Opening the black box of project management: Does World Bank project supervision influence project impact?

•Paper surveys World Bank project supervisors (Task Team Leaders).•Paper conceptualizes project supervision as a higher-level critical success factor (CSF).•Paper highlights design and monitoring as prominent supervision CSFs.•Paper shows that project supervision positively influences project management success.•Paper finds that project supervision may not influence project impact.

While the World Bank supervises projects, we do not know if this supervision influences project impact. Taking a managerial lens and, hence, moving away from a micro-economic lens, this research shifts the focus from how much effort is spent on project supervision to what makes it successful. Thus, the research looks inside the “black box” of project supervision and specifically examines the perceptions of World Bank project supervisors. Based on a sample of 178 projects and using structural equation modeling, we show that project supervision's critical success factors (CSFs) include design, monitoring, coordination, and training but by far design and monitoring are the prominent ones. Moreover, we find that project supervision positively influences project management success, but may not influence project impact. Since supervision pays off as it can lead to better project implementation performance, the World Bank should focus more on project planning, context and governance to achieve impact.