Bent Flyvbjerg

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Bent Flyvbjerg is a Danish economic geographer. He is Professor of Major Programme Management at Oxford University's Saïd Business School and the first Director of the University's BT Centre for Major Programme Management. He was previously Professor of Planning at Aalborg University, Denmark and Chair of Infrastructure Policy and Planning at Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands.[1][2] He is a fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford.[3]

Academic work[]

Flyvbjerg is the author or editor of 10 books and more than 200 papers in professional journals and edited volumes. His publications have been translated into 20 languages. His research has been covered by Science, The Economist, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, China Daily, The BBC, CNN, and many other media.[2] He is a frequent commentator in the media.

Flyvbjerg received his Ph.D. in urban geography and planning from Aarhus University, Denmark, with parts done at the University of California at Los Angeles. He has written extensively about megaprojects, decision making, city management, and philosophy of social science. He was a member of the Danish Infrastructure Commission and a director of the Danish Court Administration.[4][5] He has twice held the Fulbright Scholarship. Bent Flyvbjerg was knighted in the Order of the Dannebrog in 2002.

His research falls in three main areas: (a) The philosophy and methodology of the social sciences, (b) Power and rationality in decision making, and (c) Megaproject planning and management.

Philosophy and Methodology of the Social Sciences[]

In the philosophy and methodology of the social sciences, Flyvbjerg's main contribution is developing the theory and methodology of phronetic social science, i.e., a social science based on Aristotelian phronesis. Flyvbjerg argues that social sciences that attempt to emulate natural science and predictive theory have failed, and will continue to fail. He further argues that in order to matter the social sciences must inform practical reason instead of abstract rationality. This is best done by a focus on values and power in actual human decision making, according to Flyvbjerg. He develops the methodological guidelines for such research and demonstrates how to employ them in concrete case studies in phronetic social science.

Phronetic research is aimed at being directly relevant to society and people, including ordinary citizens and policy makers. In terms of philosophy and history of science, Flyvbjerg is influenced by Aristotle rather than by Socrates and Plato. Flyvbjerg's key works on phronetic social science are the books Making Social Science Matter: Why Social Inquiry Fails and How It Can Succeed Again[6] and Real Social Science: Applied Phronesis (with Sanford Schram and Todd Landman),[7] both published by Cambridge University Press, plus a number of research papers.[8][9][10][11][12]

Flyvbjerg's work has been extensively debated in the social sciences, most prominently in the so-called "Flyvbjerg Debate" covered in the book Making Political Science Matter: Debating Knowledge, Research, and Method, edited by Sanford Schram and Brian Caterino.[13]

Power and Rationality in Decision Making[]

In his research on power and rationality, Flyvbjerg has documented how power influences rationality, and vice versa. Flyvbjerg here shows that in human decision making what is called rationality often turns out to be rationalization, under the influence of power. Flyvbjerg sums up this work in a number of propositions about power and rationality, among which:

  • Power defines reality;
  • Rationality is context-dependent; the context of rationality is power;
  • Rationalization presented as rationality is a principal strategy in the exercise of power;
  • The greater the power, the less the rationality;
  • Power has a rationality that rationality does not know.

Flyvbjerg argues that his research on power and rationality is an instance of phronetic social science (see above).[14] Theoretically and methodologically, the main influences on Flyvbjerg's work on power and rationality are Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Nietzsche. Flyvbjerg specifically highlights Machiavelli's power studies in Florence as a source of influence for the choice of in-depth case studies as the means for understanding the dynamics of power and how power enables and constrains rationality and rational government.

Flyvbjerg's main works on power and rationality are the book Rationality and Power: Democracy in Practice,[15] published by the University of Chicago Press, plus a number of research papers.[16][17][18][19][20][21][22]

Megaproject Planning and Management[]

Flyvbjerg's research on megaproject planning and management compares plans with actual outcomes, and explains discrepancies. Flyvbjerg documents what he calls The Iron Law of Megaprojects: "Over time, over budget, under benefits, over and over again."[23] This is a statistical, not a deterministic, law. Megaprojects that are on time, budget, and benefits do exist, but they are rare, according to the data. The Iron Law applies at an overwhelmingly high level of statistical significance. Flyvbjerg shows that a root cause is that competition between megaprojects and their sponsors creates biases rooted in political and organizational pressures that lead to the consistent overestimating of project benefits and the underestimating of project costs. The best megaprojects do not get implemented, but rather the ones that look best on paper. Flyvbjerg argues that the ones that look best on paper are the ones for which costs and benefits have been misrepresented the most, either deliberately through strategic misrepresentation (political bias), or non-deliberately through optimism bias (psychological bias) or, typically, through a combination of both.

