Opening the Black Box of Benefits Management in the Context of Projects

Literature Review and Theoretical Framework

This section provides an overview of the literature on benefits management and its evolution over time, from both the academic and the professional communities in project management. Review of the relevant literature includes scientific articles and other sources derived from what is referred to as gray literature. Adams et al. (2017) define the latter as “[…] the diverse and heterogeneous body of material available outside, and not subject to, traditional academic peer-review processes” (p. 2). Gray literature also includes standards and practitioner-oriented guides produced by professional associations and publications from professionals and consultants. As Adams et al. (2017) argue, some scholars have already started to consider these sources, with the aim to, for example “extend the scope of findings in their reviews by incorporating relevant contemporary material in dynamic and applied topic areas where scholarship lags” (p. 2). Adams et al. (2017) also propose classifying gray literature in terms of its credibility. The gray literature included in our review is limited to what Adams et al. (2017) label the first tier of gray literature (material that can be retrieved easily and that has credibility in the field), and mainly covers publications from professional project management associations. We decided to include these sources, as this literature has up until now contributed in a significant way to the development of benefits management and has influenced how practitioners conceive benefits management. Generally speaking, most of the studies and material devoted to benefits management can be categorized as normative literature, which includes standards and practitioner-oriented guides produced by professional associations and publications from professionals and consultants.

Table 1 presents an overview of the emergence and development of the benefits management literature as it has unfolded over the last three decades. In the professional and normative literatures, benefits management emerged as a topic of interest among information technology (IT) professionals in the late 1980s, within a rational logic that “in order to achieve planned benefits they have to be actively managed” (Farbey et al., 1999, p. 241). The first frameworks were published by the mid-1990s (e.g., Leyton, 1995; Thorp, 1998; Ward et al., 1996). Benefits management expanded in the United Kingdom, along with the introduction in 1999 of “Managing Successful Programs,” which the Office of Government Commerce adopted as a framework for government project delivery in 2003. More recently, the UK Government published a new practitioner-oriented guide dedicated to benefits management in major projects (UK Government, 2017).

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Table 1

The Literature on Benefits Management Over Time

	1990–2000	2000–2010	2010‒2014	Emerging (2015‒…)
Professional and Normative Literature (Referred to as Gray Literature )
Main focus	Emergence of concepts and principles of benefits management Thorp (1998), Willcocks (1992)	Case studies—mostly focused on IT projects and publicly funded initiatives, methodology, and “how to achieve benefits management” Bradley (2006); Jenner (2009); Light et al. (2005); Ward and Daniel (2006)	Lessons learned and recipes for success Bradley (2010); Jenner (2012)	Agile approach Bradley (2016); Meredith and Zwikael (2020); PMI (2018a); Zwikael and Smyrk (2019)
Academic Literature
Main focus	Very few papers describing a process in the IT field. Peters (1990); Remenyi and Sherwood-Smith (1998); Ward et al. (1996)	Mainly in IT but gradual opening to a variety of empirical settings such as healthcare and government Ashurst et al. (2008); Bennington and Baccarini (2004); Clarke and Doherty (2004); Doherty et al. (2008)	Searching for practices and methods, which improve benefits realization and the evaluation process Ashurst and Hodges (2010); Breese (2012); Doherty et al. (2012)	Integration of benefits management into larger organizational systems (i.e., governance, knowledge) Badewi (2016); Breese et al. (2020); Chih and Zwikael (2015); Dupont and Eskerod (2016); Keeys and Huemann (2017); Mikkelsen and Marnewick (2020); Zwikael et al. (2018)

As Table 1 reveals, academic interest in benefits management appeared several years after the topic started attracting the attention of professionals. Until 2010, both literatures showed a clear focus on the IT sector, as much of the research undertaken was concerned with developing benefits management tools and methods within an information systems (IS)/IT context. The primary focus of these methods was to improve investment decisions regarding IT projects, which led to the development of a number of different IS/IT evaluation methodologies available to practitioners (Andresen et al., 2000). From 2010 onward, research on benefits management increased and diversified to include various empirical settings, including healthcare and major projects (Badewi, 2016).

