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Project networks are an increasingly salient organisational temporary form to deal with complex problems. It remains unclear, however, whether and how project networks adapt over time, and hence implement changes, both within the span of the specific project, and across projects. The authors apply the performance feedback (PF) perspective to explore how adaptive responses to PF are organised and absorbed within project networks. The authors investigate these matters in the area of humanitarian and development aid efforts, which represent complex social issues. In this context, project networks involve a multitude of actors at different distances from the implementation field, ranging from the donor, through an international Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), to the NGO’s country offices, local NGOs and the beneficiary communities. This study’s qualitative findings, which the authors generate through an abductive analytical process, highlight that project networks dealing with complex social issues face six paradoxes based on work by DeFillippi and Sydow: the distance, difference, identity, learning, temporal and performance paradoxes. Collective goal setting, adaptive monitoring and evaluation practices, and continuous re-negotiation of aspiration levels emerge as coping mechanisms enabling project networks to internalise insights from the field and translate them into adaptive behavioural responses, mainly at the intra-project level. The authors contribute to a better understanding of adaption in these temporary forms, and particularly in its behavioural consequences. The study also advances knowledge on the PF perspective, through its application in temporary settings, on the level of the project network and in the context of complex social issues, where organisational arrangements strive to pursue multiple interdependent goals.

This paper aims to understand the challenges of managing projects in hybrid organizations. The authors explore how organizations with persistent competing institutional logics strive to balance competing priorities, and the authors craft a research agenda to examine the capabilities to manage projects in hybrid organizations.

The authors focus on the social enterprise hybrid organizational form to study how such organizations manage persistent competing social and economic logics. The authors review the project management and social enterprise literature to generate new insights and suggest future research directions for theory development for project management.

The understanding of the influences of the institutional context on the management of projects is still quite limited. The authors propose that project managers need adaptive capabilities to address how the dual logics, and their corresponding different expectations, can be flexibly combined. The objective is not to reduce the complexity due to the different logics, which is the focus of much of the literature on institutional complexity. Instead, the focus is on how to incorporate dual logics into a successfully blended hybrid organization.

There is a dearth of literature about how projects are successfully managed in hybrid organizations with persistent competing institutional logics, like social enterprises, and important questions remain to be answered. This paper offers new insights on the capabilities required to flexibly combine dual logics that would generally compete and create conflict on projects in hybrid organizations.

The authors argue that the mainstream scholarly discourse on hybridity and accounting is thus far primarily interested in the use and effects of accounting “in” hybrid organizations. Consequently, the literature has to a lesser extent explored how accounting mediates hybrid settings (while also being mediated), and the role of disentanglements in such processes. In hybrid settings, objects are difficult to define, and measures and tools difficult to agree upon. However, the literature on hybrid accounting is inconclusive and indicates that accounting can potentially both stabilize and de-stabilize relations in a hybrid setting. The authors address the research question of how accounting emerges and manifests itself in a process of entangling and disentangling in a heterogeneous emerging hybrid setting.

The paper is based on a longitudinal qualitative case study of the implementation of social investments, a public sector calculative framework based on the logic of measuring long term and social and economic impact of prevention. Methodologically, the study was guided by actor-network theory. In total, 18 observations and 48 interviews were conducted.

The observation the authors make in their case study is that much effort was spent on both keeping things apart and tying elements together. What the authors add to the literature is an illumination of how the interplay between entanglements and disentanglements facilitated the design idea of social investments to be enacted as multiple semi-integrated and purified hybridizations. The authors describe different translation points, each representing a specific hybridization where elements were added, recombined and disentangled. Still, the translation points were not completely compartmentalized, but rather semi-integrated where associations were facilitated through active mediation, likeness and productiveness for each other.

One limitation is the single case approach. A second limitation arises from the ANT approach to hybridity.

A practical implication of this paper is that in hybrid settings, the semi-integrated character may be interpreted as a strength because it allows the mobilization of heterogenous actors. However, this may also come at the cost of governability and raises further questions of managerial practices in hybrid settings.

The paper suggests the potentially productive role of disentanglements in allowing multiple hybridizations to evolve in hybrid accounting settings.

The paper suggests the potentially productive role of disentanglements in allowing multiple stabilized hybridizations to evolve in hybrid accounting settings.

This paper aims to contribute to the on-going debate about the best way to measure the economic effectiveness of public policies, as well to explore the possibility of using the social return on investment (SROI) method as one of the indicators.

This study combines the SROI method with the case study analysis and comparative study. The paper presents the process of economic evaluation with the use of the SROI methodology and its results, along with methodological and evaluation observations.

This study confirms some assumptions based both on the subject literature, as well as, on own experience related to the implementation of the evaluation, the author also points out dilemmas related to the use of SROI analysis and the possibility of using it to measure the effectiveness of social innovation projects.

The study contains several practical suggestions on the advantages and disadvantages of the SROI method in the evaluation of particular public policy intervention.

The paper includes implications for the use of SROI analysis of social innovation projects implemented in the frames of public policies.

The authors’ ambition is to provide practical suggestions on the advantages and disadvantages of the SROI method in the evaluation of particular public policy intervention and to contribute to the discussion about the possible space for comparing the results of economic evaluation based on the SROI method. Furthermore, it is different than most approaches to SROI analysis as the authors combine this method with the case study analysis and comparative study.

This paper aims to consider the development of corporate social responsibility (CSR) projects by Catoca, a diamond mining company in Angola, along with the effectiveness of these projects, and the benefits to stakeholders.

The research method used was direct observation and semi-structured interview with executives and administrative employees of the company, and collaborators of CSR projects, during 2010, 2011 and 2012. We also analyse documents about CSR projects developed by Catoca and identify the challenges faced.

