WHAT IS NOT SEEN IS NOT MEASURED”: HOW TO EVALUATE SUCCESS FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF STAKEHOLDERS IN ACADEMIC EXTENSION PROJECTS
Project Success. Success Criteria. Stakeholders. Academic Extension Projects.
Project success is likely to be assessed under several aspects that go beyond the successful
delivery of the project/result, such as project management success, success factors and
success criteria, some more critical factors and criteria that others. Regarding the
measurement of success, specifically through the success criteria, measuring the results
generated by the project is a complex challenge that can be linked to meeting, or not, the
expectations of the various actors, or stakeholders, present externally and internally the
organization (Toor, & Ogunlana, 2010; Osei-Kyei & Chan, 2017b). As for university
extension projects, these are increasingly complex, with limited budgets, stakeholders that
change over time, and there is still a need for the University to attest to the results generated
from the projects both for society and for specific groups characterized as the target audience
of the actions (Poston & Richardson, 2011; Davies, Baines, & Batt, 2013; Cheshmberah,
2020). Given the context, the objective of this paper is to evaluate the success of academic
extension projects from the perspective of different stakeholders in a Federal Institution of
Higher Education (FIHE). This is an exploratory research, of a qualitative nature, to be carried
out through bibliographical research and a case study in an FIHE. A semi-structured interview
script will be used with internal and external stakeholders related to FIHE academic extension
projects. After data collection, content analysis will be carried out with the aid of qualitative
analysis software, to be defined in a later stage of the research, with the aim of identifying
what is considered successful in academic extension projects from the perspective of of the
stakeholders interviewed. It is expected as a possible result the creation of a mechanism,
through indicators, capable of including the various actors in academic extension projects and
optimizing the planning, execution and evaluation of the management of projects of this
nature. In terms of scientific knowledge, the aim is to contribute to the strengthening of
studies that deal with project success, specifically success criteria for public projects applied
to the context of academic extension projects.