This study investigates the nuanced relationship between public sector project managers and their adherence to organizational project management protocols, as defined by reference documents such as ...PRINCE2 and PMBOK® Guide. It investigates why these project managers frequently deviate from these protocols. The study investigates the practical relevance yet perceived redundancy of these documents through interviews and a focus group with nine experienced project managers in the Australian public sector. Using thematic analysis and a Derridean perspective, we show how these documents create a project manager's their authority and autonomy. The study concludes with the proposal of a deconstructive theory of public sector project management, emphasising pragmatism over rigid adherence to established project management ideologies.
•Public sector managers often bypass standard project management processes.•These project management processes stem from project reference documents.•A Derridean lens is applied to public sector project manager transcripts.•Reference documents act as treaties, not guides, creating authority and autonomy.•Study suggests re-evaluating the role of project management reference documents.
The subject of management is renowned for its addiction to fads and fashions. Project Management is no exception. The issue of interest for this paper is the establishment of standards in the area, ...specifically the ‘College of Complex Project Managers’ and their ‘competency standard for complex project managers’. Both the college and the standard have generated significant interest in the Project Management community. Whilst the need for development of the means to manage complex projects is acknowledged, a critical evaluation show significant flaws in the definition of complex in this case, the process by which the College and its standard have emerged, and the content of the standard. If Project Management is to continue to develop as a profession, it will need an evidence-based approach to the generation of knowledge and standards. The issues raised by the evaluation provide the case for a portfolio of research that extends the existing bodies of knowledge into large-scale complicated (or major) projects. We propose that it would be owned by the practitioner community, rather than focused on one organization. Research questions are proposed that would commence this stream of activity towards an intelligent synthesis of what is required to manage in both complicated and truly complex environments. This is a revised paper previously presented at the 21st IPMA World Congress on Project Management Cracow, Poland.
University governing bodies, especially academic boards, play a crucial role in policy formation. However, due to the predominance of managerial values over academic values in the policy-making ...process, a persistent divide exists between policy formulation and implementation. This divide results from the marginalisation of academics and the dominance of managerial authority figures within these bodies. Our study investigates the latter to determine the precise Foucauldian apparatus used by authority figures to influence policy-making meetings. Using an innovative arts-based method, we analyse ethnographic vignettes through a Foucauldian lens and transform them into collages depicting the apparatus used by authority figures: Strategic Managerial Monumentalism, Managerial Historical Revisionism, Managerial Discursive Dominance, Managerial Panoptic Surveillance, and Managerial Normalisation. We contend that only a well-defined separation of governance powers can effectively counter the encroachment of managerialism and uphold the democratic representation of academic values in university policies to bridge the policy-practice divide.
University institutional policy is poorly understood. While policy is required by law for universities to accept funding and is revered for articulating values, mitigating risk, and guiding practice, ...policy is frequently considered absurd and resisted in practice. This is the policy-practice divide. To gain a better understanding of this divide and the nature of the resistance, we asked policy actors to describe their experiences with policy development, implementation, enactment, and review. We asked: If policy is absurd, what is the nature of the relationship between policy and university management, and how do those who enact policy deal with this absurdity? We discovered that university management has an infinitely regressive self-fulfilling relationship with policy because they intentionally exclude the workforce from policy-making and see themselves as solely responsible for policy interpretation and implementation. However, when Kierkegaard's concepts of absurdity, faith, hope, and doubt are applied to policy actors' experiences, we see that resistance can be characterised positively as a 'leap of faith', where those who enact policy overcome their doubts and reinterpret it to achieve some semblance of good. This is an unintended consequence for managerialism, as deliberately creating a policy-practice divide solicits resistive 'good' practices from policy actors.
Accountability and responsibility defined McGrath, Stephen Keith; Whitty, Stephen Jonathan
International journal of managing projects in business,
05/2018, Volume:
11, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to remove confusion surrounding the terms responsibility and accountability from the general and project management arenas by creating “refined” (with unnecessary ...elements removed) definitions of these terms.
Design/methodology/approach
A method of deriving refined definitions for a group of terms by ensuring that there is no internal conflict or overlap is adopted and applied to resolve the confusion.
Findings
The confusion between responsibility and accountability can be characterised as a failure to separate the obligation to satisfactorily perform a task (responsibility) from the liability to ensure that it is satisfactorily done (accountability). Furthermore, clarity of application can be achieved if legislative and organisational accountabilities are differentiated and it is recognised that accountability and responsibility transition across organisational levels. A difficulty in applying accountability in RACI tables is also resolved.
Research limitations/implications
Clear definition of responsibility and accountability will facilitate future research endeavours by removing confusion surrounding the terms. Verification of the method used through its success in deriving these “refined” definitions suggests its suitability for application to other contested terms.
Practical implications
Projects and businesses alike can benefit from removal of confusion around the definitions of responsibility and accountability in the academic research they fund and attempt to apply. They can also achieve improvements in both efficiency and effectiveness in undertaking organisation-wide exercises to determine organisational responsibilities and accountabilities as well as in the application of governance models.
Social implications
Refined definitions of responsibility and accountability will facilitate building social and physical systems and infrastructure, benefitting organisations, whether public, charitable or private.
Originality/value
Clarity resulting in the avoidance of confusion and misunderstanding together with their consequent waste of time, resources and money.
Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate the variety of affective emotions that are evoked in extant project management (PM) practitioners by various PM artefacts.Design methodology ...approach - A phenomenological methodology is used for eliciting, through self-reporting and observation of gesture, the affective responses and consequential emotions experienced by PM practitioners as they interact or recount previous interactions with various artefacts of PM.Findings - This paper suggests that PM is prevalent in the Western corporate environment because project managers obtain an emotional affect from aspects of the PM experience, and project managers utilise various PM artefacts to emotionally manipulate their environment to their own advantage.Practical implications - The paper argues for a PM environment which is founded on evidence-based practices. It suggests that future research should explore the links between PM, social architecture and flow theory.Originality value - This paper advances the evolutionary framework for PM research.
Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to resolve and remove from the governance arena in general and the project arena in particular, conflict which occurs when parties do not realise they have ...different meanings for common governance terms.
Design/methodology/approach
– Review literature on definitional confusion in general and on governance in particular and develop a method for defining an internally consistent group of terms, then apply this to a group of terms in the governance arena.
Findings
– Several important subjects commonly arranged under the governance banner do not actually constitute governance (strategy, behaviour, decision making).
Research limitations/implications
– Further work is necessary to remove similar confusion in other closely related areas, including power itself and authority as well as project and general management terms such as responsibility and accountability.
Practical implications
– Projects and business alike can potentially achieve significant improvements in efficiency and effectiveness through gaining consistency across current models, frameworks, policies and procedures thus reducing cross-boundary conflict.
Social implications
– Creation of a unifying feature within the project and management literature, shifting the understanding of the boundaries and limitations of governance. These definitions will help progress governance from complexity to simplicity, from an art to an understandable practice, from a concept that has been hijacked for partisan and political gain to a lean social tool which can be put to use for the benefit of organisations, whether public, charitable or private.
Originality/value
– The value is clarity – resulting in the avoidance of confusion and misunderstanding together with their consequent waste of time, resources and money.
This study examines the historical role preparation experiences of professional staff and academics in a managerialised university field. Semi-structured interviews were used to identify the impact ...of these experiences on the individual's ability to ‘play the game’ of the managerialised university field. The Bourdieusian concepts of habitus, doxa and illusio were used to analyse the data. The results showed that professional staff had a more advantageous position in the managerialised university field due to their pre-existing mastery of the rules of the game, which was attributed to their similarly structured educative role preparation experiences. Conversely, academics had a less advantageous position due to their lack of understanding of the managerialised nature of the university administrative field. This manifests as a heterodoxy, in which academics feel abandoned, disregarded and subordinated by managerial orthodoxy. The results of this case study reveal that managerialised universities in the Anglosphere are in crisis. It is argued that recognising academic heterodoxy could pave the way for their situation to alter and improve.
A model of projects as a source of stress at work Darling, Eric John; Whitty, Stephen Jonathan
International journal of managing projects in business,
03/2020, Volume:
13, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to describe the relationship between project work and stress. It examines how the conditions of project work negatively impact on an individual’s mental and ...physical state of well-being, consequentially reducing organisational performance.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors systematically review the project management literature for sources of stress or stressors as it relates to Cooper and Marshall’s (1976) model of stress at work. The authors perform a thematic analysis on these stressors to reveal the “sub-stressor” conditions of project work.
Findings
A “model of projects as a source of stress at work” is developed. It shows the relationship between the sub-stressors of project work and the ill effects they have on mental and physical well-being of the project workforce.
Research limitations/implications
The findings of this study are constrained by the limits of a literature review process. This study has implications for research on stress in project work, as studies can benefit from the “model of projects as a source of stress at work”, which can be continually advanced to gain insights on the minimisation of physical and mental distress.
Practical implications
Many sectors including health, education, policing, aviation and military provide scenario-based training. In project management, a greater understanding of stressful scenarios and counter measures would improve health outcomes for project staff, human relations and project outcomes.
Originality/value
The study presents a comprehensive model of projects as a source of stress at work. It draws attention to the burden and cost of anxiety and stress placed on the project workforce. It makes the case for organisations and employees to take responsibility for the well-being of project staff.
PurposeTo determine if there is confusion in governance terminology amongst experienced management and project management practitioners.Design/methodology/approachPractitioner interviews and ...subsequent analysis.FindingsSignificant differences in governance terminology were found. The participants had nevertheless arrived at similar operating arrangements for their committees, even though they came from different segments of different industries and did not agree on the definition of governance. It was possible to develop a list of working parameters for operation of these committees from their responses. The labelling of committees associated with governance as steering or decision-making was found to be problematic and various causes/motivations for the differing definitions of governance having arisen were detected. These ranged from altruism, through dogmatic belief in particular frameworks, to enhancing career prospects/ego.Research limitations/implicationsThe sample came from organisations and industries in one state in one country. The need for review of governance terminology used in various project management practitioner reference documents and methodologies was identified.Practical implicationsProjects and business alike can potentially achieve improvements in efficiency and effectiveness through consistency of terminology and the clarity this brings to governance arrangements and committee operations.Social implicationsCreation of a unifying feature within the project and management literature, shifting the understanding of governance and its boundaries and limitations. This will help progress governance from complexity to simplicity, from an art to an understandable practice, from a concept that has been hijacked for partisan and political gain to a lean social tool which can be put to use for the benefit of organisations, whether public, charitable or private.Originality/valueThe value is clarity – resulting in the avoidance of confusion and misunderstanding together with their consequent waste of time, resources and money.
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