•Learning in a project-based context spans multiple levels including individual, project and organization.•Project managers, senior leaders, and PMO personnel influence different levels of ...learning.•Multilevel learning in a global project-based context occurs mostly in networks.•Formal and informal networks offer a powerful parallel organizational structure for multilevel learning.•PMO networks connect disjointed PMOs even if the offices are geographically dispersed.
Project learning is a function of individuals’ internal cognitive processes, interpretation and integration of learning at the team and project level, and the organization's ability to institutionalize learning into practices. However, understanding of how learning unfolds between these levels remains limited. Using a single in-depth case study, this paper reports on how learning occurs between levels in a global project-based organization (PBO). Six bridging mechanisms are identified: (1) networks, (2) organizational initiatives, (3) power and politics, (4) coaching and mentoring, (5) culture of empowerment, and (6) temporality. The temporal nature of the projects paired with the global context offers the opportunity for a stable workforce to be deployed across geographical regions to form formal and informal networks that offer a parallel organizational structure for multilevel learning. Project managers (PMs), senior leaders and the project management office (PMO) engage differently in the learning process, depending on their degree of connectivity and power within the global organization.
•The PMO has three distinctive sets of knowledge brokering roles.•Bottom-up roles promote experiential learning to inform decision making.•Top-down roles maintain deliberate learning to assist ...continuous improvement.•Horizontal roles facilitate knowledge synchronisation to help intra level learning.•The three sets of roles collectively contribute to better knowledge governance.
Organisations often suffer from knowledge flow gaps between operational and strategic management levels, leaving much knowledge trapped within operations’ boundaries. Prior studies viewed the project management office (PMO) as a knowledge broker that can enhance the interaction between these levels. However, they take a single-faceted knowledge brokering perspective that fails to define the specific knowledge brokering roles of the PMO and offer highly fragmentary evidence on the associated enabling factors. To fill this void, we draw on the brokerage theory to develop a comprehensive theoretical framework in which we define specific knowledge brokering roles of the PMO and delineate their enabling factors for facilitating multidirectional knowledge transactions. We elaborate on three sets of knowledge brokering roles, each of which corresponds to one of three categories of knowledge transactions. Our model shows how PMOs can broker knowledge trapped in organisational silos by balancing bottom-up experiential learning with top-down deliberate learning while maintaining horizontal knowledge synchronisation.
This paper aims at positioning organizational design as an important phenomenon in the field of project management with a high potential of contributing to organizational theory. While organizational ...design has been neglected by scholars of management and organizational theory, it has been of great interest to those from the project management field. This incongruence—comprising the focus of this study—calls for new insights on theorization in context. The paper provides a preliminary theoretical framework combining contingency theory, the historical approach and social theory to understand organizational design, both as a thing and as a process. It provides empirical evidence from three case studies in healthcare. Findings confirm the specificity of each design while at the same time adopting a similar temporal pattern. We take this opportunity to highlight the seminal work of Rodney Turner on project-based organization and design.
In this day and age, it is commonplace to assert that organizations are complex and that they change continuously over time. The complexity is said to exist, for example, in large organizations dealing with multiple competing projects while at the same time performing their regular operations. The concept of organizational design refers to both the resulting organization (the thing) and the process of performing the design. The field of project management has made many theoretical contributions to organizational design; yet it has also created confusion by introducing a plurality of terms for describing and understanding such organizations.
Organizational design is increasingly a topic in the literature from management and organizational theory and, especially, from project management. A review of the literature from both fields demonstrates that contingency theory is still considered as a major theoretical foundation for situating the organization within its context. The review also points to an increasing interest in social perspectives taking into account politics, organizational dynamics, paradoxes and pluralism. In addition, it shows an opportunity for scholars in project management to contribute to management and organizational theory.
This research proposes a pluralist theoretical framework for tackling contingency theory with the historical approach and social theory.
The empirical setting is comprised of complex large organizations—in this case, three university hospitals engaged in major organizational transformations—that are challenged to pursue their regular operations while undertaking multiple completing projects. Interestingly, the three hospitals are from the same geographical region. The organizational design was thus a crucial question and, in light of the complexity, no one-size-fits-all type of solution was strived for.
