مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد آزمون های آماری سد برای درک موضوعات تحقیق در علوم اجتماعی (الزویر)

In a recent article published in World Development titled The Fallacy of Beneficial Ignorance: A Test of Hirschman’s Hiding Hand, Bent Flyvbjerg argues that the Principle of the Hiding Hand, an idea that Albert O. Hirschman introduced in his 1967 book Development Projects Observed, is ‘‘wrong”, inexistent, ‘‘invalid in scholarly terms”, ‘‘potentially disastrous” and should thus be rejected. Flyvbjerg bases his claim on empirical evidence that he distills from his impressive data set on large infrastructure projects that he has collected (Flyvbjerg, 2016). The identical argument, using the same data set and methodology, is repeated by him in another article written jointly with Cass Sunstein that was published in Social Research in 2016. According to Flyvbjerg, Hirschman’s Hiding Hand suggests that ‘‘ignorance [of costs and possible problems] is good in planning.” It is beneficial in two ways. First, ‘‘because if decision makers knew the real costs and difficulties of projects, few ventures would ever get started” and second, because, problems that appear during project implementation are not only manageable but will be dealt with creatively and innovatively—in fact, the Hiding Hand implies that ‘‘problem-solving abilities will be triggered when needed.” The Hiding Hand covers up real costs and problem-solving abilities—but as a general rule in Flyvbjerg’s understanding, one can optimistically rely on the problem-solving abilities to turn projects into successes (Flyvbjerg, 2016, p. 177). For Flyvbjerg, the Hiding Hand thus offers a ‘‘theoretical justification” to a ‘‘start digging” approach to large investment projects (Flyvbjerg, 2016, p. 176) and is thus attractive for politicians and planners. He sees the Hiding Hand as the most common pretext ‘‘of why low-balled costestimates and optimistic business cases are considered acceptable in large projects” (Flyvbjerg, 2016, p. 176). As a result, adhering to the Principle incites deliberate slack in project planning as planning is based on the optimism that all contingencies will be dealt with through unexpected ingenuity. The Principle, so Flyvbjerg, ‘‘stands stronger and more celebrated today than ever” (Flyvbjerg, 2016, p. 176).