Flyvbjerg identifies three antidotes to the Iron Law: (a) Realistic planning, including de-biasing of all cost, schedule, and benefit estimates; (b) High-quality delivery teams; and (c) Governance structures with incentives for realistic plans and for delivering those plans to time, budget, and benefits; and with early-warning-sign systems to immediately capture and act on things that go wrong, which they invariably do in megaprojects, due to their sheer size and complexity, according to Flyvbjerg. Based on Daniel Kahneman's work on the planning fallacy and optimism bias, Flyvbjerg pioneered reference class forecasting as a practical method for de-biasing megaproject plans.

In his book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman calls Flyvbjerg's insights on the planning fallacy and reference class forecasting, "the single most important piece of advice regarding how to increase accuracy in forecasting."[24] Kahneman is a key intellectual influence for Flyvbjerg's work on megaprojects, as is Nassim Nicholas Taleb, especially his work on black swans, and Martin Wachs, who was Flyvbjerg's doctoral supervisor at UCLA.

Flyvbjerg's key works on megaproject planning and management are the books Megaprojects and Risk: An Anatomy of Ambition (with Nils Bruzelius and Werner Rothengatter),[25] The Oxford Handbook of Megaproject Management,[26] Decision-Making On Mega-Projects: Cost–benefit Analysis, Planning, and Innovation (with Hugo Priemus and Bert van Wee),[27] and Megaproject Planning and Management: Essential Readings,[28] plus a number of research papers.[29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41] Flyvbjerg has argued that his work on megaprojects constitutes an example of phronetic social science (see above).[42]

"Underestimating Costs in Public Works Projects: Error or Lie?" Principal author: Bent Flyvbjerg; co-authors: Mette K. Skamris Holm and Søren L. Buhl. Journal of the American Planning Association , vol. 68, no. 3, Summer 2002, pp. 279-295. The main findings from the study reported in the reports-all highly significant and most likely conservative-are as follows: • In 86% of transportation infrastructure projects, costs are underestimated. • For all project types, actual costs are on average 28% higher than estimated costs (sd=39). • Overestimates are rare and small (very rarely over 20%) • Underestimates are much larger (more than 30% are over by 40+%). • Cost underestimation cannot be explained by error and seems to be best explained by strategic misrepresentation, i.e., lying. • Estimates have not improved at all in 70 years. • Martin Wachs reports being told over and over of pressure to cook numbers. • This seems to be a problem particularly when the responsible agency is not private and is not a public agency with transparency and accountability (e.g., special purpose agencies). • They did not find any significant difference between public and private agencies in how good their cost projections were. • They also found that projects that get approval seem to be those that underestimate costs, understate environmental harm and overstate funding and economic benefits and transit ridership.


Books[]

  • 1998 Rationality and Power: Democracy in Practice, University of Chicago Press (ISBN 0226254518)
  • 2001 Making Social Science Matter: Why Social Inquiry Fails and How It Can Succeed Again, Cambridge University Press (ISBN 0-521-77568-X)
  • 2003 Megaprojects and Risk: An Anatomy of Ambition. Cambridge University Press (ISBN 0-521-00946-4)
  • 2008 Decision-Making on Mega-Projects: Cost-Benefit Analysis, Planning and Innovation, Elgar (ISBN 978-1-84542-737-5)
  • 2012 Real Social Science: Applied Phronesis, Cambridge University Press (ISBN 978-0-521-16820-5)
  • 2014 Megaproject Planning and Management: Essential Readings, Volumes I-II, Elgar (ISBN 978-1-78100-170-7)
  • 2017 The Oxford Handbook of Megaproject Management, Oxford University Press (ISBN 978-0-19873-224-2)

References[]

  1. ^ Krak's Who's Who, Copenhagen, 2008
  2. ^ Jump up to: a b "Bent Flyvbjerg". Said Business School, University of Oxford. Archived from the original on 2018-04-12. Retrieved 2016-04-02.
  3. ^ "Professor Bent Flyvbjerg - University of Oxford". www.ox.ac.uk.
  4. ^ "Infrastrukturkommissionens betænkning - Transportministeriet". www.trm.dk. Archived from the original on 2015-12-22. Retrieved 2015-12-21.
  5. ^ "Med en "bestyrers" øjne". Danmarks Domstole, No. 20. December 2003. Archived from the original on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2016-04-02.
  6. ^ Flyvbjerg, Bent, 2001, Making Social Science Matter: Why Social Inquiry Fails and How It Can Succeed Again (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 214 pp.
  7. ^ Flyvbjerg, Bent, Todd Landman, and Sanford Schram, 2012 eds., Real Social Science: Applied Phronesis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 319 pp.
  8. ^ Flyvbjerg, Bent, 2004, "Phronetic Planning Research: Theoretical and Methodological Reflections." Planning Theory and Practice , vol. 5, no. 3, September, pp. 283-306.
  9. ^ Flyvbjerg, Bent, 2002, "Bringing Power to Planning Research: One Researcher’s Praxis Story." Invited plenary paper for Planning Research 2000, London School of Economics and Political Science, 27-29 March 2000. Journal of Planning Education and Research, vol. 21, no. 4, Summer 2002, pp. 353-366.
  10. ^ Flyvbjerg, Bent, 2004, "A Perestroikan Straw Man Answers Back: David Laitin and Phronetic Political Science," Politics and Society, vol. 32, no. 3, September, pp. 389-416.
  11. ^ Schram, Sanford F., Bent Flyvbjerg, and Todd Landman, 2013, "Political Political Science: A Phronetic Approach," New Political Science, vol. 35, no. 3, pp. 359-372, DOI:10.1080/07393148.2013.813687
  12. ^ Clegg, Stewart, Bent Flyvbjerg, and Mark Haugaard, 2014, "Reflections on Phronetic Social Science: A Dialogue Between Stewart Clegg, Bent Flyvbjerg, and Mark Haugaard," Journal of Political Power, June, pp. 1-32, DOI: 10.1080/2158379X.2014.929259
  13. ^ Schram, Sanford F. and Brian Caterino, 2006 eds., Making Political Science Matter: Debating Knowledge, Research, and Method (New York: New York University Press).
  14. ^ Flyvbjerg, Bent, 2001, Making Social Science Matter: Why Social Inquiry Fails and How It Can Succeed Again, translator Steven Sampson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 144 ff.
  15. ^ Flyvbjerg, Bent, 1998, Rationality and Power: Democracy in Practice (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press).
  16. ^ Flyvbjerg, Bent, 2002, "Bringing Power to Planning Research: One Researcher’s Praxis Story." Invited plenary paper for Planning Research 2000, London School of Economics and Political Science, 27-29 March 2000. Journal of Planning Education and Research, vol. 21, no. 4, Summer 2002, pp. 353-366.
  17. ^ Flyvbjerg, Bent, 1998, “Habermas and Foucault: Thinkers for Civil Society?” British Journal of Sociology, vol. 49, no. 2, June, pp. 208-233.
  18. ^ Flyvbjerg, Bent, 1996, “The Dark Side of Planning: Rationality and Realrationalität,” in Seymour Mandelbaum, Luigi Mazza, and Robert Burchell, eds., Explorations in Planning Theory (New Brunswick, NJ: Center for Urban Policy Research Press) pp. 383-394.
  19. ^ Bent Flyvbjerg, "Beyond the Limits of Planning Theory: Response to My Critics." International Planning Studies, vol. 6, no. 3, August 2001, pp. 285-292.
  20. ^ Flyvbjerg, Bent, 2015, "More on the Dark Side of Planning: Response to Richard Bolan," Cities, vol. 42, February, pp. 276–278.
  21. ^ Bent Flyvbjerg, "Five Misunderstandings About Case Study Research." Qualitative Inquiry, vol. 12, no. 2, April 2006, pp. 219-245.
  22. ^ Flyvbjerg, Bent and Tim Richardson, 2002, "Planning and Foucault: In Search of the Dark Side of Planning Theory," in Philip Allmendinger and Mark Tewdwr-Jones, eds., Planning Futures: New Directions for Planning Theory (London and New York: Routledge), pp. 44-62.
