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The effective management of inter-organizational integration is central to complex projects. Such projects pose significant challenges for integration, as organizations struggle with constantly changing inter-organizational interdependencies and must develop and adapt integration mechanisms to meet new demands. The purpose of this paper is to understand what kinds of integration mechanisms are used and how they are developed and adjusted during the infrastructure alliance projects.

This study provides empirical evidence of integration dynamics in project alliancing by analyzing two infrastructure alliance projects – a complex tunnel construction project and a railway renovation project. The research approach is an inductive case study.

This paper identifies integration mechanisms adopted in two case projects and three central triggers that led to changes in the integration mechanisms: project lifecycle phase, unexpected events and project team’s learning during the project.

Integration capability should be a precondition for alliance project organizations and requires the adoption of a wide range of integration mechanisms, as well as an ability to adjust those mechanisms in response to everyday dynamics and emergent situations.

Although unplanned contingencies and the responses to them represent important influences in organizations, there is limited amount of research on the dynamics of integration. The findings will be of value in supporting the management of inter-organizational integration in complex, uncertain and time-critical construction projects.

Risk management and uncertainty in megaprojects is a flourishing topic in project management, while the unexpected is still a neglected matter. The purpose of this paper is to offer conceptual clarifications of the unexpected based on second-order-cybernetics and systems theory. While transferring findings from organisation theory to project management, the article provides fresh insights into managing the unexpected in megaprojects.

Being grounded on constructionism and systems theory, the conceptual paper explores selected research approaches from organisation theory: research on high-reliability organising, organisational resilience and organisational improvising, on contributions to managing the unexpected in megaprojects. Using the framework of meaning i.e. the factual, social and temporal dimensions, challenges of handling the unexpected are analysed and (effects of) decision-making structures for such projects are defined.

This paper argues that classic project management, while neglecting the fundamental distinction between risk, uncertainty and the unexpected, sticks to a planning-and-controlling approach. But the unexpected cannot be planned; however, organisations and managers can prepare for the unexpected. This requests a balance between structure and self-organisation in planning, communication, hierarchy and organisational culture. Understanding the contradictions inherent in managing megaprojects allows for smart decision-making when riding the waves of resilience.

The study adds to the literature on complexity and uncertainty in project management by enhancing the view to include the unexpected. While rejecting the universal applicability of rationality-based risk and controlling conceptions, shifting to second-order cybernetics and integrating elements of resilient organising increases the understanding of handling the unexpected in megaprojects.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the development and outbreak of a crisis in a high-priority project within a large organization.

Single-case study using extreme case sampling, a type of purposeful sampling, because this case provides rich information on a rare research opportunity: a project crisis that emerged during the fieldwork. Research data are semi-structured interviews, observations, project and organization documentation, logbook, notes and memos.

The paper shows the relevance of notions from organizational crisis management to an internal crisis in a temporary setting. This allowed a deeper understanding of crisis development. The paper reveals the wealth of meaningful, transparent data that can be collected when a crisis emerges. It highlights the high potential of project crises to reveal parent organizations’ dysfunctions. Indeed, findings suggest that the parent organization’s usual project management practices greatly contributed to the crisis affecting this project, which was unusually large and complex.

The main potential limitation relates to transferability. However, a single-case study is appropriate when it represents a rare phenomenon that is not easily accessible for researchers – a crisis outbreak.

Results can provide insights enabling practitioners to improve their understanding of the ambiguous, stressful situations created by a crisis.

The results show the relevance of notions from organizational crisis management to the development of a project crisis and demonstrate the potentially harmful impact of a parent organization’s “usual” practices, especially on “unusually” large and complex projects.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the origins and nature of unexpected events that affect complex projects, by relying on a view of projects as social systems. The authors argue that the project relation to its environment is mediated by a model of this environment that is embedded in the communications between project participants. The adequacy of this model to the causal texture of the environment inspired a first, epistemological, dimension for characterizing events: event predictability. The nature of the boundaries between system and environment inspired the second dimension: locus of generation.

This study followed a multiple‐case study approach. The authors collected data in 17 complex projects, in three types of industries: construction, IT/IS, and pharmaceutical.

In total, nine categories of unexpected events were identified from the intersection of two dimensions: event predictability and locus of generation.

The empirically validated two‐dimensional framework sheds new light on the way organizations react to unexpected events and on the reasons for the eventual project performance.

The findings show that project managers tend to underestimate certain risks. This research will help managers better predict those types of risks. However, some risks are simply unpredictable, therefore the authors argue for the necessity to prepare projects for the unforeseen.

Analyzing the previous literature in unexpected events, the authors identified two main, but opposing, theoretical perspectives: one rooted in decision theory and the other that sees projects as social systems. The value of this paper comes from the original mode in which the authors propose to reconcile these perspectives, by viewing projects as networks of communicative couplings between actors.

Most complex engineering projects encounter unexpected events through their life cycle. These are traditionally attributed to inaccurate foresight and poor planning. Outlining a nonanticipatory alternate, the authors seek to explain the ability to rebound from unexpected events, without foresight, using resilient systems theory. This paper seeks to outline the theoretical underpinnings of project resilience and to identify criteria for planning and selecting projects for greater resilience.

