Annals of the University of Oradea: Economic Science (Jul 2016)
CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS FOR INFRASTRUCTURE EUROPEAN FUNDED PROJECTS
Abstract
Absorption of European funds is on top of Romania’s public agenda for the last years although the first programming period has ended and the necessary lessons were learned so far. To have a high degree of absorption of funds provided by the EU must be of quality projects and their implementation to be successful. Through this work we aimed to investigate the success factors of infrastructure projects with European funding in Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova, Ukraine, Serbia and Kosovo, and identify critical success factors of these projects through a research surveying the teams of consultants and support personnel from the countries in an international consulting company. The research results are therefore constitute the empirical evidence of what constitutes critical success factors of infrastructure projects financed by the European Union and can be used as a starting point for scientific studies of the management of European projects or other actions that investigates measures that can be taken to improve the success rate of projects implemented in the area mentioned above.One of the contributions of this paper is to identify the critical success factors of success factors present in literature. With more so as they are critical success factors of infrastructure projects with European funding still required field studies and analysis performed in the present context. In addition, the critical factors were operationalized in a conceptual framework. Moreover, this framework includes leadership style of project manager as critical success factor has been identified in the research as the most important in the context in which it was conducted. As such, this paper demonstrates, with the necessary limitations, the importance of management style of project managers in the context of specific European funded infrastructure projects. And this is happening even though there are sophisticated project management tools availabe and relevant knowledge exists at both local and international consultants. We also hope the study results represent an impetus for both theorists who bring new evidence in this direction but also for practitioners to focus their efforts on these key areas.
