Introduction

Project work strategies in fusion research

“…We wanted to explore the claims about projects acting like “straitjackets” or “iron cages” in academic research and whether researchers feel “trapped” and “conquered” by project time to almost the full extent that the general literature on the proliferation of projects in the public domain both implicitly and (to a lesser degree) explicitly claims. Niki Vermeulen (2015: 31) suggests that projectification has an epistemic dimension when she says that “…a project format...determines not only the structure of the research process but also influences the content of science.” Vermeulen (2015: 31–32) looked into a particular Dutch genomics project about which she highlighted several “discontents” that are commonly associated with project format work: the short-term orientation in planning and execution; the hegemony of effectiveness, flexibility, and fixed time frames; and the overall “insensitive instrumentality” that characterizes the research process (see also Hodgson et al, 2019: 2–4).…”

The consequences of the temporary employment of project managers for public innovation: An analysis of EU projects in Finland

“…The move from top-down administered public policies and services to policy implementation and service delivery in public-private partnerships and collaborative arrangements has required new governance tools to manage the complex web of interdependencies between public and non-public agents (Osborne & Brown, 2013). Among the new flexible forms of organization, temporary organizations present specific challenges to public governance (Hodgson et al, 2019;Sjöblom et al, 2013). Although there is no shortage of research on project management in the public sector, for example on such technological projects as the Manhattan project and Apollo project (Lundin & Söderholm, 1995;Sahlin-Andersson & Söderholm, 2002) and, more recently, in the contexts of environment protection and natural resource management (Engwall, 2003;Munck af Rosenschöld & Wolf, 2017) and urban, rural and metropolitan governance (Grabher, 2004b;Marsden et al, 2012), insufficient attention has been paid to the effects of employing temporary project managers.…”

“…Regional development in the European Union (EU) (Bache, 2010) and local environment protection in the USA (Munck af Rosenschöld & Wolf, 2017) are good examples of areas in which these projects are used. These projects are part of the general shift in Western liberal democracies from topdown government to bottom-up governance (Hodgson et al, 2019;Jacobsson et al, 2015). However, although they enable learning and innovation (Grabher, 2004a;Jensen et al, 2013), the time-limited nature of these projects poses governance problems in terms of accountability (Büttner, 2019) and sustainable results (Godenhjelm et al, 2019).…”

A Retrospective Case Study Report of the Projectification and Quick Wins during the COVID-19 Pandemic in the Governmental Healthcare Sector: Lessons Learned from Al-Ahsa, Saudi Arabia

“…However, projectification is designed to address challenges to a real-world project, resulting in the adding of value, the improvement of products, and improving services − in this case, the continuity with the COVID-19 crisis and the resultant variabilities. Projectification is a process; it is a path taken toward increased orientation to, and use of, projects and toward formalization of project management and the project form of organizing, rather than a one-time event [ 2 ].…”