More specifically, the literature review led us to identify not only a number of key themes in benefits management research but also the presence of two distinct approaches: instrumental and social (see Table 2). Within the instrumental approach, scholars tended to have a more rational perspective on benefits management, focusing namely on four dimensions: measurability, evaluation process, organizational change, and performance. Generally speaking, articles revolving around measurability discuss the characteristics of benefits that can be measured. Studies referring to the evaluation process of benefits address it as a sequence of steps that align, more or less, with those of a project life cycle. Other studies have approached benefits management in relation to the broader context of organizational change associated with a project. Finally, some papers clearly see benefits management as part of performance, whereby benefits management is embedded in the financial system of the organization. Most of this literature is marked by the presence of a rigid benefits management framework (Breese, 2012), following a traditional linear, sequential, and deterministic logic influenced by an engineering perspective. At the same time, we note the multiplicity of labels used to define this organizational process: some authors use benefits management to describe the phenomenon; others rather use benefits realization management (Breese, 2012), value management, or benefits realization capability (Ashurst & Hodges, 2010). Moreover, this literature is characterized by a variety of terms used to refer to the benefits, such as value, financial goal, cost, budget, performance, economic, or gain and profit (Ashurst et al., 2008).

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Table 2

Approaches and Themes in Benefits Management in the Literature Research

Major Themes	Perspective on Benefits/Main Purpose of the Research	Contribution/Limitations	Key Authors
		Instrumental Approach
Measurability	Benefits measure the best ways to classify and measure the value of benefits.	Value creation serves the outcome dimension of project success, similar to benefits, impact, and worth. Benefits have to be described and measured in the business case and approved at the beginning of the project. Limits There is no consensus on the semantic limits between the concepts value and benefit.	Breese et al. (2015); Doherty (2014); Blismas et al. (2006); Laursen and Svejvig (2016)
Evaluation process of benefits	Improve the technical perspective of evaluation	Formal effective application in evaluation is used for control. Limits Evaluation process lacks an organizational dimension although authors point to the importance of these aspects.	Baccarini and Bateup (2008); Chih and Zwikael (2015); Remenyi and Sherwood-Smith (1998)
Organizational change	Focus on the links between benefits management and change management	Benefits management’s main objective is to link individual projects, together with the management of change. Organizational change is necessary for delivering benefits. Limits There are limits on the social behaviors of accompanying change and the place of leadership.	Badewi (2016); Breese (2012); Doherty et al. (2012)
Performance	Examine the impact of benefits management practices on project success	Routinizing benefits management practices improves the performance of business change managers in transformational projects. Limits There is ambiguity on the utility, scope, and role of benefits management. Most studies are carried out in the IS/IT sector. Moreover, in-depth studies are needed on the benefits identification and formulation process.	Coombs (2015); Doherty et al. (2012); Zwikael et al. (2018); Serra and Kunc (2015)
		Social Approach
Opportunities exploitation	Focus on how to increase the project value by increasing the benefits achieved by the project	Involvement from various stakeholders is required to increase project benefits and exploit opportunities created by the project. Benefits are defined as multidimensional and multileveled values for different stakeholders. Limits The concept of benefit as value is mainly based on an economic approach highlighting value maximization postulate.	Ang and Biesenthal (2017); Eskerod et al. (2018); Keeys and Huemann (2017); Liu et al. (2019)

With what we have called the social approach, scholars question the rational assumption of the linearity of the benefits management process. This relatively recent stream of research views benefits management as a social process where actors are actively involved in interactions with the milieu for the discovery of benefits (Eskerod et al., 2018; Keeys & Huemann, 2017; Liu et al., 2019). This social approach also covers studies where actors are considered along with their personal characteristics, emotions, and anxieties. In this approach, the management of benefits is more likely socially constructed, along with stakeholders (Ang & Biesenthal, 2017). In spite of its potential to add nuances to benefits management, this social approach is still in development and remains marginal.