Investigating project resilience, this paper studies the relationship between unexpected events and project performance in 21 projects. The authors perform a systematic review of project ex post evaluations 3–12 years after project completion.

First, the authors find that all projects encountered unexpected events, even when discounting planning error. Second, the authors show that, as a consequence, projects underperformed, not necessarily relative to formal criteria, but in terms of subjective opportunity cost, that is, relative to competing alternates – known or imagined – foregone by their implementation. Finally, the authors identify four types of resilient projects – superior, equivalent, compensatory and convertible projects – as opportunities for building project resilience.

The properties of resilient projects provide opportunities for building resilience in complex projects.

Departing from traditional efforts to “de risk” plans and “de-bias” planners, this paper focuses on the properties of projects themselves, as an alternate to improved foresight and up-front planning.

This paper aims to describe three exploratory field studies investigating which characteristics add to later time to market and/or low product functionality of newly developed products. The studies are conducted at the level of developments tasks, or work packages. The first and second studies investigate to what extent the unpredictability of the project's outcome is the result of the unpredictability of the completion time of individual work packages, and of the instability of the total network of work packages.

Statistical analysis of the empirical data about the progress of three design projects carried out in the development department of a high‐tech capital equipment manufacturer was used. The third study examines the reasons that members of the product development teams in this firm give for the unpredictability of time and quality of the project's outcome.

The results result indicate the existence of three very different sources of unpredictability: the usual uncertainty about the duration of a design task, the discovery of unexpected new problems in a design task, and the reprioritization of a work package by project leaders due to new problems in other work packages.

Together the three studies provide a detailed account of the operational characteristics of time‐paced product development projects in a particular firm and suggest ways to effectively manage such a project.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the international market development process in small- and medium-sized exporting firms (SMEs) and to examine the influence of “unexpected market events” in relation to actual market activities.

The discussion is illustrated with a multiple case study. The data in the cases were collected by using secondary data, but also through face-to-face interviews with export executives in the firms. The cases for this research were selected on the basis of suggestions from the Swedish Export Council who applied their own interpretations of firms that have shown rapid export development.

SMEs are becoming more involved in international activities and exhibiting market behaviours not previously seen. The recognition that internationalization is affected by multiple influences has led to a growing interest in contingency approaches. The findings in the study are illustrated by a typology of international market behaviour.

The study is limited to a few exporting firms within the manufacturing industry so the results of the study can only be tentative.

The number of SME firms operating in international markets has grown. The findings in this paper emphasize the importance of the fact that management has the interest, experience and commitment necessary for international activities.

The interest in the study is focused on capturing the steps in the development process that diverts internationalization in a firm from the traditional path of exporting in SMEs. The multiple case studies illustrate the fact that unexpected market events can influence the firm’s marketing behaviour and the international marketing strategy.

Growing emphasis on meeting client needs and improving project performance within the construction industry has led to increasing use of fully integrated “design and build” (D&B) construction project teams. Advocates of the D&B system contend that integrating design and construction this way leads to a seamless procurement process, improved team relationships, and a more efficiently delivered product. This article reports on research which explored the operational efficiency of such integrated project teams. The findings suggest that despite the benefits of integration, cultural and professional interfaces remain which impair team performance and undermine structural change management protocols. This effectively leaves the team operating as work‐groups in a similar way as they would under a traditionally procured contract, with the construction team excluded from the change management process. A methodology is proposed for exploring these discontinuities in detail, and addressing intra‐work‐group conflicts which threaten the continued development of D&B within the sector.

The Nature of Business Policy Business policy — or general management — is concerned with the following six major functions:

The purpose of this paper is to review and analyze Albert Hirschman’s landmark book Development Projects Observed, share its insights for managing big projects, discuss its theoretical implications and how it may contribute to the current understanding of project behavior, project management (PM), and in what way it may encourage the rethinking of PM.

The paper is based on an in-depth analysis of Hirschman’s book. The paper draws on the writings of Jeremy Adelman who authored Hirschman’s biography, Cass Sunstein and Michele Alacevich who, respectively, wrote the foreword and afterword of the Brookings Institution classic published in 2014. It also profits from the work of Robert Picciotto who first met Hirschman in 1964, and Bent Flyvbjerg who recently offered a test of validity for Hirschman’s “Hiding Hand” principle.

Albert Hirschman was an original thinker and, the authors argue in many ways, a father of PM scholarship. His ideas had profound implications for social sciences and lasting influence in academy, policy, and practice. Although, to a great extent based on studies of projects, his ideas have had surprisingly little impact on modern writings of PM. This paper contributes to amending this weakness in current literature on PM. The authors identify in Hirschman’s book a set of core ideas that possess analytical power for explaining problems in contemporary PM. They include the principle of the Hiding Hand, the power of context, the role of complexity and uncertainty, the unexpected project effects, project traits, and latitudes/disciplines. For all his work and way of research, the authors conclude that Hirschman is not only an early behavioral theorist in PM but equally an early rethinker of PM.

This is the first paper that offers a discussion of Hirschman’s ideas on contemporary projects, how to understand them, their behavior, including the principle of the Hiding Hand and other important nuggets of wisdom in his research such as the significance of project traits, latitudes, and disciplines. The authors discuss in what respects these ideas may enlighten PM practice and theory. This paper also conveys the novel idea that Hirschman is an early rethinker of PM.