Work motivation and temporary organizing – an overview of the state and perspectives of reward practices in project-based organizations

Abstract

Projects, project-oriented or project-driven companies have emerged as the most popular forms of temporary organizing in the last couple of decades. While marginalized in the past, people factor has appeared as one of the most important factors of project success, and human resource management issues are consequently generating more knowledge on principles and practices of motivating and rewarding individuals and team members in project-based organizations. In this review paper, a desk-research was undertaken in order to analyse available studies on motivating and rewarding project teams, and several research questions that can potentially fill in the gaps present in the literature were revealed. More precisely, conclusions and research gaps were divided into five broad areas: (1) cross-sectional nature of data gathered by available studies, (2) separation of available motivation and reward practices examined in research so far, (3) generic application of reward practices and conclusions without taking into account independent characteristics of individuals, organizations and industries, (4) potential application of new reward management concepts to project teams, and (5) reward management problems related to various roles and responsibilities of project management stakeholders. Keywordstemporary organizing, project-based organizations, work motivation, reward management, human resource management5th IPMA SENET Project Management Conference (SENET 2019)

A framework for paradoxical tensions of project management

“…Although alternative reward mechanisms of team members are recognized in the PM literature [88]- [95], the said literature has paid relatively little attention to the tension between individual and team-based rewarding [96]. Appendix B summarizes empirical findings of explanatory/predictive quantitative PM research related to the relationship between individual/team-based rewarding and project performance.…”