Indeed, while our literature review has surfaced variety, benefits management mainly remains anchored in the instrumental approach as most of the research conducted on this topic belongs to this category. While this approach succeeds in giving structure to an overall process, it fails to account for the actual process of engaging in benefits management, as it does not account for the social and political dimensions of benefits management nor the actual work it involves. This is precisely what the social approach currently recognizes as a clear lack in benefits management research. Yet, research conducted to account for and address the social dimensions of benefits management remains scarce. One of our aims is thus to add to this burgeoning social approach and complement what we currently know about benefits management.

This overview of the current literature on benefits management leads us to formulate some observations that directly inform our study. First, in terms of positioning, it is not clear in the literature whether benefits management constitutes a field in itself or whether it is part of program management or project portfolio management. While some sources position benefits management within program management (Thiry, 2015), portfolio management (Project Management Institute [PMI], 2017), organizational project management (PMI, 2014, 2018b), or as a responsibility of a project management office (PMO; Hill, 2004), others consider it to be a distinct field (Bradley, 2010). This first observation may already reveal that disagreements could arise, in practice, around the moment when benefits management should be undertaken in the course of project management. This vagueness may create confusion for the actors involved both in benefits management processes and project management, potentially creating a paradoxical situation where the quest for a clear and well-defined process clashes with confusion in the operationalization of benefits management.

Our second observation supports the fact that there is no clear definition of what a benefit is or should be. While the literature offers several angles to define benefits, including value management (Chen et al., 2016; Svejvig et al., 2019; Thomas & Mullaly, 2008), return on investment (Badewi & Shehab, 2016; Kendall & Rollins, 2003), and performance (Cooke‐Davies, 2004; Musawir et al., 2017), all of these approaches are based on the idea that benefits can and should be measured. Yet, this raises the question of whether such a goal is always attainable: Are all benefits derived from projects necessarily tangible (e.g., Hubbard, 2010)?

Third, scholars seem to have mainly worked on conceptualizing and refining the process of benefits management without questioning the rational assumptions on which this process rests (Breese, 2012) or have simply proposed an instrumental view of this process (Coombs, 2015). Hence, most of this research and normative literature has been completed under a rational paradigm where the correct implementation of benefits management processes is assumed to yield benefits. In other words, planning for benefits is expected to lead to positive results, and failure to deliver benefits results from a lack of planning (Cicmil & Hodgson, 2006; Williams, 2005). Overall, most of the research currently published on benefits management is based on a series of steps that follow a sequential process as prescribed in the normative literature (e.g., Jenner, 2012). In this sense, most of this research is similar to other mainstream approaches associated with various managerial tools and techniques—approaches that address neither their underlying assumptions nor the shaping effects that these assumptions can have. Studies of such other prescribed activities or techniques have shown that action tends to be conceived as rational, sequential, and predictable—a model that promotes the idea that organizational processes and activities can be planned, controlled, and even standardized (e.g., Deuten & Rip, 2000; Packendorff, 1995). But does this model correspond closely to how activities proceed in organizations?

Taken together, these three main observations point to the necessity of understanding what, concretely, is done when people engage in benefits management—in other words, to inquire into the actual work involved in benefits management with the goal of exposing what such work entails. Currently, the dominant instrumental approach does not consider this concrete work, which appears mostly as a black box in the prescriptive views of benefits management. We thus argue that a fruitful approach to developing a better understanding of benefits management is to explore this activity as conceived as a practice, by building on a theoretical perspective that specifies what practice is and by applying it to conceptualize and study benefits management in a different fashion. By considering in qualitative terms how people actually accomplish benefits management, we argue that we can address some of the limitations in current knowledge on this activity, as highlighted by our literature review. Interviewing actors about the work they do when they are practicing the activity that in their organization is labeled benefits management could allow us to understand (1) how benefits management unfolds in situation, (2) how actors locally define what the benefits are, and (3) how benefits management is influenced and shaped by social and political aspects of organizational dynamics. We contend that exploring these neglected facets of benefits management requires a significant change in terms of the epistemological, theoretical, and methodological orientations of research.