  23. ^ Flyvbjerg, Bent, 2017, "Introduction: The Iron Law of Megaproject Management", in Bent Flyvbjerg, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Megaproject Management (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 1-18.
  24. ^ Kahneman, Daniel, 2011, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux), p. 251.
  25. ^ Flyvbjerg, Bent, Nils Bruzelius, and Werner Rothengatter, 2003, Megaprojects and Risk: An Anatomy of Ambition (Cambridge University Press).
  26. ^ Flyvbjerg, Bent, 2017, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Megaproject Management (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
  27. ^ Priemus, Hugo, Bent Flyvbjerg, and Bert van Wee, 2008, eds., Decision-Making On Mega-Projects: Cost–benefit Analysis, Planning, and Innovation (Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar).
  28. ^ Flyvbjerg, Bent, 2014, ed., Megaproject Planning and Management: Essential Readings, vols. I-II (Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar).
  29. ^ Flyvbjerg, Bent, 2016, "The Fallacy of Beneficial Ignorance: A Test of Hirschman's Hiding Hand," World Development, vol. 84, May, pp. 176–189. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2016.03.012.
  30. ^ Flyvbjerg, Bent, 2014, "What You Should Know about Megaprojects and Why: An Overview," Project Management Journal, vol. 45, no. 2, April-May, pp. 6-19.
  31. ^ Flyvbjerg, Bent, 2013, "Quality Control and Due Diligence in Project Management: Getting Decisions Right by Taking the Outside View," International Journal of Project Management, vol. 31, no. 5, May, pp. 760–774. DOI: 10.1016/j.ijproman.2012.10.007
  32. ^ Flyvbjerg, Bent, 2013, "How Planners Deal with Uncomfortable Knowledge: The Dubious Ethics of the American Planning Association," Cities, vol. 32, June, pp. 157–163.
  33. ^ Flyvbjerg, Bent, 2006, "From Nobel Prize to Project Management: Getting Risks Right," Project Management Journal, vol. 37, no. 3, August, pp. 5-15.
  34. ^ Flyvbjerg, Bent, and J. Rodney Turner, 2018, "Do Classics Exist in Megaproject Management?", International Journal of Project Management, vol. 36, no. 2, pp. 334-341, DOI: 10.1016/j.ijproman.2017.07.006.
  35. ^ Flyvbjerg, Bent, Allison Stewart, and Alexander Budzier, 2016, "The Oxford Olympics Study 2016: Cost and Cost Overrun at the Games," Saïd Business School Working Papers (Oxford: University of Oxford), July.
  36. ^ Flyvbjerg, Bent and Alexander Budzier, 2011, "Why Your IT Project May Be Riskier than You Think," Harvard Business Review, September, pp. 601-603.
  37. ^ Flyvbjerg, Bent, Massimo Garbuio, and Dan Lovallo, 2009, "Delusion and Deception in Large Infrastructure Projects: Two Models for Explaining and Preventing Executive Disaster," California Management Review, vol. 51, no. 2, Winter, pp. 170-193.
  38. ^ Flyvbjerg, Bent, Mette K. Skamris Holm, and Søren L. Buhl, 2005, "How (In)accurate Are Demand Forecasts in Public Works Projects? The Case of Transportation." Journal of the American Planning Association, vol. 71, no. 2, Spring, pp. 131-146.
  39. ^ Flyvbjerg, Bent, Mette K. Skamris Holm, and Søren L. Buhl, 2002, "Underestimating Costs in Public Works Projects: Error or Lie?" Journal of the American Planning Association, vol. 68, no. 3, Summer, pp. 279-295.
  40. ^ Atif Ansar, Bent Flyvbjerg, Alexander Budzier, and Daniel Lunn, 2016, "Does Infrastructure Investment Lead to Economic Growth or Economic Fragility? Evidence from China," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, vol. 32, no. 3, autumn, pp. 360–390; DOI: 10.1093/oxrep/grw022
  41. ^ Ansar, Atif, Bent Flyvbjerg, Alexander Budzier, and Daniel Lunn, 2014, "Should We Build More Large Dams? The Actual Costs of Hydropower Megaproject Development," Energy Policy, vol. 69, March, pp. 43-56.
  42. ^ Flyvbjerg, Bent, 2012, "Why Mass Media Matter and How to Work with Them: Phronesis and Megaprojects," in Bent Flyvbjerg, Todd Landman, and Sanford Schram, eds., Real Social Science: Applied Phronesis (Cambridge University Press), pp. 95-121.
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