Search results

This paper’s purpose is to describe students’ learning processes in a project-based and self-organized seminar on sustainability. A detailed knowledge of typical learning processes is part of a pedagogical content knowledge of sustainability and can therefore contribute to the professional development of university educators.

In a project-based and self-organized seminar, a case study has been conducted with the grounded theory’s methodological approach. Data were collected from student interviews, group discussions and observations of students’ planning and organization meetings.

The results of the case study show that students’ learning processes vary depending on their pre-seminar sustainability experiences. Two types have been established: sustainability newcomers and sustainability experts. Furthermore, the results indicate the importance of emotions in the involvement with sustainability.

The significance of the case study is limited by a small number of cases. Also, the results are specific for a seminar self-organized by the students and can therefore not simply be transferred to other seminars.

Knowledge of specific learning processes and a possible conceptual change in sustainability classes could be an important issue in the professional development of university educators because it would increase the educators’ pedagogical content knowledge.

The triangulation of qualitative data mainly served the investigation of students’ perspectives and therefore the understanding of subjective preferences, experiences and learning processes in the field of higher education for sustainable development (HESD).

With the purpose of enhancing the understanding of multi‐project management, this paper is based on the findings of a doctoral thesis that focuses on the management and organisation of project‐based companies.

The research presented here is based on an inductive and qualitative case study approach, characterised by an exploratory purpose and based on an in depth analysis of two individual cases.

The study sheds light on several important aspects for managing and organising the special dynamics that characterise project‐based organisations. The thesis discusses how the balance between structuring mechanisms and the ability to handle the ever‐present uncertainty in project‐based organisations (PBOs) can be understood. This balance is necessary in order to handle the amount of changing requirements – both operational and contextual – during a certain period of time, thereby, being given the opportunity to encourage the organisation's dynamic capability.

This research proposes that the traditional theoretical focus of “How to … ” in project portfolio management is neither adequately efficient, nor sufficient. This view must be complemented with active individual and situated management actions, and the findings encapsulate the importance of the multi‐project management to focus on the balance between creativity, flexibility, and structure.

The profound theoretical ambition with this work is to complement the literature on project‐based organisations with an empirically‐based understanding inspired by organising theory, for both the research and practical execution of multi‐project management from a project‐as‐practice perspective. This research expands the conceptual view on the balance between structuring mechanisms and the ability to handle the ever‐present uncertainty in PBOs.

The creation of a new venture is at the heart of entrepreneurship and shares parallels with project-based organizing: embedded in an institutional context, founders have to assemble a team that works on specified tasks within a strict time constraint, while the new venture undergoes various transitions. The purpose of this paper is to explore parallels between both streams of research and an increasing projectification of entrepreneurship.

The study is based upon a case study of the Berlin start-up ecosystem including the analysis of interviews (n=52), secondary documents, and field observations.

The paper reveals that – shaped by their institutional context – patterns of project-like organizing have become pertinent to the new venture creation process. It identifies a set of facets from the entrepreneurial ecosystems – more specifically different types of organizational actors, their occupational backgrounds, and epistemic communities – that enable and constrain the process of new venture creation in a way that is typical for project-based organizing.

This study thus elaborates on how institutional settings enforce what has been called “projectification” in the process of new venture creation and discuss implications for start-up ecosystems.

The purpose of this paper is to use an organizational design perspective to determine the scope of the state-of-the art of research into project-based organizations.

The paper follows a structured framework-based literature review approach. It uses an analytical framework from the organization design literature to assess 177 papers relevant to the design of the project-based organization that were published in four leading PM journals between 2008 and 2015. The authors determine which elements of organization design are covered in each paper and identify specific research themes for each of the element emerging from the literature. Finally, the authors examine the degree to which interdependencies among separate elements are addressed in the literature and discuss the most holistic papers in more details.

The results show that the literature on project-based organizations downplays broader organizational issues (such as organizational strategy, incentive schemes and performance management systems) while emphasizing research agenda inherited from research on single project management. In addition, the study highlights limited attention in the literature to the interdependence between separate design choices. Finally, it develops a research framework to map current themes in the literature and their relative importance and discusses a prospective research agenda.

Academic implications stem from looking at the project management literature from a fresh theoretical perspective and putting project-based organization as a whole in the focus. There is a great research potential in studying organization-wide aspects and interdependencies between various organization design choices in project-based organizations.

Reflective practitioners could benefit from a wider view on the project-based organization and its design. They could also use the developed framework in management discussions.

The paper offers a novel way of conceptualizing research on project-based organizations by linking it to an established stream within the field of organization theory and design.

This study aims to explore how project-based firms, which generally organize most of their work around temporary projects in discontinuous and fragmented types of business contexts, proactively formulate and implement digital transformation strategies under institutional pressures in a predigital era.

An exploratory case study was conducted in a large-scale construction company in China using multiple data collection methods, including semistructured interviews, documentation collection and observation.