Conducting this type of research requires that we move away from prescriptions and what actors should do and instead focus on their concrete experience with benefits management. To do so, we build on the practice perspective that has blossomed in the last two decades in management and organization studies and also partially in project studies. One of the key ideas of the so-called practice turn in organization studies, in general, has been to move away from abstract or formalized prescriptions (what people should do) to focus precisely on what people are concretely doing and saying in situation. Adopting this perspective has proven to be of interest for a number of areas in management and organization studies, including project management in general (Blomquist et al., 2010; Floricel et al., 2014; Sergi, 2012). This perspective helps to present project management activities in a way that is a more accurate reflection of the actual activities, their complexity, and the concrete challenges that arise around and in situations (Cicmil et al., 2006). Opting for a practice perspective allows us to understand project management as a social accomplishment, hence developing a complementary approach to normative perspectives (Hällgren & Lindahl, 2012). Discussing the richness of the practice concept is beyond the scope of this article (for more detailed discussions, see Feldman & Orlikowski, 2011; Nicolini & Monteiro, 2017; Nicolini, 2013, among others). Moreover, as discussed by Corradi et al. (2010), not only is there no unified theory of practice (a point also made by researchers interested in practice, such as Schatzki, 2001 and Nicolini & Monteiro, 2017), but practice-based studies differ both in the label they use and their positioning of the concept of practice. Furthermore, practice can be defined both as an empirical focus of study and an epistemology (Corradi et al., 2010) and can also be studied from theoretical and philosophical approaches (Feldman & Orlikowski, 2011). Hence, a variety of positions can be taken by researchers when building on the practice perspective. Broadly speaking, practices can be defined as “meaning-making, order-producing, and reality-shaping activities. That is, orderly sets of materially mediated doings and sayings aimed at identifiable ends” (Nicolini & Monteiro, 2017, p. 114). Among other characteristics of practice, Nicolini and Monteiro (2017) highlight their organization on a specific object (here, benefits); their situation in time and space (a situation that can be defined both as micro and macro); and their collective, indeterminate, and dynamic nature. In this sense, despite using the same word, practice as defined in this theoretical perspective should not be confused with formal or formalized practices in organizations, which allude more to prescriptions.

Given that our study is an exploration into doing the work associated with benefits management, in this article we mainly locate ourselves in the category of practice-based studies in which practice is seen as an empirical focal point.

While we recognize that the concept of practice is richer and broader than simply “what people do” (cf Nicolini & Monteiro, 2017), the absence of studies describing the empirical and concrete activities and challenges of project actors engaging in benefits management calls for starting from such descriptions. By placing action at the center of our inquiry (following Söderlund’s recommendation, 2004), our study is influenced by the broad “Rethinking Project Management” stream of research (Svejvig & Andersen, 2015; Winter et al., 2006) and by the turn to project studies (Geraldi & Söderlund, 2018). If, as argued by Geraldi and Söderlund (2016), inquiries into the actuality of projects (cf Cicmil et al., 2006) have multiplied, there is still an absence of such studies on benefits management.

In this context, we contend that a shift toward in situ activities (concerned by the work done by actors and its practical challenges) represents the first necessary step to contrast and complement the dominating instrumental approach (concerned with prescriptions and normative knowledge). Such an empirical approach implies focusing on the actions and interactions among the actors embedded in the management of benefits, paying specific attention to how they locally engage in benefits management, and considering how they conceive what benefits are. By adopting such an approach, we start from the assumption that benefits are not a given that a project team simply discovers and can measure, but rather that benefits are co-constructed in context and over time. This approach is very well in line with Keeys and Huemann (2017), who argue that project benefits are the result of a co-creation process. As we will discuss in the last part of this article, this first foray into the actuality of benefits management—to borrow Cicmil et al.’s (2006) expression—offers us several insights into deepen our understanding of this activity. We argue that turning our attention to the concrete practice of benefits management paves the way to developing a different theorization of benefits management—one that sheds light on aspects not currently covered by most of the literature on this topic.

Empirical Setting

All four organizations studied have implemented a more or less formal benefits management process. Table 4 presents an overall view of the components of benefits management and governance mechanisms implemented in the four organizations, along with other relevant processes with regard to benefits management.