Results confirmed the prevalence of individual organizational design rather than mimetism, or homogenization, between the three hospitals. Being in the same region, the heads of the respective project management offices met on a number of occasions to exchange about their challenges and solutions. Nevertheless, in the end each hospital made an individual decision regarding its organizational design.
The study also identified organizational design as an ongoing process, introducing the concept of trajectory to illustrate how projects and organizational design change over time. In doing so, we observed a pattern where reflection and sense-making took place before engaging in any specific decision regarding the organizational design.
The theoretical contribution of this research is to demonstrate the potential of pluralist theoretical frameworks for understanding complex phenomena such as organizational design in the context of managing multiple projects. More specifically, the process view of organizational design was found to reveal new insights that would have remained hidden otherwise.
From a practical view, our research challenges certain utopian assumptions regarding the stability and replicability of a one-size-fits-all model in organizational design. Instead, we recommend developing an in-depth understanding of an organization's specific context by means of sense-making activities. The latter should be performed in an ongoing approach to ensure that the organizational design evolves in keeping with its environment.
•A theoretical framework is proposed for consolidating the dispersion of meanings of the concept of organizational design.•We validated this theoretical framework with three case studies dealing with major organizational transformations.•Empirical results suggest that organizational design is best understood with three theories that complement one another.•The results have theoretical implications for the fields of project management and organizational theory.•Practical implications concern decision-makers facing complex organizations in managing multiple competing projects.
Celem artykułu jest zbadanie procesu wdrożenia biura zarządzania projektami IT w dużych przedsiębiorstwach posiadających funkcje logistyczne, opisanie sytuacji przed wdrożeniem i po wdrożeniu, ...zidentyfikowanie dobrych praktyk dla menedżerów oraz wyznaczenie kierunków przyszłych badań. Badanie studium przypadku zostało przeprowadzone w dwóch przedsiębiorstwach funkcjonujących w Polsce
centralnej. Procedura zbierania danych obejmowała: obserwację uczestniczącą, wywiad nieustrukturyzowany oraz analizę dokumentów. Pierwsze przedsiębiorstwo wdrożyło biuro zarządzania projektami IT jako narzędzie niezbędne do usprawnienia funkcjonowania istniejącego systemu ERP oraz w drugim etapie jako wsparcie migracji do nowego, bardziej zaawansowanego systemu ERP. Drugie przedsiębiorstwo rozpoczęło definiowanie oraz wdrażanie biura zarządzania projektami IT jako środka do zarządzania koegzystencją
dwóch systemów zarządzania gospodarką magazynową. Dwa systemy magazynowe powinny zostać w dłuższym okresie porównane w zakresie elastyczności oraz czasu odpowiedzi na dynamiczne zmiany zachodzące w środowisku retail. Artykuł przedstawia wyniki pochodzące jedynie z badań przeprowadzonych w dwóch przedsiębiorstwach i prezentowane rezultaty nie powinny być traktowane jako reprezentatywne dla wszystkich dużych przedsiębiorstw realizujących procesy logistyczne. W celu dokonania uogólnienia rezultatów dla
przedsiębiorstw w Polsce wymagane jest przeprowadzenie kolejnych badań. Artykuł wzmacnia połączenie między praktyką a literaturą naukową przez dostarczenie empirycznych dowodów funkcjonowania biura zarządzania projektami IT w przedsiębiorstwach deklarujących potrzebę rozwoju funkcji logistycznych, identyfikuje dobre praktyki dotyczące zarządzania zmianami funkcjonalności oraz projektami IT oraz
wskazuje zagadnienia, które mogą stanowić podstawę do dalszych badań.
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the implementation of IT project management office within big companies with logistics organizations, describe situations before and after implementation, identify best practices for managers and indicate directions of further research. A case study method was used, with two companies selected and operating in central Poland. The procedure of data gathering included: participative observation, not structured interview and analysis of documents. The first company has implemented IT project management office as a tool necessary to improve existing ERP system and prepare organization for the future migration to the new, more advanced ERP software. Second company started the journey of defining and implementing IT project management office as a way to manage coexistence of two warehouse management software’s solutions. Two warehouse management software’s were to be compared in terms of flexibility and time of response to changes of dynamic retail environment. This paper studied just two companies and it is not intended to be representative of outcomes at all companies implementing IT project management office within the logistics organizations. Further studies
are required for a more generalized picture of IT project management office implementations in companies localizes in Poland. This paper strengthens the link between practitioner and academic literature by providing empirical evidence of the presence of IT project management office within companies declaring necessity of development in logistics areas. In the paper best practices concerning management of changes and projects in IT are presented and no-tions that could be used for further research are indicated.
