Decoupling and standardization in the projectification of a company

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to describe and analyse the change trajectory in a large, global, project‐oriented company, with focus on standardization of project work, and on how the company's structure, processes and employment‐base changed in line with the company's increasing volume of projects.Design/methodology/approachThe stance taken is to define firm‐based projects as temporary organisations embedded in, and coupled to their parent company. Narratives of employees' working history were combined with historical company data. The outcome is a trajectory of the company's history from four different perspectives, shown in parallel with the development of the company's project operations.FindingsThe projectification history was found to be connected with two parallel movements: a push towards project decoupling countered by a pull towards standardization of project management practices to tighten the coupling. The direction of the movements was influenced from current project management trends.Research limitations/implicationsThe model of a projectified company as a loosely‐coupled system provides a novel way of analysing an organisation and its interfaces to its projects. Even though the work focuses on a unique company's projectification history, the intention is to provide a means to better understand the forces impacting the transformation of organisations increasingly using projects as a work‐form.Originality/valueAdding the notion of coupling gives a new dimension to the transformation of project‐oriented companies. The model for analysing projects by means of their patterns of loose and tight coupling provides arguments for the shift in focus from the individual project to the interplay between structure, people and processes in the project‐oriented company.

Mechanisms of Isomorphism in Project-Based Organizations

“…Third, this study acknowledges the role of the project's organizational and institutional contexts (Engwall, 2003;Grabher, 2004). In particular, the study builds upon the clarification of the project context within a project-based organization (Bergman et al, 2013). Specifically, for a focal project within a project-based organization, all other projects carried out in the same parent organization comprise an important part of the project context.…”

“…The antecedents and consequences of various temporary organization design choices are still ambiguous despite their importance (Lechler & Dvir, 2010). Within the context of the project-based organization we know even less about the dynamics of temporary organization design (Bergman et al, 2013), since much of the literature studies project arrangements separately from the organizational context (Engwall, 2003).…”

“…Empirical findings reported in the project management literature suggest that this view also seems to be valid for temporary organizations. Indeed, temporary organizations experience pressure from their institutional environment (Lundin & Söderholm, 1995), which might lead to homogenization of project structures and approaches (Bergman et al, 2013;Kadefors, 1995). Moreover, learning among projects contribute to this process (Engwall, 2003;Prencipe & Tell, 2001).…”

“…Second, it follows the notion of a project as a temporary organization (Lundin & Söderholm, 1995;Packendorff, 1995). While this view dominates the discourse on single project management, it does not receive equal attention within the literature on project-based organizations (Bergman et al, 2013). Within the PBO literature, projects are often seen as idiosyncratic business processes and their structures are not explicitly taken into account (Miterev, 2017).…”

“…First, building on the notion of a project as a temporary organization (Lundin & Söderholm, 1995) it elaborates on the concept of project context within a PBO, thus contributing to the contextual stream of literature on projects (Engwall, 2003;Grabher, 2004). While the extant literature focuses on organizational and wider institutional context (Bakker, 2010), this study shows how the portfolio of projects represents an important constituent of the internal PBO context (Bergman, Gunnarson, & Räisänen, 2013). In other words, when scholars refer to projects as embedded in organizational context, they largely emphasize the linkages to the parent organization and its business processes (Gann & Salter, 2000).…”