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Table 4

Components of Benefits Management and Governance Mechanisms Implemented in the Cases (At the Time of the Interview)

	Project Management Methodology	Formalized Benefits Management Methodology	Existence of a Steering Committee (Go or No-Go Decision on Projects)	Generic Project Life Cycle			Follow-Up on Benefits After Closure of the Project – Benefits Realization
				Conception of the Project—Investment Decision–Benefits Identification	Realization of the Project Status ReportBenefits Monitoring	Closure and Passing Over to the Owner –Benefits Ownership
TRA	√	√	√	√	Few	Few	In implementation
FIN	√	√	√	√		Few	√
PUB	√	Ad hoc	√	√
HEA	√	Ad hoc	√	√			√

Note. HEA = Healthcare; FIN = Financial = PUB: Public sector; TRA = Transportation.

Generally speaking, all of these organizations have implemented a project management methodology, albeit with varying levels of experience; two of them (TRA and FIN) have a highly formalized benefits management methodology. These two organizations have a steering committee or project management office authorized or mandated to make investment decisions for projects. The other two organizations (PUB and HEA) have what can be viewed as an ad hoc benefits management methodology, indicating that their methodology is rather informal and inconsistently implemented throughout the organization as generally used, for example, in the project management maturity model (Thomas & Mullaly, 2008).

Defining What Benefits Are: A Challenging Task

As one of our respondents stated: “What is conveyed as definition [of benefits] is that it is a gain perceived by a stakeholder. So it’s pretty simple.” (TRA03). Yet, the Appendix at the end of the article indicates, what may be subsumed under the concept of gain not only changes depending on the organization but is also quite varied in itself. With our four cases, we have found 56 individual examples of benefit, which we have grouped inductively based on their nature: (1) operational, (2) economic or financial, (3) social and pertaining to external environment and users; and (4) social and pertaining to the internal environment. As we can observe in the Appendix, examples relate strongly to the economic nature of benefits. For instance, the search to enhance operational efficiency was shared by three organizations. For example, individual economic benefit in the TRA organization was to avoid service break, whereas in HEA it related to processes such as efficiency in appointment management. From PUB, benefits appeared not of an operational or economic nature but were found exclusively within the external environment. However, this classification does not provide an account of the challenges associated with defining what counts as benefits. Our analysis has led us to identify five of such challenges.

Benefits Management as an Evolving Process

Ongoing Transformations of Benefits

Our analysis of the four cases also reveals that over the course of projects and the overall process of benefits management, as described by our respondents, the way in which benefits are framed and presented changes over time. Our analysis uncovered three such changes, each located at different stages in the course of a project (see Figure 1). First, most respondents described how nonmeasurable benefits were transformed in the early stage of a project into elements that were measurable, while benefits that could not be measured were left aside (identified as A in Figure 1). This was observed in all four cases where we saw serious efforts in the identification of benefits, including qualitative and nonmeasurable benefits, but that quickly focused solely on quantitative and measurable benefits. At this stage, while the identification of benefits can lead to listing many benefits, those that may be important for the project but that cannot be measured are challenged, as illustrated in the following quote where the manager challenged the list of benefits identified by the project team in the context of preparing for the steering committee:

In concrete terms, the super benefit you’re mentioning there, what does it mean? […] But if someone asks you a question, and if I challenge you on it, how can you show me what you learned? So we did remove [these nonmeasurable] benefits in those cases; if you can’t measure it, it’s not a benefit. (TRA05)

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Figure 1

Changes over time in how benefits are viewed.

Secondly, we noted a difference in the framing of benefits between the first and second stages of the project (identified as B in Figure 1). During the first stage, respondents emphasized the benefits to be gained from the project. In all four cases, identification of benefits was done in the early stage of projects, with the objective of getting approval and a positive investment decision. This led to what we call a sales rhetoric: Benefits to be derived from the project are used as an argument to convince the project portfolio steering committee to approve the project. We noted this phenomenon in the context where, as expressed by respondents from our four organizations, the sponsor ¹ and the project team scrutinized the strategic objectives to find out any element the project may contribute to, with the aim of presenting them to obtain a positive decision, as exemplified in the following quote:

