Search results

Boltanski and Thevenot’s Economies of Worth framework and the project world introduced by Boltanski and Chiapello are well known in the fields of sociology and organization theory, but have been largely ignored in the project management literature. The purpose of this paper is to introduce them into the literature on projects and projectification.

The framework and the project world are described in detail and compared with two streams of writings that are well known in the field of project management: Making Projects Critical and the project as a complex self-organizing emergent network.

The paper shows that the framework and the project world are relevant to research in project management and the understanding of the projectification of society.

The framework and the concepts presented could be used in both conceptual and empirical research in project management, particularly the analysis of projects in which disputes occur among stakeholders. Several paths that future developments could follow are identified.

The framework can be used to better understand disputes and identify how they can be resolved or compromises can be found.

The analysis by Boltanski and Chiapello showed that the evolution of management practice is linked to changes in society and in the dominant ideology.

The paper introduces a very valuable framework into the project literature.

This paper aims to present the challenges faced by a small startup as entrepreneurship and marketing intersect to influence the success or failure of the venture. The entrepreneurial marketing focus of the case provides a deeper understanding of the practice-based interface of these two disciplines. The case focuses on the vision of two entrepreneurs and how they use the value creation process of opportunity recognition, evaluation and development to design a consulting service for Canadian firms that want to do business in China. It also provides insight on the difficulty of creating, communicating, selling and delivering a new consulting service to the Canadian business community.

The case is based on extensive interviews with QiaoLinx Inc.’s founders, relevant others and secondary data including press releases, social media and promotional material.

The events, issues and questions presented to track the entrepreneurial actions and marketing process of a startup from concept to market to tipping-point. The case is intended to serve as an instructional platform that encourages deductive reasoning in analyzing and synthesizing the application of entrepreneurship and marketing theories.

This teaching case can be used in undergraduate or graduate courses in entrepreneurship, marketing, new venture creation and international business. Researchers, faculty, practitioners and students can use the case to engage in a discussion on the underlying theories of entrepreneurship and marketing.

The purpose of this paper is to summarise a doctoral thesis that has been defended in 2007 and to share scientific results on a recent organisational phenomenon, the Project Management Office (PMO), in a context where most of the literature is currently coming from consultants. The focus of this research bears on the PMO transformation process rather than on the description of their great variety. Results bring into question some established paradigms on PMOs.

The methodological strategy is based upon a constructivist epistemology. Just as organisations are complex social entities, so too are the specific organisational project management structures that encompass PMOs. The methodological strategy is designed to understand such complexity. Results reported in the thesis are based upon a grounded theory approach where over 60 interviews from four large organisations were analysed to uncover the process of transformation of organisational project management.

There are two primary findings. First, a PMO should not be considered as an isolated island in the organisation, but rather as one part of an archipelago, defined as the organisational project management. Second, the organisation project management and specifically the PMO evolve continuously adapting to changes in their external or internal environment or as an answer to internal tensions.

From an academic perspective, the originality of this research rests primarily on its non‐positivist epistemology to the study of PMOs and particularly with the mobilisation of a social conceptual framework. From the professional perspective, it provides PMO managers with a fresh look at their own configuration and it gives them means to understand their evolution through their particular history. Being able to do this reflection, managers making decisions on structural dimensions are more critical of the advices from outsiders.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how new policies and standards to professionalise nightclub bouncing along with customer-oriented service imperatives affect bouncers’ work practices and identities.

The paper is based on 13 months of ethnographic fieldwork among Danish bouncers and uses the concept of “emotional labour” and related ideas of “interactive service work” to explore how service imperatives play out at political/commercial and organisational levels and how such initiatives are negotiated by bouncers in their work practices.

Until recently, the nocturnal work of bouncers had been relatively unaffected by labour market service paradigms. This is now changing, as policy initiatives and the capitalist service economy colonise ever greater domains of the urban night and the work conducted here. We argue that trends towards professionalisation have landed bouncers in a double-bind situation, in which they are increasingly faced with competing and sometimes contradictory occupational imperatives requiring them both to “front up” effectively to unruly patrons and to project a service-oriented persona. We show how bouncers seek to cope with this precarious position by adopting a variety of strategies, such as resistance, partial acceptance and cultural re-interpretations of service roles.

While existing research on nightclub bouncers has primarily focussed on bouncers’ physical regulation of unruly guests, this paper provides a theoretical framework for understanding current policy ambitions to “domesticate” bouncers and shows how attempts to construct bouncers as civilised “service workers” is fraught with paradoxes and ambiguities.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the interplay between risk management and uncertainty and the contextual variability of risk management practice. More precisely, the research empirically measures the relation between the extent of use of risk management and the level of project uncertainty.

The research defines risk management from an empirical perspective., i.e. from an empirically‐identified set of tools that is actually used to perform risk management. This toolset is derived from the results of an ongoing major worldwide survey on what experienced practitioners actually do to manage their projects. This paper directly relates uncertainty to the degree of project definition. It uses a sample of 1,296 responses for which the interplay between risk management and uncertainty could be measured.

The results are very coherent. They verify and empirically validate many of the propositions drawn from a review of the literature. But results challenge some of the propositions found in the conventional project management literature and some commonly held views. The research shows that the use of risk management practices and tools is negatively related to the degree of project uncertainty. This somewhat counter‐intuitive result is consistent with a general tendency for all project management tools and techniques to be used more intensively in better defined contexts.

The empirical investigation of actual risk practices and their contextual variability can help better understand risk management practice and manage risks better. The research also clarifies the concepts of uncertainty, risk and risk management.

The results confirm some well‐known assumptions about practices, but at the same time produced unexpected results that can stimulate the development of new practices adapted to highly uncertain contexts. The project management field needs to develop new responses for specific contexts for which it was not primarily developed. The results of this research point in the direction of such a need for ill‐defined projects and highly uncertain contexts.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the papers comprising a special issue of the journal. The central theme of this special issue is “Projects and organisations: adding rungs to the ladder of understanding project management and its relationship with the organisation”. It is dedicated to research that explores and proposes different avenues to contribute to the development of the field of project management from this perspective of projects and organisations.

The Guest Editors solicited academics and collaborators of the Project Management Research Chair at the École des sciences de la gestion, Université du Québec à Montréal (ESG UQAM). Following a call for papers, five were selected that underwent a double‐blind peer‐review process.

The five selected articles each provide unique perspectives and insights. Viewed as a set, their contributions view projects and organisations from three main perspectives: project management governance issues; management of innovative and IT projects; and processes, practices and tools. The set brings new empirical data, ideas and theoretical frameworks to bear that justify the extension of the current project management paradigm, and suggest that project management be viewed as a critical function of the organisation.

The set of papers encourages scholars to continue to examine organisational concerns related to project management with the goal of explaining and enhancing important relationships among organisational phenomena and the project management field.

By bringing this special issue together, the Editor played an important role in adding rungs to the ladder of understanding project management and its relationship with the organisation.