To promote a better understanding of the effectiveness in project portfolio management (PPM), this article investigates how PPM effectiveness can be achieved. Conducting case study research with four ...market-leading organizations in USA, the results reveal different practices, summarized into five contributors of PPM effectiveness. These contributors are 1) a high degree of interaction with strategic management activities through PPM process and structure, 2) a strong relationship with functions responsible for managing multiple projects, 3) a consulting responsibility of project management office, 4) the organization's cultural traits regarding involvement, consistency, and sense of mission, and 5) an integrative complexity, a cognitive attribute of the PPM committee members. These findings provide a basis for both researchers and practitioners for reassessing, improving, and developing PPM approaches and working conditions that enhance PPM effectiveness.
Purpose: This article aims to investigate how project governance, project portfolio management and best practices are related in a company in the Brazilian electricity sector, considering the gaps ...identified in the management of its projects and the results of them. Methodology/Approach: In order to subsidize this study, in theoretical terms, the study is supported by a systematic survey of the literature and, in empirical terms, it conducts an investigation with 18 key employees of the organization through the application of a questionnaire, with a view to confronting the perception of respondents with the relevant concepts found in the literature. Findings: In the empirical research, on the other hand, made it possible to investigate the perception of respondents from different groups in relation to the organization's adherence to the proposed themes. Research Limitation/implication: The studies were not carried out outside the environment of the selected company, nor are extrapolations made to other organizational realities, although it recognizes that this study can contribute to influencing companies in the same or different segment to deepen into the above theme. Originality/Value of paper: The proposed research is applicable in all organizations or sectors that are strategically project oriented.
Today's project management offices (PMOs) in the construction sector need to be equipped with breakthrough capabilities necessary for making a difference in multi-project management. Although there ...is an upward trend in academic research on PMOs, a comprehensive framework of potential success variables is still lacking in the literature. This research aims to assess the extant literature from the perspective of the construction sector to provide a single consolidated overview of potential PMO success variables. A systematic search process was adopted to retrieve publications and narrow them down to eligible studies followed by a qualitative synthesis. A set of 32 success variables was synthesized and inductively categorized under four emerging themes of (1) establishing PM infrastructure, (2) promoting PM practices, (3) PMO structuring, and (4) organizational support. This set of variables refers to three kinds of functional, structural, and contextual variables characterizing potential features of successful construction PMOs. These variables were compared between the construction industry and other industries to reflect contextual contrasts and similarities. A research agenda was proposed to encourage empirical studies on examining success variables. This study contributes to an improved understanding of PMO success variables in the construction industry and directs future research towards the most important topics.
The contemporary literature emphasizes a need to delve into how project management offices (PMOs) can be effectively operated in construction organizations by embedding integrated project management ...rather than relying on stand-alone project controls. However, capabilities for running high-performing PMOs in this complex industry are still unknown to this growing body of knowledge, which is considered a barrier to the realization of their full potential. To address this gap, the current research explores a factor structure for core capabilities using a cross-validation method with survey data from 395 experts in general contracting organizations. The results revealed that the five-factor measurement model encompasses constructs of competent human resources and supportive culture, strategic alignment, delivery support, knowledge management, and leveraging organizational capabilities. This study extends the current literature by establishing a new measurement model explaining the dimensionality of PMO capabilities.
The paper presents an investigation of the creation and the reconfiguration of project management offices (PMOs) as an organisational innovation. The analysis of 11 organisational transformations ...centred on the implementation or reconfiguration of PMOs is presented. The objective of the paper is to contribute to a better understanding of PMOs and of the dynamic relationship between project management and the organisational context. The aim is also to integrate the examination of PMOs as an organisational innovation into the mainstream of research on the place of project management in organisations and more widely to the “rethinking of project management.”
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