An integrated framework is developed to conceptualize three key dimensions of digital transformation strategies of project-based firms: strategic adaptation for organization-environment fit through balancing the internal efficiency needs with the external legitimacy pressures; proactive business transformation through comprehensively managing the roles of digital technologies in optimizing defined business processes and fostering new business models; and delicate organizational transformation to integrate temporary project-level operation processes with ongoing firm-level business processes.

This study represents an exploratory effort to empirically investigate how project-based firms strategically organize complex digital transformation imperatives in their discontinuous and fragmented business contexts. The findings contribute to deepened understandings of how complex organizational and environmental contexts can be comprehensively managed for systemic business and organizational transformations to leverage the value of emerging digital technologies for project-based organizations.

The aim of the article is to analyse HR devolution from HR departments to the line. Two important problems are addressed. The first problem concerns the disregard for the changes in line management that comes with HR devolution. The second problem addressed deals with the lack of studies of organisational contingencies.

The paper presents and analyses an in‐depth case study of a radically projected firm within the Tetra Park group where a new HR‐oriented management role has been created to replace the traditional line management role. Based on the case study findings, the paper elaborates on the new approach to line management and how a new management role is moulded in the context of project‐based organisations.

Based on literature studies, the paper identifies four key challenges for HRM in project‐based organisations that are critical for the development of the new approach to line management in such settings. Based on case study observations, it analyses the creation of a new management role – the so called “competence coach” – in project‐based organisation within the Tetra Park group. It argues that the new approach adopted points to the need of breaking out of traditional conceptions of line management, and of developing the concept of an HR‐oriented management role that is a legitimate player in the HR organisation of a firm.

The paper provides a rich case description of a project‐based firm in a HRM perspective. The descriptions and the analysis give practical as well as theoretical implications of HRM issues that arise in project‐based firms, and of changes in line management as a way of developing the capabilities to handle these issues.

Agile project management methods gain increasing attention of practitioners while they often remain neglected by scholarly research. Specifically, there is little known about how performance factors of agile firms differ from those of traditional firms. Scholars argue that these factors often relate to a firm’s human resource management (HRM). This study aims to analyze and compare the HRM architectures in agile and traditional project-based organizations that lead to high firm performance.

The authors apply fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis on data of 154 project-based organizations of diverse professional service industries in Russia.

This study’s findings suggest that HRM architectures of high-performance agile firms imply a broad use of ability-, motivation- and opportunity-enhancing practices and a high degree of HRM process centralization, while traditional firms adopt more diverse HRM architectures.

Based on this study’s results, the authors stress the importance of ensuring a good fit between a company’s project management approach and HRM architecture. The revealed configurations may also provide guidance for practitioners on designing effective HRM architectures in project-based organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the extent to which project preferences and social capital constrain mobility in project‐based careers.

The paper analyzes the careers of 352 individuals who entered the motion picture industry between 1988 and 1990. It uses motion picture credit histories to generate role sequence paths. The paper quantifies differences between paths using optimal matching techniques and cluster analysis to classify paths into clusters. It validates the classification by testing hypotheses about differences between path clusters.

In addition to a large group of individuals who exit the industry after the initial credit, the paper identifies three distinct clusters of career paths that exhibit differences in the sex of individuals on them, in the persistence of relationships with employers, in employer characteristics, and in the nature of subsequent projects.

Because the paper is exploratory, general hypotheses are tested. Motion picture production may be an extreme example of project‐based production, which would limit generalizability.

Managers, individuals and career experts should recognize that mobility can be constrained and channeled by preferences in project type and by social capital. Employer celebrity appears to play no role in the careers of assistants, but control over many projects plays a significant role.

The paper demonstrates non‐organizational constraints on mobility in project‐based, apparently boundaryless, self‐managed careers.

The author aims to explore and provide new insights on the resource manager role in a matrix-like project-based organization. What is the content of this role and the challenges as perceived by role incumbents?

This a case study of a large project department in an industrial organization. The main source of data is interviews with 12 respondents.

The author describes and analyzes several mechanisms related to the key tasks of resource allocation, competence development and performance appraisals. Key challenges are the magnitude of stakeholders, especially the relationship with the project manager. To cope with these challenges, resource managers engage in extensive networking and recurrent dialog with the project manager. In addition, system knowledge and a sociable personality are perceived to enhance coping.

One case. 12 interviews were conducted at one point in time. The resource manager is a specific type of line manager, complementing a task (project) manager. Hypotheses and research questions based on empirical findings are identified.

Organizational structure and the content of managerial roles are important in order to understand HRM challenges and activities in project-based organizations. Networking, relation maintenance and system knowledge and sociable and creative mindsets are key success factors for resource managers in large matrix-like project-based organizations.

One of the few in-depth studies of the resource manager in a project-based organization. A novel organizational context for the study of roles in HRM. A number of suggestions for further research.