Investment projects: definition from the process perspective

Abstract

Due to the level of importance in industrial development, investment projects are the basic tools for decision-making based on a commercial, technical, environmental, economic, financial and social analysis. Since their inception, investment projects were framed in the analysis of the generation of new productive units, which over the years has had to change in the search for efficiency and improvements in its existing processes within a framework of commercial dynamism and international competitiveness. This paper develops an analysis of the definition of investment projects from the perspectives of the subject, method and object of intervention in order to identify its relationship with processes improvement. The analysis consisted in identifying a set of investment project definitions commonly used in university literature and then determining the perspective that characterizes it in order to classify them. Subsequently, the information was systematized in order to specify its methodological coherence with the current need to improve organizations processes. As a result, it has been found that most of the definitions are framed within the method or form of intervention, a position that conceptually limits interventions in ongoing organizations that require investments; thus, a new definition of investment projects is described and supported under the process approach as the main contribution of the research work.