Engaging the organizational field: The case of project practices in a construction firm to contribute to an emerging economy

We develop a model of practices undertaken by project managers to address the challenges of organizational fields in an emerging economy context. We anchor the model in a qualitative study of project managers’ activities in a major construction industry firm in India. We make three contributions. First, our study illustrates how the micro activities of project managers, in coordination with the actions of senior management, address the emerging economy challenges, and project managers’ responses hold lessons for the emerging literature on “projects as practice.” Second, we augment the dominant cognitive orientation in the discussion of organizational fields in project management literature with a practice perspective. Finally, we enrich the institutional theory stream in project management. In addition to the mechanisms identified in that stream of literature, our data suggest that the activities of project managers in major construction projects may act as a mechanism of transition in emerging economies. While the project managers in the Indian construction industry firm undertook numerous field building activities that were crucial for their projects’ success, these activities were simultaneously addressing major gaps in the economic infrastructure of India. Thus, our data portray construction industry managers as not merely engaged in project execution, but as active participants in the economic transition of a country.Similarly, labor and supplier markets in India were underdeveloped, and the projects had to bear the cost of this development.     

Exploring variety in factors that stimulate project managers to address sustainability issues

As it is increasingly being recognized that projects play a key-role in creating a more sustainable society, the integration of the concepts of sustainability into project management should be considered as one of the most important global project management trends today. This integration refers both to the sustainability of the project's deliverable and to the sustainable management of projects. In this last perspective, sustainable project management, the project manager has a central and influential position. However, many factors or circumstances influence the behavior of the project manager with regards to addressing sustainability in his or her project?The study reported in this paper explored the variety factors that stimulate the project manager to address sustainability issues in the project he or she is managing. Based on the factors provided by the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPA), the study used Q-methodology to explore different subjective patterns of stimulus project managers experience. Based on the factor analysis of 49 Q-sorts, we discovered three factors in the stimulation of sustainable project management behavior. These three factors, that represent distinct stimulus patterns, were labeled as “Pragmatic”, “Intrinsically motivated” and “Task driven”.By identifying three distinct patterns of what stimulates project managers to address sustainability issues, the study contributes to a successful implementation of sustainable project management as a new ‘school of thought’ in project management.     

Intervening conditions on the management of project risk: Dealing with uncertainty in information technology projects

A review of the outcome of many information technology (IT) projects reveals that they fail to meet the pre-specified project objectives of scope, time and budget. Despite well-established project risk management processes, project managers perceive their application as ineffective to manage risk. This failure may well be attributed to the inadequate application of those risk management processes. The purpose of this research was to investigate how project managers responsible for the management of risk in IT projects actually managed risk and to relate this back to established project risk management processes. In undertaking this investigation, we were seeking to understand the ways in which the project managers’ approaches and behaviours, when considering risk in IT projects, differed from what might be expected. Results show that because of environment-related and decision maker-related conditions, project managers tend to deny, avoid, ignore and delay dealing with risk, with the consequence of those actions having an adverse influence on their perceived effectiveness of risk management and the project outcomes. If project risk management, and its underlying processes are not to be discredited, the behaviour of project managers when confronted by uncertainty should be considered and actions need to be taken to discourage project managers’ irrational actions.     

Project manager's emotional intelligence and project performance: The mediating role of project commitment

Emotional intelligence is considered to be important for project managers to affect project performance, but emotional intelligence does not always play an effective role. Based on conservation of resource theory, this article explores the impact of project managers’ emotional intelligence on project performance. The results show that the emotional intelligence of project managers affects project performance through the mediating effect of project commitment, and project complexity negatively moderates the impact of project managers’ emotional intelligence on project commitment. This article provides practical guidance on how project managers can handle emotional intelligence in different complex situations and serves as a reference for the selection and appointment of project managers in complex projects.     

Value creation through project risk management

Risk management is a common and widely adopted project practice. Practitioners use risk management based on a common assumption that risk management adds value to projects. Yet, in the complex and ambiguous environment of a project, value is often subjective. If this is the case, then how do stakeholders perceive project risk management to create value? This paper presents a literature review and an empirical study of project risk management as a means of creating value. The empirical study is based on interviews, analyzed through qualitative analysis, to unravel the subjective value of project risk management. Specifically, we addressed how practitioners perceived the connection between project risk management practices and value creation. We found that stakeholders' perceptions of value played an important role in how value was created through project risk management. What a stakeholder perceives to be important, such as the prospective outcomes of a project, influences the perceived value of a given project risk management practice. The empirical findings indicate the need for a contextualized understanding of the value of project risk management, and thereby provide a more nuanced view of the variety of forms through which project risk management can create value. The findings question the “universal ideal” of PRM value creation portrayed in the academic and practitioner literature.     

