison between the military megaprojects has shown that such vast projects can be managed like normal vast development projects. On the other hand, these kinds of vast projects are comprehensively complex. Such projects do also involve ideas leading to project developments of already known and unknown obstacles before and during the mega project not possible to manage and results in project and development failure.

Keywords: Megaprojects, case study, defence industry, ideas, change culture, power

Composition of jury: