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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.

As social media technologies permeate public life, the current forms of collaboration between government and non-government stakeholders are changing. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how social media use reconfigures the organizing practices around such collaboration. A case study of a collaborative e-government project showcases how emergent organizing practices through external social media differ from existing ones along the dimensions of time, task, team and transition.

This paper presents a case study of a collaborative e-government project on open data, organized by Shanghai Municipality, local businesses, universities and non-governmental organizations, using an external social media platform, WeChat. Adopting the theoretical lens of temporary organization, the paper identifies the key aspects of change emerged in the organizing practices of this collaboration.

The findings outline how the use of external social media reconfigures the collaboration between government and non-government stakeholders along the four dimensions of time, task, team and transition. The new form of collaboration is reconfigured along the lines of (1) an ad hoc and non-linear management of time; (2) discursive task creation, assignment and engagement among stakeholders; (3) a serendipitous engagement of team members based on expertise; and (4) a shift in formal and informal organizing practices.

This paper provides insights on the use of external social media for collaboration in e-government research and develops the concept of temporary organization in a sociomaterial setting. It also provides practical suggestions on how to manage new forms of public projects leveraging on the capacity of external social media.

This empirical study aims to determine whether justice perceptions formed in one context (i.e. the agency or the client) relate to work behaviors in another context (i.e. the client or the agency). To provide a balanced perspective, it seeks to examine both organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) and counterproductive workplace behaviors (CWBs). It also aims to understand how workers' “volition” or their attitudes towards temporary employment would affect their behaviors.

To test the hypotheses, 157 temporary agency workers were surveyed; these data were analyzed with structural equation modeling (SEM). To ensure that the measures were appropriate for the context of temporary agency employment, a two‐stage pretest was conducted.

The results suggest that temporary agency worker perceptions of interpersonal justice from their agencies and their client organizations “spillover” and are indeed related to their OCBs and CWBs in both contexts. Furthermore, the extent to which workers voluntarily chose temporary agency employment related to agency‐directed OCBs, while a preference for permanent employment related to client‐directed OCBs.

This study provides insight into the ways in which perceptions formed in one context (i.e. interpersonal justice) may spill over and affect behaviors in another context. The findings also contribute to the broader literature on how volition affects temporary agency worker behaviors.

The purpose of this study is to understand the teamwork of temporary employees by taking into consideration the impact and role of the management’s perspective, temporary employee’s perspective and contextual perspective.

Based on reviews of workplace literature pertaining to temporary employments, conversations with managers and temporary and permanent employees of organizations engaging temporary employees on a perennial basis have been thematically analyzed.

Multiple perspectives of teamwork of temporary employees exist in organizations. However, one rarely finds the interaction and collective treatment of these perspectives, which are critical to understanding teamwork of temporary employees. The paper reports on these perspectives.

With rise in temporary employments in organizations and teamwork being crucial to participative work cultures, organizations need to consider multiple perspectives of the phenomenon before making an informed decision.

There is limited research that delves into teamwork of temporary employees despite the phenomenon becoming increasingly significant in organizations. This paper offers an approach to look at teamwork of temporary employees through multiple perspectives.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the governance in project organising where owner organisations interface with the temporary project organisations that they initiate. This interface between the two types of organisation represents an opportunity for innovation.

In total, 25 narrative interviews were conducted with managers who work in permanent owner and operator organisations and temporary project organisations. It is combined with the analysis of textual narratives represented in institutional reports (APM, IPA, PMI).

The findings show that it is the flexible and balanced approach to governance that allows innovation to emerge. Strong capable innovative owners play crucial role in creating the corporate governance framework to allow innovation in projects.

The current research presents narratives voiced by senior managers in permanent owner and operator organisations and temporary project organisations. The ways governance can be adjusted through the life cycle of major programmes require further a more longitudinal research investigation.

The practical benefits for the project management community is a better understanding of corporate governance in owner and operator organisations, the role of leadership and their narratives in governing processes, and the impact of strong governance on organisational performance and project deliverables.

Senior managers socially constructed the meaning of governance through narratives. The author learn about practices of governance through the perspectives of those involved in decision making.

This paper contributes to project management theory in two ways: it provides insight into the practice of corporate governance; and it develops the application of narrative enquiry to project management research.

Many workers today are employed under a variety of nonstandard work arrangements, such as contract work and agency temporary work. While prior research has shown that the use of nonstandard workers can be detrimental to standard workers’ attitudes and behaviors, producing conflict between nonstandard and standard employees, that research has not shown how or why. We propose a model in which threat to status of, and accommodation by, standard workers cause negative reactions to nonstandard workers, contingent upon the competence of nonstandard workers. The model helps explain how subtle differences among seemingly similar nonstandard work arrangements can produce dramatically different challenges to work group effectiveness. Implications for the effective blending of work groups are discussed.

The purpose of this research is to examine the causes and consequences of permanent employees' perceptions that temporary employees are a threat to their job security.

The underlying theme of the current research is that an important reason why temporary employees can disrupt the work environment is that permanent workers can perceive them as threatening. A survey of permanent (n=99) and temporary employees (n=62) was used to test hypotheses. Multiple sources were used to assess permanent employees' treatment of their temporary co‐workers.

Permanent employees felt more threatened when they perceived the layoff policy and motives for using temporary workers as inappropriate, and when the position of temporary employees was equal to or above their own rank. The relationship between these feelings of threat and their behavior toward the temporary employees was moderated by temporary employee type. Specifically, permanent employees who did not feel threatened treated involuntary temporary employees better, but permanent employees who felt threatened treated voluntary temporary employees better.

The sampling procedure limits the generalizability of the findings.

This paper helps illuminate the dynamics between temporary and permanent workers to enable organizations to decide when temporary employees will be helpful and when they will be harmful. The results provide specific recommendations for when different types of temporary employees should be used.

This paper applies psychological and organizational theories to the workplace to uncover when blended workforces are likely to be problematic.

The last several years have witnessed a growing scholarly interest in project-based organizations. This interest mirrors the diffusion of this organizational form across a wide range of industries, well beyond those where organizations traditionally have been organized by projects. To date, however, research on project-based organizations has not yet offered a systematic investigation of the interactions between project-based organizing and strategic management research. An examination of the existing literature indicates that some of the answers to key strategy questions remain incomplete, at times contradictory, and at best ambiguous. This volume moves the discussion to the next level by offering a comprehensive yet integrated view of cutting-edge research on project-based organizing to shed light on some of these ambiguities and clarify the relationship between project-based organizing and strategic management. To accomplish this, the volume includes the contributions of several leading scholars who have been active researchers on this subject. The chapters develop and extend key strategic aspects of project-based organizing, raise many new important questions, and identify fruitful areas for future research.

Project-based organization (PBO) can serve as a temporary organizational form in response to uncertainty or turbulent environmental conditions. An updated retrospective study of the Danish hearing aids maker Oticon illustrates the role of PBO (the so-called spaghetti organization) in guiding the company through a specific period of industry turbulence and the company leader's search for a more effective structure to organize innovation within the company. The spaghetti organization was experimental in two distinct senses. First, the spaghetti organization tested the limits of decentralization, bottom-up self-organizing innovation, and PBO. Inspired by the experience of just how dysfunctional hierarchy could become, Oticon's spaghetti organization tested the limits of nonhierarchy. And unlike the failed Brook Farm utopia of the 1840s, the utopia of radical project-based organizing at Oticon proved highly successful as a means of promoting innovation even if the spaghetti organization was not sustainable in its original form and required subsequent modification. Second, Oticon was essentially a natural experiment testing and refuting the complementarities-based claim that intermediate forms of organization which include elements of both hierarchical organization and team (or project-based) organization are inherently unstable.

The purpose of this paper is to explore intra-firm coordination in temporary organizations (TOs). Specifically, it identifies and explains how operational coordination evolves over time in a particular TO: the 2016 Olympic Games Organizing Committee.

This is an immersive case study based on qualitative analysis and longitudinal fieldwork, which allowed the observation of operational coordination in real time. The main sources of data are participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and internal documents of the TO.

The findings suggest that operational coordination in TOs dealing with multiple and decentralized operations takes place through the combination of both formal and informal coordination mechanisms. Further analysis indicates a contingency logic in using these mechanisms, shaped by the presence of specific coordination challenges in different phases of work. Three main aspects influencing coordination are explored. First, it is suggested that TOs are inherently “hybrid.” That is, they comprise enduring as well as temporary and centralized as well as decentralized elements. These elements change over time. Second, a formal transition phase is explored: “venueization” – a phase between planning and operation in which centralized structural elements and processes are translated to operational units. Third, since TOs present emergence and dynamism, and related challenges across various phases of work, coordination is arguably contingent on the phase of the project.

Although the findings are limited to a particular empirical context, this paper offers theoretically new insights concerning the hybrid nature of processes in TOs, the contingent use of complementary coordination mechanisms, and the importance of the venueization phase, and provides a basis for future research into operational coordination in TOs.

The findings can help practitioners understand and identify the challenges embedded in temporary contexts and develop coordination strategies accordingly.

This study explains how operational coordination takes place in TOs enabled by formal and informal mechanisms, which are contingently combined over time through particular coordination strategies.