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The purpose of this paper is to understand how has the European Union (EU) funding influenced projectification of the Polish public sector. The projectification of the public sector is analysed in relation to three levels: mega (state level), macro (sector level) and mezo (organisation level). Hence, it is understood as a multidimensional phenomenon that permeates different social structures. The study also applies elements of neoinstitutional theory and Europeanisation concept to the research on projectification.

The research is based on the mixed methods approach. The adopted methods (document analysis, quantitative analysis and in-depth interviews) are both qualitative and quantitative in nature and were used sequentially to address the research question, while securing the triangulation of the data.

The Polish public sector was projectified as a result of the implementation of hundreds of thousands of projects co-financed by the EU, which among other things, effected in legal regulations that support the project implementation of public tasks and changes in organisational structures towards a project-oriented direction. At public organisation level, it causes changes in the scope of organisational structures, strategic management processes and methods of work. On the basis of the assumptions that explain the mechanism of organisational isomorphism and Europeanisation, the paper may conclude that the public sector projectification process was triggered by a misfit between the projectified EU structures and the low degree of projectification in the Polish public sector.

The study is the first step to try to understand how the massification of project activities can affect the activities of the public sector of the particular country and the shaping of public policies at home. Because Poland has been the largest beneficiary of EU funds in Europe for over ten years, it can be assumed that these processes in this country are particularly intense. An attempt was also made to identify the scale of the public sector projectification process in Poland by not only describing, but also quantifying the phenomenon.

The purpose of this paper is to understand projectification processes of the global organization, based on the example of the Catholic Church’s activities. The Catholic Church is the oldest and the largest international organisation to be assessed also from the longue durée perspective. The Church as both a large and supranational organisation and a religious community has carried out a lot of social tasks. A part of its activity relating to the Church’s basic mission is carried out in these days in the form of various projects. In this paper, the authors demonstrate that seemingly unchanging structure, such as the Catholic Church, based on a determined hierarchy, strict principles and rules of conduct, is affected by the projectification processes.

The authors chose the method of a single case study. To analyse the projectification processes in the Church, the authors focussed on flagship mega-events of WYD programme, from which the following were selected: Rome (1985), Manila (1995), Sydney (2008), Rio de Janeiro (2013) and Krakow (2016).

The study demonstrates that organisational projectification processes can have a real impact on the strategic changes in the global organisation. Under the influence of significant projects, organisations can change internally and also redefine their way of interacting with the stakeholders. Projectification at the same time is a change and leads to it. The research also shows that projectification of a global organisation can intensify internal learning processes. On the one hand, “projectification agents” transfer project practices to various regions of the world, and, on the other, draw on local practices. Therefore, the projectification process is not simply transplanting the project “virus” into new places, but also a process of change and adaptation to the stimuli flowing from the environment.

The particularities, the distinctiveness of the projects of the Catholic Church can be an inspiration for others realizing projects. The experience of the Catholic Church in the implementation of WYD can be valuable for organisations implementing other projects that require involvement and activation of many, diverse stakeholders, for example, charitable projects or the so-called community engagement projects implemented by large international organisations, such as the World Bank, UNICEF, the UN, the Red Cross or humanitarian projects organised by NGOs in different parts of the world.

The growing presence of projectification is affecting more than its cradle, the industry, characterizing it as a broader phenomenon than initially envisioned. This study aims to provide a literature review on the concept.

The sampling process includes articles from two databases, Web of Science and Scopus, and a backward snowballing sampling through the references, entailing the analysis of 103 documents. The publications were analyzed applying bibliometric, content and semantic analyses both manually and with the assistance of VOSViewer, Bibliometrix, NVivo11 and Tropes v.8.

The results identified 55 definitions of projectification. The study synthesizes them in five levels of analysis to capture their main distinctive aspects, as follows: (1) Private Organizations; (2) Public Sector; (3) Academy; (4) Individuals (work and private life); and (5) Society. The paper concludes by depicting factors as general effects, negative effects, tensions, funding and knowledge, embedded within each level of analysis.