And when I worked on projects […] we had to build the business case to prove that or to support the idea that we needed a wireless network at one hospital. There was no wireless before. But to ensure the success of this project and the functionality of [the product], you needed this wireless network. So we couldn’t just be like “could you install wireless” like at McDonalds? Nobody was going to listen to us. So we had to prove why we needed this and then, financially, what would be the ramifications of not having this. (HEA01)

The sales rhetoric is even, in some occasions, essential to making a decision on the investment, as benefits are not always clear:

…We’re going to tell it like it is. It’s exactly that: essentially it’s a sales exercise; it’s about how it is [the project] presented and the justification that comes with it. All that is very important. That’s why, with these kinds of projects, the sector presents them to five directors, so it’s not just me, you, and we’re done. And together, the five us, we challenge one another and we have good discussions at times. One of us will be like “yeah, but I’m not so sure,” and then the discussion goes on. So there’s a much softer aspect to it in terms of the decision-making. (TRA02)

However, using the sales rhetoric may create a dynamic that, in turn, can have perverse effects with regard to boosting benefits without questioning the capacity for the realization of such benefits, as some of our respondents described.

In the early stages of the projects conducted in the organizations studied, benefits were mainly associated with what the project would be delivering and were strongly connected to the strategic objectives; however, these benefits changed over the course of the project for various reasons. Somewhat in relation to this sales rhetoric, some respondents also stated that benefits tend to be overestimated, whereas costs were underestimated in the early stages of the projects.

Finally, our analysis led us to identify a third change, which suggests a rupture and form of disconnection between business and project management regarding the benefits of projects (identified as C in Figure 1) in the organizations we studied. Based on the experiences of our respondents, as projects evolved toward realization and reached the closure stage, the definition of the results seemed to be in the hands of the owner (typically, the business unit). It was at that stage when we noted that projects appeared to be evaluated on their performance and how they delivered the projects’ results (with respect to budgets and deadlines, etc.), rather than considering their benefits:

Normally, what we do, it’s always the project owner who is responsible for the project. That’s the one who’s expected to deliver [the project]… he is ultimately responsible for delivering the project on time, within budget, and for cutting out whatever needs to be left out. [Here] at TRA, we haven’t yet gone and said “I’m going to do a lot of audits.” In other words, “Once the project is delivered, I’m going to go and see what they [the project owner] have committed to do and if it has been realized. (TRA05)

At this point in the project, our analysis reveals that benefits became almost invisible to most project actors. Benefits did remain present in our four organizations, listed in business documents such as annual reports. However, they left the realm of projects, leading to a form of disconnection between all the work invested in defining the benefits in early stages, and how projects were evaluated.

Figure 1 illustrates three changes in how benefits are conceived throughout projects. Overall, benefits move from being measures to becoming promises and end up—at least in our cases—as important traces, but traces not connected strongly to the final evaluation of project performance. Importantly, Figure 1 also reveals that benefits management might be influenced by a different understanding of benefits, depending on the stage of the project and the dominating concern at that moment. Such a shift over time has not, up until now, been recognized in the literature on benefits management. We suggest this shift needs to be recognized and better understood, as it might be linked to the challenges practitioners face when engaging in benefits management activity and contribute to explaining why benefits management still fails to deliver what is expected of it.

The Definition of Benefits: Coming to Terms with the Variety of Elements Designated as Benefits

As we observed from our results, multiple terms are being used under the broad label of benefits, within the same organization and even in the same project. First, we underline that the choice of word to identify benefits is not neutral and that it may shape the way the actors will engage in benefits management. Second, this result echoes Breese et al. (2015), who highlighted a translation process of benefits management across geographical and language boundaries. Given that we noted that benefits tend to change over time, a somewhat similar process of translation process may be at work within a single organization. Following Breese et al. (2015), our study helps in showcasing, first, the complexity of simply defining benefits and, second, that changes in how benefits are defined may be influenced by the main task in different moments. Shaping the project, obtaining approval, and evaluating the project are distinct priorities, linked to different moments in the course of a project. Our study reveals that these priorities will influence and affect how benefits are conceived.

Furthermore, we argue that the polysemy we found with regard to how benefits are defined in the organizations we studied, needs to be more acknowledged than reduced. Although some may think that reducing the polysemy we found should be pursued, we contend that keeping this diversity in terms and meanings might be useful to better recognize the diversity of values within a project or an organization. In the context of benefits management, our study revealed that there were multiple definitions given to benefits, creating potential tensions among these definitions. Cameron (1986) faced a similar situation when defining organizational effectiveness for the evaluation of public projects and resolved this problem by adopting a conceptual framework recognizing the existence of competing underlying values in organizations (Quinn & Rohrbaugh, 1983). More recently, Smith and Lewis (2011) and Smith (2014) argued for a better recognition of the inherent pluralism of organizations and the variety of paradoxical situations organizations and managers face in their normal activities that arise from this pluralism. These researchers show that paradoxes, tensions, and contradictions are far from being problematic and are, in fact, part of the dynamic life of an organization. In this sense, and contrary to how we tend to view paradoxes and tensions, our aim should not be to resolve or eliminate them, but rather to better see them at play.

Following these scholars, we hence argue that rather than searching for a clear-cut definition, it might be more productive to accept in a very explicit way that, in practice, the notion of benefits may be larger and fuzzier than it tends to be conceived in theory. Thus, this notion may encompass duplication of terms, synonyms, and changes in meaning during the project life cycle. Highlighting the variety of meanings, values, conceptions, and ways of proceeding in benefits management exposes the social and technical complexity surrounding projects and the management of their benefits. This complexity—especially that related to the variety of actors involved in projects and to the politics involved in project decision-making—can never be fully reduced or tackled even by the most detailed and comprehensive methodology, which echoes an observation pertaining to project management in general (Pitsis et al., 2014). It is in this sense we suggest better recognizing better this diversity and working with it, rather than trying to fight it. This also points to the intimate connection that exists between how things are defined and how these definitions influence what is done. Extending the inquiry into the performative dimension of benefits management could hence deepen our understanding of what this practice entails and produces for the organizations that invest time and efforts in it.

The Risks of Engaging in a Sales Rhetoric

Our results show that significant efforts in the benefits management process are performed in the early stage of a project, mainly with regard to the identification of benefits, which in turn can lead to a form of overestimation of benefits that projects will deliver. This echoes Jenner’s optimism bias (2009) and, in the case of benefits management, this overestimation of benefits in the front-end stage appears to be one of the major problems leading to project failure (cf. Flyvbjerg, 2014). This is where the sales rhetoric we identified may play a key role. Indeed, presenting benefits as a way to obtain approval for the project may have a perverse effect: This sales rhetoric might overstate the expected benefits, making them harder to deliver and risking failure in meeting them.

Our study reveals that attention should be paid to the presence of such rhetoric to avoid falling into this trap and also invites practitioners to become more conscious of the risks of overselling the expected benefits of their projects. Furthermore, as with the issue surrounding the many definitions of benefits, this finding highlights the importance that should be paid to the other side of practices; that is, the sayings that accompany the doings, as both are part of the definition of practice (cf Nicolini & Monteiro, 2017). As our findings reveal, benefits management is also a linguistic and talk-based activity and these aspects shape how benefits are conceived, presented, and ultimately evaluated.

Additionally, based on our preliminary results, if the expected results of engaging in benefits management are to be reaped, attention should also be paid to what can be done in the later stages of projects. This is also important in terms of the connection between projects and strategy. Indeed, there is no question among scholars in project management that projects are a means to implementing the strategy of an organization (Morris, 2013; Morris & Jamieson, 2005), because projects are part of the business (Kujala et al., 2010). Our results also indicated that in the early stage of a project, clear efforts in all organizations were made to identify the benefits connected to the strategic objectives of each organization, reflecting strategic objectives. However, based on the experience of our respondents, once projects were underway, less attention was devoted to these strategic objectives. Conversely, in their respective organizations, there was little interest from top management in projects after their completion. This observation invites us to explore with greater care how projects and strategy can be better linked in organizational settings. In this sense, we suggest that there might be a missing link between projects and overall strategy, and that benefits management could play a part in constituting this link. However, to do so, benefits management might have to be practiced in a different way—one that would not extensively use the sales rhetoric we identified and persist after the early stages of projects.