Abstract
M.Phil. (Engineering Management)
There is little doubt that the number of service delivery protests has increased over the past few years in South Africa. The reputation of the South African Government has suffered humiliation at the hands of its citizens because of corruption and failure to deliver adequate socio-economic development projects to all citizens. Corruption is a violation of socio-economic rights since it is never victimless. Project Management tools have been adopted by many organisations for running successful projects. However, many projects continue to exceed budgets and fail to meet the initial scope of the project because of corruption. Such unethical practices are one of the contributing factors for the high failure rate of projects in South Africa. The aim of this study is to identify which phase of Project Management Lifecycle is prone to unethical practices. Part of the study is to identify factors encouraging unethical practices and to study the negative impact of unethical practices in projects.
A detailed literature review was conducted on the topic related to unethical practices in the Project Management Life-Cycle. A selective sampling method was used, as the focus of the research is in organisations that uses Project Management tools. A survey was developed based on information gathered from the literature. One hundred fifty (150) questionnaires were distributed, one hundred and eleven (111) were returned and eleven (11) were spoiled; therefore, ninety-six (96) questionnaires were used for this research. The gathered data were analysed using Statistical Packages for Social Studies of validity, internal reliability and most importantly, for data reduction through factor analysis.
The results showed that unethical practice occurs in all phases of Project Management Lifecycle, starting from project initiation until project closure. Nevertheless, the majority of the participants from the survey suggested that the execution phase is mostly affected by unethical practice. Furthermore, the results showed that there are many factors encouraging the unethical practice. There is lack a of commitment from project managers towards ethical practice, a lack of ethical training to handle non-compliance, and economic downturn and greediness are part of factors encouraging the unethical practice. Moreover, the results show that compromising the national interest for any personal gain through fraud, bribery, and kickback are some examples of unethical practice occurring in Project Management Life- Cycle. From the survey, the unethical practice has negative impact on quality and cost of projects, it negatively affects productivity.