This work sheds light on the evolution of projectification concept, presents a multilevel analysis of its consequences and brings forward the related topics, which still require further investigation.

The aim of this article is to give an overview of the development and current state of projectification research. The inquiry was driven by a threefold research question: How has projectification been understood and defined over time, what has the trajectory of the development been and what are the main trends and emerging ideas?

The article is an integrative literature review of research done on the notion of projectification to date. An interdisciplinary, integrative literature review was conducted using Scopus and Web of Science as primary sources of data collection. The full data set consists of 123 journal articles, books, book chapters and conference contributions. With the data set complete, a thematic analysis was conducted.

Among other things, the review outlines the development and scope of projectification research from 1995 until 2021 and discusses four emerging images of projectification: projectification as a managerial approach, projectification as a societal trend, projectification as a human state and projectification as a philosophical issue. These characteristics emphasize some common features of each of the images but also imply that the way projectification is understood changes depending on the paradigmatic perspective taken by the researcher, the time and place in which the observation was made and the level of observation.

The authors have outlined and discussed four images of projectification – projectification as a managerial approach, projectification as a societal trend, projectification as a human state and projectification as a philosophical issue – where each image represents a special take on projectification with some prevalent characteristics. By doing this, the authors provide a systematic categorization of research to date and thus a basis upon which other researchers can build when furthering the understanding of projectification at large.

The purpose of this paper is to establish an understanding of what projectification means, how projectification is driven forward, as well as what the consequences of projectification are in an European Union (EU) context, and in the public sector in general.

The research methods consist of a literature review as well as a meta-analysis of key EU policy documents related to the functioning of regional development and projects. The paper shows that structural developments brought forth by a projectification in a public sector context have significant consequences.

Without contextually sensitive interlinking mechanisms between temporary and permanent structures projects risk losing their flexible and innovative qualities, and may fragment the ability of permanent organisations for maintaining coordination and continuity. The findings suggests that the proximity of permanent organisations, the discretion of entrepreneurship, the political priority of the task, the inclusion of competencies and interests, and the quality of transfer mechanisms are essential variables in explaining the outcome of temporary organisations in a politico-administrative context.

The paper contributes to the literature on projects in a public sector context and suggests that comparative research on the drivers and consequences of public sector projectification in supranational as well as national contexts is needed.

The increasing requirements for applied project management skills and methods as criteria for project selection in the public sector highlight the importance of a broader theoretical and practical understanding of projectification.

The paper adds a new dimension to the projectification debate by presenting a descriptive and conceptual discussion about the consequences of public sector projectification in an EU context. It complements an existing theory of the temporary organisation and takes the first steps towards a theory applicable to projectification in a public context.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the past 25 years of the research on projectification, focusing especially on organisational aspects of projectification, as well as to discuss recent developments and potential future research directions.

This is a discussion paper, which draws on previously published research and data.

The first section identifies contexts in which projectification has taken place (projectification of) and the organisational process by which this has taken place (projectification through). Using an illustrative example based on publicly available data, the second section shows an extension of the organisational phenomenon, referred to as advanced organisational projectification. The paper concludes with a synthesised framework of organisational projectification.

The paper provides a personal reflection and commentary and is focused on the conceptualisation of the term rather than an all-encompassing study of projectification. Based on the discussion, the paper presents a synthesised view of organisational projectification as well as directions for future research to advance the understanding of projectification.

The study has implications for policy-makers in the design of the process of ongoing projectification and provides illustrations and a warning concerning the assumptions that are made as an organisation advances in its projectification.

This paper provides an elaboration of one of the focal concepts of project studies, extending some of the key elements of project management research.

This paper aims to provide insights into the role of project management associations for the projectification of society from an institutional theory perspective.

The paper is based on a mixed methods approach. It draws on the research propositions of a recently conducted qualitative study and builds on them by analyzing the empirical data of a quantitative case study.

