Search results

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the past 25 years of the research on projectification, focusing especially on organisational aspects of projectification, as well as to discuss recent developments and potential future research directions.

This is a discussion paper, which draws on previously published research and data.

The first section identifies contexts in which projectification has taken place (projectification of) and the organisational process by which this has taken place (projectification through). Using an illustrative example based on publicly available data, the second section shows an extension of the organisational phenomenon, referred to as advanced organisational projectification. The paper concludes with a synthesised framework of organisational projectification.

The paper provides a personal reflection and commentary and is focused on the conceptualisation of the term rather than an all-encompassing study of projectification. Based on the discussion, the paper presents a synthesised view of organisational projectification as well as directions for future research to advance the understanding of projectification.

The study has implications for policy-makers in the design of the process of ongoing projectification and provides illustrations and a warning concerning the assumptions that are made as an organisation advances in its projectification.

This paper provides an elaboration of one of the focal concepts of project studies, extending some of the key elements of project management research.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of complexity and its management from an OM perspective, building on and extending the systematic literature review published in this journal in 2011, and provide a foundation for exploring the interactions between complexities and responses.

The paper takes a subjective view of complexity, focusing on the “lived experience” of managers. It takes an updated systematic literature review, and demonstrates the comprehensiveness of a framework to classify complexities of projects. It reports the findings from 43 workshops with over 1,100 managers.

First, the complexity framework is effective in aiding understanding. Second, and somewhat unexpectedly, managers were able to identify strategies to reduce the majority of complexities that they faced. Third, the workshops identified a typology of responses to residual complexities.

The framework has demonstrated its utility, and a gap in understanding emergent complexities is identified. The framework further presents the opportunity to explore the recursive nature of complexity and response.

This paper provides a framework that is both comprehensive and comprehensible. The authors demonstrate that complexities can be reduced and provide a means to assess responses to residual complexities, including potentially matching managers to projects.

This work extends the previous systematic review combined with extensive empirical data to generate findings that are having impact in practice, and have the potential to strengthen a relatively neglected area within OM. A research agenda is suggested to support this.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the context of major projects and their management from an OM perspective; the authors provide a foundation for exploring how the body of work on lean production (the “old” theory) can contribute to the development of major projects (the “new” context). In doing so, it extends the prevailing economic approach to major projects (best described as “predict and provide”) and posits the development of an alternative approach based on extending the lean production logic to this new context (referred to as “predict and prevent”).

The paper investigates the scope for adopting lean practices in context of major project. To this effect the authors review the current state of both lean thinking and major project management, and use “Universal Credit” as an exploratory case study to illustrate and verify the arguments in practice.

Two main findings are proposed: first, the authors demonstrate the inherent performance challenge of major projects in OM terms, which the authors argue presents significant scope for the application of OM concepts to improve major project performance. Second, using lean thinking as framing, the authors identify three distinct process levels and common wastes in major projects, and identify five principles how lean could improve the delivery of major projects.

Major projects present an untapped area for OM research; based on the exploratory case the authors propose ways how OM concepts can be applied to this new context. Further research will be needed to validate and generalise.

Major projects, including organisational transformations, IT-enabled change, major events and large infrastructure projects, constitute a large proportion of economic activity. Despite their prominence, however, they are also commonly associated with low success rates. This paper provides one route for exploring how a successful set of principles could be applied to improving their performance.

This work translates a popular set of ideas from OM to strengthening a relatively neglected context within OM. An agenda for further research is suggested to support the development of this application.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to operations management (OM) practice contingency research by describing the complexity of projects. Complexity is recognised as a key independent (contingent) variable that impacts on many subsequent decisions in the practice of managing projects.

This paper presents a systematic review of relevant literature and synthesises an integrated framework for assessing the complexities of managing projects.

This framework comprises five dimensions of complexity – structural, uncertainty, dynamics, pace and socio‐political complexity. These five dimensions present individuals and organisations with choices about how they respond to each type of complexity, in terms of business case, strategic choice, process choice, managerial capacity and competencies.

The contribution of this paper is to provide a clarification to the epistemology of complexity, to demonstrate complexity as a lived experience for project managers, and offer a common language for both practitioners and future empirical studies considering the individual or organisational response to project complexities. The work also demonstrates an application of systematic review in OM research.

Many organisations have undergone change to make processes run concurrently in the design and redesign of new products, seeking improvement of their competitive position. Though there are many prescriptions available to the practitioner, few have been grounded in “what has worked best” across a range of industries. There has also been relatively little discussion of the downside to concurrency. This paper reports a study which shows that success is most closely associated with the level of usage of certain tools and techniques, all of which are within the power of the new product development manager to use. In doing so, it is shown that this gives far better chances of success than high levels of usage of technology. This has significant implications for firms’ investment policies for the future. The downside element also needs managing and is discussed, along with the highlighted importance of both project management and training.

The purpose of this paper is to present the findings of a doctoral thesis aimed at identifying how project managers orchestrate ambidexterity (the achievement of both exploitation of existing knowledge and exploration of new knowledge) at the level of the project.

The research reported on here initially involved a systematic literature review of the theoretical and empirical work on ambidexterity. This was followed by a two‐stage empirical investigation. The first stage involved a set of interviews with project managers in a global IT‐services firm to identify the nature of ambidexterity in their work using the lens of intellectual capital. The second stage comprised eight case studies of projects to determine the practices by which project‐level ambidexterity could be achieved.

The research showed that at the working level, project ambidexterity is a more complex concept than the existing high‐level theorisations would suggest. The key findings of the research reported on here were that the resources used to enable ambidexterity (human, social and project capital) were interwoven with one another and also with the processes of exploitation and exploration. Two configurations of ambidexterity (“distributed” and “point”) were identified, together with five managerial practices that underpin the attainment of project‐level ambidexterity. These were investigated using “parallel‐coding” of the data to gain greater insight.

This identifies the “how” of ambidexterity in project environments, and offers managers a new way of conceptualising their work in terms of exploitation and exploration in their day‐to‐day activities.

Previous empirical studies of ambidexterity have been focused mostly at the organisational level, using primarily quantitative techniques. This qualitative study has revealed the nature of ambidexterity in complex, working project environments.

Presents an analysis of the operationalization of concurrent new product development in a sample of UK manufacturing firms. Highlights the background to the change, the main organizational drivers for change and the associated tools and techniques, along with the benefits and adverse effects. Closer meeting customer needs and reduced time to market are key benefits, but the requirements for organizational change are causing significant adverse effects. Explores those factors associated with the achievement of benefits. Shows that the intensity of use of tools and techniques (though crucially not CAD/CAM) is the group of factors most closely associated with success.