Boondoggles and White Elephants

Knut Samset

Chapter 27 in Early Project Appraisal, 2010, pp 257-263 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract The term Boondoggle is used to describe a project that wastes time and money, or one that generally is known to be futile long before it is shut down. The word is said to have been coined in the early 1930s by Robert H. Link, an American scoutmaster, for the braided leather lanyard made and worn by Boy Scouts. Hence, in the Great Depression of the 1930s, when millions of jobs were given to the unemployed in the US to get the economy moving again, it was applied to projects involving the teaching of simple manual skills, regardless of their ultimate benefit.

Keywords: Decision Maker; Project Management; Oxford English Dictionary; Private Contractor; Water Supply Project (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-28992-5_27

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9780230289925

DOI: 10.1057/9780230289925_27

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().