The management of CSR projects is hampered by the low disclosure of results and the absence of social indicators. This may generate inadequate results compared to investment. The assumption of low stakeholder expectation and the absence of social indicators may lead to neo-philanthropic or preconceived actions that ignore local peculiarities.

This study is limited to one company, and the lack of social indicators means it is difficult to evaluate the reported results.

This paper improves understanding of the challenges involved in CSR projects in Africa and may also be useful for companies that develop CSR projects, drawing attention to issues that could compromise the proper use of resources and hamper results.

This study considers Angola, which is using its natural resources to boost economic and social development, establish partnerships with foreign companies and encourage the development of CSR programmes which often end up filling gaps left by the absence of government action.

This study contributes to the largely under-researched area of CSR projects in Angola.

This paper aims to integrate research on KM with the effectuation approach. This paper will add to the understanding of effectuation as a KM tool in the context of social entrepreneurial networks. Although researchers agree that the lack of resources is a structural point for the context of social entrepreneurship and that knowledge is crucial in social entrepreneurship, only few studies deal with trying to understand how resources and knowledge are obtained, transformed and managed. An effectual approach seems to be particularly appropriate to work on this subject.

A literature review leads to a theoretical model that is tested in a single-case study of a French entrepreneurial project.

The empirical study not only shows the legitimacy of using an effectual approach but also puts forward three concepts that enable a better understanding of the access to resources and knowledge and their use in the context of social entrepreneurship. This study contributes to the knowledge management literature in identifying the process of gathering and sharing external resources and knowledge through an effectual process led by the entrepreneur and by the network.

The results complement the extant KM literature on the following points: identify the cumulative and absorptive process of knowledge from the network, contributing to the question of KM for growth and corporate entrepreneurship; answer to the claim from Durst and Runar Edvardsson (2012) to develop a greater understanding of knowledge identification, storage and utilization in small businesses; add to the topics of knowledge sharing, knowledge transfer and knowledge creation; and show that stages of creating, identifying, sharing and absorbing knowledge from/with the network are embedded in an effectual approach.

The lack of resources should not lead the entrepreneur to a dead end, but rather invite him/her to better raise following questions: Who can help me to get the missing resource? How could I develop the project without these resources and knowledge? The entrepreneur is invited to search more flexibility in the making of the project, and to seek more support from the network. A second important implication is a guideline that can be followed by business incubators to give better advice and guidance to social entrepreneurs.

The paper links effectuation, KM and social entrepreneurship literatures. The identification of the role of the network in knowledge creation, identification and sharing is valuable for both researchers and practitioners.

While the success of the toll road projects procured through public private partnerships (PPPs) routes are widely confined to the cost, time and quality performance in the delivery context, considerable evidence suggests that such success criteria are not sufficient when the toll road projects are assessed in relation to meeting the long-run community expectations. The purpose of this paper is to examine the key factors associated with the success of the toll road projects from a societal perspective in Indonesia.

Based on the input from 12 experts and a rigorous literature review, a questionnaire survey was designed and a total of 206 respondents from three broad stakeholders’ groups, namely, government, private and end-users’ communities were surveyed to measure the performance of eight toll road projects. The data were primarily analyzed using exploratory factor analysis and reliability test using SPSS Software.

Four significant factors associated with the project social benefit were established as a measure of the overall success criteria in toll road projects. It is expected these can be used as guidance to deliver project social benefit to the community in the overall project lifecycle.

This research contributes to the incorporation of social project benefit attributes to the the toll road projects’ success criteria in overall project lifecycle.

This study can be used as guidance for the overall stakeholders, such as the government and the project manager to address the current social problems and better navigate the project direction in order to achieve the overall toll road project success in the overall project lifecycles.

The research highlights how the Indonesian government’s program of developing toll road projects using the PPP procurement routes can be supported for complete social inclusivity by considering the social dimension to achieve long-term success.

Identification of the key project social factors based on the data set with a wide representation of the stakeholders has made the research original and unique.

The social inclusion of youth is addressed from the perspective of goal-directed action in order to understand and foster it effectively. Conceptualized from the perspective of contextual action theory (CAT), the specific understanding of action as levels, perspectives and systems provides the basis to unpack the complexity of human action. One pertinent action system is identified as project. It refers to a series of actions over time with the same goal. Using this understanding, the social inclusion of youth is described though the joint actions and projects between youth and non-familial adults. These joint actions and projects include advocating for youth, providing instrumental knowledge and encouraging community involvement and civil engagement. CAT is also used to conceptualize and conduct research on the social inclusion of youth. Specifically, the action project method was used to describe the joint projects of both youth with disability and immigrant youth as these projects involved the youth’s social inclusion.

Social risk management has recently come to the fore as a significant feature of project management. This prominence is particularly evident in urban construction projects that take place in cultural heritage and tourism historic sites. Accordingly, this study aims to adopt social network analysis (SNA) to investigate social risks in construction projects occurring in urban districts rife with historically and culturally significant tourism sites.

The present study analyzed a real case study in Iran as an emergent economy and a developing country. Primarily, the study reviewed previous literature on social risks and relevant stakeholders. Next, the judgments of experts through the content validity ratio analysis confirmed 12 social risks and 9 key stakeholders. Finally, SNA is used to determine the relations between the social risks and stakeholders as well as the significance of each risk.

The investigation demonstrated that the most important social risks in the construction projects of the case study are “Psychological disorders”, “Environmental pollution” and “Cultural conflicts”.

The findings could help policymakers, urban planners and project managers in developing countries with a rich cultural heritage to reduce social risks and improve the efficiency of their projects.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the present study is one of the first instances to investigate construction projects implemented in densely populated urban areas hosting cultural heritage and historic tourism sites.