Understanding project management performance using a comparative overrun measure

Project managers need support to diagnose project management performance problems. Diagnosis happens when managers learn about prior project management performance by using outside view information about past projects to situate focal projects within the context of past project management performance. No prior research has incorporated outside view information into performance measures. Hence, we propose a comparative performance measure that compares overrun of a focal project to overrun of past similar projects to promote an understanding of trends across projects. Traditional overrun measures that only compare performance to initial estimates fail to encourage learning from past performance. Our comparative measure can be used to evaluate how well lessons have been leveraged, addressing a lack of existing quantitative measures for learning from previous projects. Project managers need encouragement to use new comparative project performance measures, so they should be embedded in performance management systems with incentives for continuous improvement.     

When ‘knowing what’ is not enough: Role of organised simulations for developing effective practice

A decade on from the Rethinking Project Management (PM) network, concerns about the relevance gap continue with a number of multinationals looking explicitly to alternative strategies and forms of PM staff development. The literature is light on how project simulations can help the development of experienced managers as reflective experts. Few have examined the link between intended learning outcomes and real-time performance. Posing the question of “how easily is knowledge developed in the classroom transformed into effective practice?” the paper presents a chronological account of a 3-day simulated project by 25 experienced managers. Despite their prior experience and learning from shared problem-solving and structured reflections, participants struggled to deliver their projects as planned. Analysis referencing the knowledge epistemology and ambidexterity literatures yielded a number of design improvement opportunities and the insight that closing the knowing-doing gap requires courses to incorporate the ‘soft’ perceptual and attitudinal aspects underlying why people fail to convert their learning into effective practice.     

Acquisitions as programs: The role of sensemaking and sensegiving

The intersection of program management and acquisition research remains undeveloped. Within both research domains there is limited recognition of how senior and project managers frame change and influence the meaning construction of others in complex and ambiguous situations. We investigate how sensemaking and sensegiving alternate within an acquisition program during ten Indian acquisitions. Our resulting model highlights how sensemaking and sensegiving interface and blend across different projects (e.g., functional or task-based) to build shared meaning and maintain business continuity. Viewing acquisitions as programs, consisting of interrelated projects, disentangles how senior managers create shared meaning. Additional implications for research and management practice are identified.     

Enforcing strategic fit of project portfolios by project termination: An empirical study on senior management involvement

Project portfolios are vehicles for strategy implementation. Senior management should terminate projects no longer conforming to corporate strategy in order to ensure strategic fit. This paper investigates how rigorous termination of bad and troubled projects affects portfolio effectiveness and senior management's decisive role in this context. We introduce the concept of project termination quality, analyse its consequences for strategic fit and how it is affected by senior management involvement. Using a quantitative longitudinal study of a sample of project portfolios, we show that termination quality positively affects strategic fit. We also show a positive, but inverted u-shaped relationship between senior management involvement and termination quality. We conclude that there is an optimal degree of involvement, beyond which an additional involvement of senior managers results in negative effects.     

Impact of quality performance ambiguity on contractor's opportunistic behaviors in person-to-organization projects: The mediating roles of contract design and application

Contracts are critical for managing projects. However, studies increasingly found that contracts, albeit well written, might not be thoroughly implemented. This study aims to examine the impact of quality performance ambiguity on contractor's opportunistic behaviors in person-to-organization projects and to investigate the mediating role of contract design and application. A questionnaire-survey of 265 dwelling fit-out projects was undertaken in China. The results showed that quality performance ambiguity has great impacts on project development as it hinders detailed contract drafting, results in ineffective contract application and leads to opportunism. The mediation results showed that contract application rather than the written contract mediates the effect of quality performance ambiguity on contractor's opportunistic behaviors. Thus, it is recommended that project managers should pay attention to project characteristics and the gaps between the design and application of contracts in project management.     

The formation of a collaborative project identity in an infrastructure alliance project

Inter-organizational projects struggle to build a sense of joint belonging and a culture of cooperation. In evaluating the social processes of collaboration in inter-organizational projects, organizational identity is considered a core concept. To extend existing knowledge of how collaborative identity is formed in inter-organizational infrastructure projects, the study investigates how the specific characteristics of temporary organizations (time, team, task and context) influence identity formation activities. A case study of the first Finnish infrastructure alliance project identifies six key activities supporting the formation of collaborative project identity: (1) articulating a joint vision for collaborative project identity; (2) converging on mutual conceptions of collaborative project alliance philosophy; (3) attaining a shared collaborative mentality; (4) designing ways of working with multiple identities; (5) attaining distinctiveness and (6) legitimizing activities. The findings indicate that identity formation activities are context-dependent, and that the formation of organizational identity differs between temporary and permanent organizations. The findings illuminate how managers can build a collaborative project identity.     

