Critical Success Factors of International Development Projects: The Case of UN Women
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Date
2023-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Ensuring a successful project management through the satisfaction of critical success factors is important for development partners operating in Ethiopia. Hence, the focus of this study is to identify and assess the critical success factors (CSF) and success criteria in the management of development projects implemented by UN Women in Ethiopia, as perceived by UN Women and stakeholders. The study also intended to explain the relationship between the CSFs and project success criteria of development projects. This research thus employed a convergent mixed method approach combining qualitative and quantitative data and used exploratory and explanatory research design. The researcher used questionnaire and key informant interview to collect data. Questionnaires were completed by 46 participants from UN Women programmer staff as well as government and nongovernment stakeholders who are involved with UN Women projects. Interviews were conducted with selected key informants from both UN Women and stakeholders. Descriptive statistics and Spearman’s correlation were used to analyze the quantitative data through SPSS while thematic analysis was employed for the qualitative data.
The descriptive statistics results of the survey identified five critical success factors: strong local ownership of the project, effective consultations during planning, commitment to project goals and objectives, compatible development priorities, and understanding of the environment. Moreover, the findings of the qualitative data identified similar critical success factors as the descriptive survey data. The results of the qualitative data shows that effective consultation and support of stakeholders, local ownership, alignment with key priorities of stakeholders, result based management, and commitment to project goals are considered as critical success factors for UN Women projects. The study ranked relevance, effectiveness, impact, efficiency, and stainability according to their level of importance to evaluate the success of UN Women development projects. The analysis further shows that there is some level of relationship between and among each of the five critical success factors and project success criteria. This research provides insight on CSF and success criteria for development projects particularly UN projects in Ethiopia. Considering the gap in literature, further research is suggested to be undertaken by including more stakeholders (funding agencies, implementing partners and grassroot beneficiaries) and on the relationship between the identified critical success factors with project success
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Keywords
Interntional Development Projects, Success Criteria