Rules First or Practice First? The Paradox of Quality Management in Innovative Projects in Developing Countries: A China Case

Project quality management as one key area of the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) of the Project Management Institute (PMI) is undertaken through the method of plan-do-check-act (PDCA). The PDCA cycle assumes that formal rules (such as regulations and codes) could work as the guidelines. However, these formal rules appear to be less systematic in developing countries, which might lead to a practical paradox. On the one hand, the absence of the formal rules may hinder the adoption of innovative quality management, especially for building and infrastructure projects as they involve operational safety, and that of the end-users and the public. In such a context, the development of rules should be prioritized. On the other hand, innovative projects are often taken as conduits to give rise to the emerging formal rules. This encourages innovative quality management practices to take place prior to setting the rules. How to deal with this paradox remains unknown, and addressing this question may have important implications for quality management in innovative projects in developing countries. This research aims to examine how stakeholders manage the paradox of quality management in innovative projects. China, a developing country, is taken as the empirical setting. One precast project was examined in-depth in order to delineate the trajectory of quality management and development of formal rules. Key findings are: (1) experimentation before full-scale application is necessary; (2) during the experimentation and on-going implementation, it is important to formalize quality management plans; and (3) it is important to engage a wider range of stakeholders (such as clients, contractors, supervisors, government agencies, and professional experts), who could jointly contribute their knowledge to the implementation of the new technology and increase the legitimacy of innovative quality management methods. These findings may inform the quality management of projects and enrich the application of the PMBOK in developing countries.