The results indicate that the projectification of society in Germany is well advanced and continues growing. The economy plays a leading role, which resonates with other sectors of society. The actions of project management associations have only an indirect influence on the projectification of society, which cultural–cognitive institutions are mediating. Both findings are novel compared to the literature.

Taking an overall view of the findings, project management associations gain a better understanding of the projectification process and important guidance on their role.

The results offer all people interested intriguing insights into the contemporary phenomenon of the projectification of society, along with its current state and future evolution.

The application of institutional theory to the projectification of society in the framework of this case study enables an in-depth analysis of the underlying social processes and interactions between the regulative, normative and cultural–cognitive activities of project management associations on the one hand, and institutions on the other hand, at the societal level. This opens up new and promising perspectives for further research.

The purpose of this paper is to improve the methodology of assessing the importance of projects in a national economy. The subject of study is projectification in the Icelandic economy and to measure this, the share of project work in relation to the total work done in an organisation was used as an indicator. This is a time-consuming approach and it was decided to do an additional benchmark study, to verify the alleged importance of projects, and to investigate the usefulness of a benchmark study and establish whether the two approaches could complement each other.

Data were collected from 146 organisations in Iceland, regarding the share of project work relative to total work, as explained by Schoper et al. (2018). In addition, by participation in a large quarterly omnibus survey among people with high management positions in their respective companies in Iceland, more general data were collected. The methods and outcomes of both surveys were compared, and general conclusions are drawn.

The authors conclude that the two research approaches complement each other and could be applied in a systematic way to give a longitudinal view of the evolution of projectification in a society, where projectification is measured, traced over time and benchmarked. The first part is more complicated and expensive in execution, and could be done at longer intervals, whereas the second part takes less effort and can be used to monitor the evolution more regularly.

Two very different research approaches were applied to assess projectification. On the one hand, a detailed quantitative survey of the economic impact of projects. On the other hand, a general survey of a very large sample of managers. This combined approach to assess the level of projectification is new, and the authors hope that this will be of value in the context of developing efficient, reliable and practical methods to assess projectification of societies.

The last few decades have seen the rapid emergence of two transformative streams in large firms. The first is the development of project management, aimed at improving the performance of innovation management, while the second, the internationalization of innovation organizations and processes in response to strategies of redeployment toward emerging countries. Both streams have been closely analyzed in the fields of project management and international management, respectively. However, the links between the two have been less studied. The purpose of this paper is to consider the hypothesis that a firm’s projectification might have an important impact on its pattern of internationalization in innovation.

First, we present the models of internationalization of innovation processes used in the multinational corporation literature. This field essentially focuses on the components of permanent organizations: global internationalization strategy and legacy, R&D footprint, characterization of local subsidiaries and the role of central head offices. Projects figure only as a context in which those elements operate, not as a structuring variable of the global innovation process pattern. The authors challenge this view by exploring whether the specificities of the firm’s projectification pattern can influence how it builds its global innovation process. The paper is based on a longitudinal case where the authors analyze the organizational transition within the Renault group, an emblematic case of a multinational that implemented a spectacular internationalization transition in the 2000s.

Our results demonstrate project organizing’s major impact on the internationalization patterns of innovation processes within the firm. They show how the deployment of a polycentric innovation footprint has been the consequence of a specific projectification transition, giving the project and program functions the autonomy to transgress centralized product development norms to adapt their project to the local environment; use the initial breakthrough project as the foundation for a new and specific global product development network through a lineage logic; and sustain this innovation global network as a permanent process of the firm.

The paper demonstrates the importance of the organization’s projectification characteristics as an important vector for successfully implementing the most advanced internationalization strategies (i.e. reverse innovation) and innovation processes models (i.e. integrated networks).

The paper characterizes project management related conditions that can govern the success of innovation strategies in high-growth emerging countries: the autonomy and empowerment of project functions; colocation and integration of teams; existence of a program function; and HR policies capable of supporting lineage management and project-to-project learning processes.

Bridging project management literature with multinational management literature. Demonstrate the key impact of projectification on internationalization pattern of the firm. Longitudinal analysis of a firm internationalization transition on a ten-year period.