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Some companies to aid the product development process have implemented a stage‐gate framework, as a high‐level representation of the activities required. Such a framework allows the development process to be closely monitored and controlled, using stages of work and review gates. Six different companies have been examined to show the variations in representation. Each approach was compared to a generic four‐staged framework. Companies which are organised mainly in cross‐functional teams adhere strongly to the four stages, namely a low‐phased approach. However, companies organised with a strong functional structure tend to have more phases and gates within each stage, i.e. a high‐phased approach. These additional phases tend to be placed late in the product development process rather than at the start where their effect would be greater. A generic representation of the product development process applicable to various organisations and industrial sectors, provides an architecture for carrying out any business process improvement project.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the ways in which management control is enacted in a product development setting, to provide new insights into the different roles that control can play in this context.

A nine‐month, in‐depth field study was carried out at a subsidiary of an Australasian multinational firm which operates in the consumer foods industry. A participant observation approach was used to collect field notes and documents from the organisation, which were analysed through the lens of ethnomethodology.

The results indicate that the role of management control during product development is mainly focused on reducing uncertainty at each stage and promoting goal congruence at the decision gates. The authors argue that this helps explain why management control has a positive effect in a product development setting.

The implication of this finding is that the role of management control changes during product development due to the involvement of different organisational members (communities of practice) and the activities that they carry out. This helps build a more holistic understanding of control in product development. As this is a field study of a specific company, the findings are not generalizable to other companies or settings. Future research needs to investigate other possible roles which management control may play in this context.

The paper extends the research in this area by showing how and why management control can take on multiple roles in practice.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the governance of inter-firm co-development in an open innovation setting and show how a stage-gate product development process can be used to support this relationship.

The authors adopt a qualitative case-study approach informed by ethnomethodology. Data were obtained via semi-structured interviews and document analysis.

They found that in an open innovation setting – where the producing partner relies on a research partner for all product development activities – a stage-gate product development process can act as a governance mechanism, as it enables the development of trust and cooperation which supports the co-development relationship.

The implication of this finding is that a stage-gate process can be a flexible governance mechanism, which can adapt over time in relation to the needs of the co-development partners in an open innovation setting. This also lays the groundwork for future research to explore the applicability of this tool in other settings, e.g. outsourcing arrangements as well as help guide the design and implementation of future governance mechanisms.

In the context of accounting research, this paper helps practitioners and academics understand how a stage-gate process can be used as a governance mechanism to manage and control co-development projects in an open innovation setting.

This paper aims to present and describe a value for money framework that can be used on alliance projects to improve the consideration of, and reporting of, value for money.

Development of the framework used a combination of interviews with domain experts, reflection on practice and a Delphi panel to develop and refine a value for money/best value outcome framework for alliance projects.

The results indicate that a robust framework for demonstrating value for money in an alliance project is feasible, and a framework was developed and tested through the Delphi panel.

The paper briefly describes the research approach but focuses on the outcome rather than the process.

The research aim of this paper is to expand the conceptual view and to illustrate how a practical assessment of value for money in project alliancing can be achieved. It presents the framework and describes it in sufficient detail for readers to be able to adopt and adapt it.

Value for money in infrastructure projects has profound implications for society; this extends and enhances techniques used to assure value for money.

The paper provides a value for money framework across the whole project design to delivery cycle.

The authors of this paper contend that too many firms' innovation initiatives are shackled with archaic budgeting and planning methodologies that are intended to protect managers from the embarrassment of blown budgets, missed deadlines, or market flops but instead suppress learning and adaptability, both critical to achieving successful commercialization of unique ideas. This paper aims to address this issue.

The authors propose that the first step to rid myopia and rigidity from the stage‐gate approach is to re‐conceive it as an assumption‐driven process centered on learning, rather than simply a sequence of activities marching towards a pre‐determined outcome.

The authors suggest that firms should adopt assumption‐driven learning in a series of sequential divergent‐convergent cycles – one cycle per stage – each centered on testing the major assumptions for that stage.

Continuous learning and unlearning is essential to the process of developing raw ideas into viable commercial applications. The key to success is to test assumptions through real‐life experiments – for example, market assumptions should be tested in‐market, manufacturability assumptions should be tested in production.

Firms should adopt assumption‐driven learning in a series of sequential divergent‐convergent cycles – one cycle per stage – each centered on testing the major assumptions for that stage.

