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This paper aims to advance recent literature on the performativity of accounting by examining how project accounting affects a project organization’s ability to deliver a relevant project outcome, such as a product or a building, for a receiving client organization.

The paper draws on a longitudinal case study of a 41.4-billion-kroner (5.5-billion-euro) Danish project of constructing 16 new public hospitals. Its objective was to reduce the average unit costs and improve the quality of patient care. Each hospital construction was managed by a separate project organization and handed over to a separate receiving hospital organization. The project organizations applied a common approach to project accounting. The paper relies on Michel Callon’s concepts of performativity and sociotechnical agencement – approaching project accounting as an arrangement of devices.

The paper shows that the project-accounting agencement simultaneously supported and undermined the project organizations’ ability to deliver hospitals relevant to the receiving hospital organizations. The agencement performed hospital designs, disciplined project actors and guided decision-making, thus supporting the overall work of the project organizations. It also, however, compelled the project organizations to compromise on hospital designs when unexpected events occurred. These compromises led to the delivery of hospitals, which largely prevented the receiving hospital organizations from achieving the project’s objective.

This paper advances our limited understanding of the dynamic and complex relationship between project accounting and the relevance of project outcomes. It introduces the concept of a “contronymity device” to capture the way project accounting simultaneously produces two opposing consequences, both supporting and undermining the enactment of a particular reality. The paper lastly enriches our understanding of how project-accounting devices impact hospital organizations’ operating cost structures and challenge patient care capabilities.

This paper shows how Bruno Latour’s novel work and methodological approach can enrich management and organization studies, accounting and science and technology studies on what it takes to redesign sustainable societal infrastructures. Latour’s notions of trials of strength, macro-actor and design as redesign are used in a case study to describe and analyse how the laboratory becomes decisive in negotiating the bridge design and project budget to the benefit of a more sustainable transport infrastructure.

Latour’s notion of the detective-author is used to research and write a longitudinal qualitative case study that reconstructs the project processes and chain of related events by following the actors/actants.

The case analysis shows how a project design becomes an emerging powerful macro-actor through the mobilization of laboratory simulations and calculations. The role of the project budget changes; from a strong supporting role as input to a decision option in favour of a cheaper stayed bridge to a weak role as an output from a process of redesign supporting a much larger, costlier and more sustainable suspension bridge.

We use Latour’s methodological approach to engage primarily in detailed process descriptions to go beyond the often-pointless call for further theory development and to rather account for what is at work in specific situations. Latour’s notions of redesign as an outcome from trials of strength, we consider a useful approach to further our understanding since it also takes account of the distributed knowledge production that is integral to the actors’ cognitions and recognitions. Relatedly, the specific Latourian notion of redesign opens up new avenues for researching the more or less powerful role accounting devices such as a project budget can play in valuing, supporting and/or undermining the design of sustainable societal infrastructures.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how animals can become stakeholders in interaction with project management technologies and what happens with project temporalities when new and surprising stakeholders become part of a project and a recognized matter of concern to be taken into account.

The paper is based on a qualitative case study of a project in the building industry. The authors use actor‐network theory (ANT) to analyze the emergence of animal stakeholders, stakes and temporalities.

The study shows how project temporalities can multiply in interaction with project management technologies and how conventional linear conceptions of project time may be contested with the emergence of new non‐human stakeholders and temporalities.

The study draws on ANT to show how animals can become stakeholders during the project. Other approaches to animal stakeholders may provide other valuable insights.

Rather than taking the linear time conception for granted, the management challenge and practical implication is to re‐conceptualize time by taking heterogeneous temporalities into account. This may require investments in new project management technologies.

This paper adds to the literatures on project temporalities and stakeholder theory by connecting them to the question of non‐human stakeholders and to project management technologies.

Little attention has been paid to the initial development of programs. The purpose of this paper is to explore co-creation as an alternative strategic approach for program management. Co-creation of programs means that the projects within the program are created by the users and producers of the projects.

The paper is based on a case study of the co-creation approach of the Umeå 2014 European Capital of Culture program. The empirical material analyzed consists of qualitative interviews with members of the Umeå 2014 team and the politicians involved, as well as secondary data on the program.

The Umeå 2014 Capital of Culture program takes the form of a platform that makes meetings and interactions possible. Co-creation allows for creative cultural projects to emerge, but the program becomes reliant on the different actors involved. Balancing dilemmas of multiple stakeholders and maintaining control while enabling the emergence of ideas is key.

These findings have practical implications for the management of more emergent program structures. A flexible organization with guiding values and criteria to balance the different projects can be used to achieve program goals when multiple stakeholders have their own agendas.

This paper contributes to research on program management by introducing the concept of co-creation as a strategic approach for program management. The creative and innovative benefits of co-creation can be reached in the development of programs but other challenges for their management are involved.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the implications that Power’s book had to the author’s research in public sector auditing.

In this paper, the author reflects and debates the inspiration that Michael Power’s book The Audit Society had on the author’s own research.

The author finds that this book had a significant influence on how he succeeded theorizing his studies on auditing, and how he could contribute to the audit literature. It is stunning how the book succeeded in synthesizing audit research, encouraging scholars to understand auditing as a social practice, i.e. how auditing can be theorized using various social science theories and how the book also appealed to broader social science.

