دیدگاه تئوری آژانس در مشارکت دولتی و خصوصی: پروژه توسعه بین المللی Agency theory perspective on public-private-partnerships: international development project

Introduction The unacceptable high rate of projects being completed over budget, behind schedule and without meeting quality and scope requirements is widely recognised (Cullen and Parker, 2015; Lim and Mohamed, 1999). There is evidence that the poor success rate is partly due to leadership (Nixon et al., 2012), inadequately managed resources (Lim and Mohamed, 1999), ineffective stakeholder welfare support (Parker et al., 2013), and impoverished communications (Ceric, 2012). Moreover, international development (ID) projects appear to have an even worse success rate (Ika and Saint-Macary,2012; Youker, 1999; Khang and Moe, 2008), with some countries experiencing as little as 10 per cent planned completion against target (Diallo and Thuillier, 2004, 2005). In this study, we follow the early stages through to implementation of a Road Safety Toolkit for aid organisations that was initially tested in Kenya; and which ultimately would assist humanitarian agencies develop road safety programmes. Road crashes are the largest single cause of mortality for NGO staff in the field. This case describes how a multi-sector partnership was conceived and delivered, and how the stakeholders met the challenges of communication and co-ordination. The case allows agency theory to be explored through the dynamics of the large number of players operating within a multi-sector public-privatepartnership (PPP): governments, NGOs and private companies. We explore how agency theory may assist us to understand the relationships associated with managing ID projects, and ultimately provide insight and so improve project outcomes. Agency theory has been widely used across a variety of disciplines since its inception some four decades ago (Eisenhardt, 1989; Hirsch and Friedman, 1986). However, recently the theory has been given little attention in operations management and project management literature. This is remiss as agency theory applies to most relationship situations (see Majone, 2001) in which one party (the principal) delegates authority for control and decision making about certain tasks to another party (the agent) (Basu and Lederer, 2011). The essential assumption underlying agency theory is that agents are essentially selfish opportunists who, unless monitored effectively, will exploit their principals (Miller and Whitford, 2007). The information asymmetry that exists between agents and their more distant principals provides the basis for opportunism. It is assumed the agent will act upon this unless controlled or ‘incentivised’ not to do so (Fama and Jensen, 1983; Jensen and Meckling, 1976; Jensen and Ruback, 1983). Agency theory has been used to explain relationships in the field of economics and finance (e.g., Sappington, 1991), political science (e.g., Moe, 1984), social sciences (e.g., Shapiro, 2005), information systems, (e.g., Mahaney and Lederer, 2011), and management, generally (e.g., Donaldson and Davies, 1991). More recently, it has been applied to supply chain management (e.g., Zsidisin and Ellram, 2003) and project management (e.g., Forsythe et al., 2015; Ceric, 2012). The theory was first formulated in the economics literature (Jensen and Meckling, 1976; Ross, 1973) as a quantitative and conceptual approach to investigate the nature of resulting costs. Subsequently, an empirical focus has emerged to explore organisational behaviour and corporate governance (Cuevas-Rodríguez et al., 2012).