A recent training programme for senior and middle managers of Leeds Business School is examined. Following a five‐week assessment and diagnosis period, which included a two‐day outdoor activities course, participants were able to draw up their own plan of development which met specific identified needs, drawing on the resources of Leeds Business School. The effect of the programme has been to create a number of “development champions” for further staff development.

Effective and robust governance of major projects and programmes in the public sector is crucial to the accountability of the state and the transparency of state spending. The theoretical discourse on governance, in the context of projects and programmes, is not fully mature, although is now sufficiently well developed to warrant an increased scholarly focus on practice. This paper aims to contribute to the empirical literature through a study of assurance routines in the UK Government Major Projects Portfolio (GMPP).

A framework analysis approach to the evaluation of a subset of GMPP database generates original insights into (1) the framing of assurance review recommendations, (2) the treatment of assurance review data and (3) the subsequent tracking of the implementation of actions arising from the assurance review process.

The analysis reveals that the “delivery confidence” of the major projects and programmes included in this study improves during the time that they are assured on the GMPP. This would suggest that “enhanced” governance routines are desirable in programmes and projects that exhibit high degrees of complexity and scale.

The research findings contribute to the wider conversations in this journal and elsewhere on project governance routines and governance-as-practice in the context of government and public services.

Information technology (IT) has often been cited as being able to create competitive advantage. However, the degree of leverage is often dependent upon several factors, not least the type and level of IT training provided, resources available, management commitment, and prevailing level of corporate culture. This paper introduces the generic processes involved in developing an IT training framework in order to support and deliver the business strategy, and presents findings in the form of a generic IT training model. This model identifies the sequential stages needed to commission and deploy IT training in a construction environment in the form of an implementation roadmap. This model was developped with two leading UK construction organizations. Findings have identified that seven core process phases should be considered before committing resources to training. Recommendations include identifying the core business benefits and matching these to the training outcomes, albeit cognisant of barriers such as lack of empowerment, organizational culture, resource limitations, and so on.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a practicable systems‐based approach to knowledge management (KM) in a project environment, to encourage organisations to unlock the value in their review processes. It relies on knowledge capture and storage at decision review points, to enrich individual, team and organisational learning during the project life cycle. The project's phases are typically represented horizontally with deliverables (objectives) or project “promises” as the desirable outcomes. The purpose of this paper is to give expression through introducing a vertical dimension to facilitate the KM process. A model is proposed that conceptualises project‐specific knowledge drawing on and feeding into the organisation's knowledge management system (KMS) at tactical and strategic levels.

This conceptual paper links concepts from systems theory with KM, to produce a model to identify, collate, and optimise project‐based knowledge and integrate it into the management process.

The application of the system theory approach enriches the knowledge generated by a project, and feeds it into the next phase of that project. At the same time, it contributes to the individual's and project team's KM, specifies possible courses of action, together with risks, costs and benefits and thus it expands the organisation's higher level KMS.

The concept suggests that the knowledge capture, storage and sharing process may best be undertaken holistically, in view of the systems relationships between the tasks. Systems theory structures this process. Research opportunities include studying the interfaces between levels of KM, in relation to the project's progress.

Reconceptualisation of the project as a knowledge creation process may improve the project's progress as well as add to the individual's, project team's, and wider organisation's knowledge base. An example is given.

This paper illuminates the broader potential of under‐utilised opportunities in well‐known management approaches to add dimension to the business project, of knowledge creation, storage and sharing.

Discusses the necessity for the conscious recognition of the phenomenon known as the extended enterprise; this demands that product, process and supply chain design are all considered simultaneously. Structure must be given to the extended enterprise in order to understand and manage it efficaciously. The authors discuss multiple perspectives for doing this, and employ the notions of “3‐dimensional concurrent engineering” and “holonic thinking” for conceiving what the structure may look like. Describes a current “action research” project that is investigating potential lead‐time reductions within an extended enterprise’s product introduction process. This aims to produce process visualisations, a framework for structuring and sychronising phases and stage‐gates within the extended enterprise, and a new simulation tool which will provide a synthetic distributed hypermedia network. These deliverables will be used to play strategic “games” to explore problem issues within the product introduction process that belongs to the extended enterprise, develop teamwork across autonomous companies, and ultimately, contribute to the design of future extended enterprise supply chains.