This paper is a reflection that covers around a 20-year period with potential mis-representations of how exactly sequences of actions and thoughts were.

This paper helps to clarify how it is that audit operates and influences everyday life of persons involved with auditing.

This paper casts doubts as to what actions are carried out in the name of audit and that audit is not just a value free activity but involved with political agendas.

The originality of this paper is that it fleshes out how a seminal book can have significant implications on how research is carried out.

Most intercultural frameworks assess intercultural competencies, but global businesses lack instruments to support the feedback loop, that is help project managers answer the question if an effective global team has been formed. The purpose of this paper is to develop and assess a new indicator for measuring the actual effectiveness of intercultural communication and collaboration at the individual and team level, the Mysore InterCultural Effectiveness (MICE) indicator.

Based on a needs analysis in global businesses, international projects, and review of existing literature, a low-touch self-report indicator was developed. A test run in several international companies with live data obtained from 154 employees helped to validate the indicator using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis.

The MICE indicator is based on two scales: first, the effectiveness in interacting and collaborating with foreign counterparts by providing an answer to the question “how I think I am with them;” and second, the satisfaction with appropriateness of communication received from foreign interlocutors and the outcome of the collaboration by answering the question “how I think they are with me.”

Empirical results indicate that the two scale/six factor model provides a good fit to the data. Using the MICE Indicator, it is now possible for project managers to effectively address shortcomings of intercultural communication skills in their international teams with the right type of intercultural training.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the impact of relational norms on project success in different project governance contexts.

A worldwide web-based questionnaire yielded 200 responses. Results from regression analyses supported the hypothesis that relational norms impact project success. Hierarchical regression analyses showed the moderating effect of governance and control on the relationship between relational norms and project success.

Relational norms in the buyer-supplier relationship are positively associated with project success. This relationship is moderated by the strictness of project governance, especially the level of flexibility left to the project manager. Lower levels of managerial flexibility are detrimental to project success in cases of weak relational norms and supportive of project success in cases of high relational norms.

Academic implications stem from the indication that control has a low influence on the relationship between relational norms and project success, but that the level of managerial flexibility ultimately influences the choice of relational norms needed for a project to be successful.

Clear organizational structures and methodologies are supportive of project success in cases of good relational norms. Therefore, project management training should focus on the relationship building capabilities of project managers, to leverage investments in existing methods and organizational structures.

The paper extends the insights of the importance of soft aspects in managing projects across organizational borders and different governance structures.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the adequacy of the common individual creativity vs organizatonal innovation dichotomy in a complex real-life context.

The paper is based on a retrospective case study of a R&D project in a large industrial company.

The paper shows that understanding the relationship between creativity and innovation as a matter of individual creativity followed by subsequent collective innovation, fails to account for the inherent collective, and improvisational nature of innovation projects. To deal with this weakness, the paper proposes a reconceptualization of the relationship in terms of a capacity/activity distinction which views creativity as an individual and collective integral part of the complex innovation activity.

This paper does not discuss challenges regarding collaboration between people representing a variety of expertise, interests, and organizational belongings.

The paper points out that continuous collective creativity is more important than initial individual creativity in complex real-life projects. The paper provides specific examples of work forms and approaches encouraging the collective creativity of researchers and practitioners in an innovation project. The work forms and approaches show how people continually deal with complexity, uncertainty and “the unexpected.” As such, the paper may be valuable to managers of complex real life-projects involving people with a great variety of expertise.

The paper contributes to a reconceptualization of the relationship between creativity and innovation which forms a contrast to the most common ways to distinquish between the phenomena. The capacity/activity distinction reflects the common assumption of a close relationship between creativity and innovation, but does not restrict creativity to the individual level or initial stage of innovation projects only. As such, the reconceptualization of the relationship between creativity and innovation can form the basis for practice-based theories in project management.

The purpose of this paper is to increase understanding on the emergence of mutually beneficial relationships between component suppliers and third parties in projects, and their interaction practices in the project and potential new services.

A qualitative, exploratory research strategy is employed in the context of construction projects, with construction component manufacturers as the focal component suppliers. In total 22 interviews were conducted with structural engineers and architects as relevant third parties, to discover the specifics of component suppliers’ third-party relationship development in construction projects.

The results show the crucial role of third parties in the constructor’s and customer’s decision-making process, and various ways for component suppliers to develop the relationship toward the third parties. The results offer important knowledge about the cooperation between construction component suppliers and third parties and means to increase the centrality of component suppliers in the project network.

The research was delimited to structural engineers and architects as third parties in construction projects in one country. Further research is encouraged on third-party cooperation in other kinds of project networks, other kinds of third parties, and the various forms of triadic cooperation in project networks.

The results encourage component suppliers to take a proactive approach in developing relationships with third parties, when strengthening their network position. The paper introduces practical ways in which component suppliers may take action toward generating powerful main contractor-supplier-third-party triads.

Limited research attention has been directed at third parties and triadic cooperation in project networks. This paper offers important knowledge about the relationship between component suppliers and third parties, particularly in terms of third parties’ expectations and practical initiatives to enhance the relationships.