Fluidity in project management teams across projects

Project management teams are often fluid, changing in composition over projects. Fluidity enables innovative project success, as it allows organizing social capital dynamically across projects. In this study, we argue for an optimum between fluidity and stability. We operationalize project management fluidity as the degree of intactness of the whole team from one project to the next. In a sample of 5370 projects of video game development over ten years using information obtained by web crawling on the internet, we find an inverted-U-shaped relation between intactness and project success, assessed as sales, expert reviews, and consumer reviews. We show that optimal intactness shifts according to project context; higher success occurs at lower levels of intactness when projects require more innovation. Finally, we replicate our findings using intactness of relations between project managers and their operational teams. We discuss the implications for project management, and potential future research.     

Leadership competency profiles of successful project managers

This study examines the leadership competency profiles of successful project managers in different types of projects. Four hundred responses to the Leadership Development Questionnaire (LDQ) were used to profile the intellectual, managerial and emotional competences (IQ, MQ and EQ, respectively) of project managers of successful projects. Differences by project type were accounted for through categorization of projects by their application type (engineering & construction, information & telecommunication technology, organizational change), complexity, importance and contract type. Results indicate high expressions of one IQ sub-dimension (i.e. critical thinking) and three EQ sub-dimensions (i.e. influence, motivation and conscientiousness) in successful managers in all types of projects. Other sub-dimensions varied by project type. Comparison was made to existing profiles for goal oriented, involving and engaging leadership styles. Implications derived are the need for practitioners to be trained in the soft factors of leadership, particular for their types of projects. Theoretical implications include the need for more transactional styles in relatively simple projects and more transformational leadership styles in complex projects.     

Getting it done: Critical success factors for project managers in virtual work settings

What conditions do project managers perceive as the most important to get the work done when working in fully dispersed settings? Rather than focusing on problems that managers experience when working in dispersed settings, our study highlights the conditions that are important for successful task accomplishment. We applied a Means-End-Chain (MEC) method to investigate the links between task accomplishment and relevant conditions that are attributes, benefits and values among a sample of experienced project managers (N = 30). Our results show that important conditions for successful project execution in a dispersed setting include rules of communication and its clarity; project management style and goal-setting; and managers' competences and trust in a team. In addition to these internal conditions, project managers also stress the importance of both corporate and technology support. These four conditions are all perceived as vital for task accomplishment in global dispersed projects.     

Transformations of Planning Rationales: Changing Spaces for Governance in Recent Dutch National Planning

Dutch national planning has acquired an international reputation because it provides strong planning guidance while simultaneously being responsive to the particular spatial and political circumstances of different regions and areas. Spatial concepts, like the Randstad, are important vehicles for sustaining this approach. Such concepts incorporate select spatial planning rationales that justify operational decisions. Concepts can, however, also be ambiguous, and this can allow for different interpretations and deliberations about how guidance should take effect in different situations. In this paper we assess the degree of ambiguity contained in concepts outlined in Dutch national plans between 1988 and 2012. By focusing on the dimensions of spatial concepts, and the room for interpretation these create, we demonstrate how concepts were modified to accommodate a shifting appreciation of deliberation and, as a result, collaboration and governance. On a theoretical level, we propose a method that analyses in detail the ambiguity (“fuzzyness” or “softness”) of spatial concepts. We argue that such sophisticated understandings contribute to explaining the variety of governance responses that these geographies produce in practice. On an empirical level we seek to increase understanding of change in recent Dutch national planning.     

Psychological adjustment and coping among construction project managers

Construction project managers work under conditions of uncertainty and high risk, and this can contribute to an excessive level of work‐related stress being experienced. To date, there has been limited research that has examined how project managers cope with work‐related stress. This paper investigates whether coping and affect (both negative and positive) influence adjustment (anxiety, depression and stress) among project managers. A sample of 100 male project managers from Australian contracting organizations completed a questionnaire that measured coping strategies, affect state and potential stressors. Hierarchical regression analyses demonstrated that specific work‐related characteristics such as work experience, project size, age and level of education influenced the psychological adjustment of the project managers sampled. Further, those who engaged in a more problem‐focused style of coping, such as active coping were found to be better adjusted than those who engaged in more emotion‐focused styles of coping such as cognitive avoidance coping, social coping, accepting responsibility and self‐controlling coping. In addition, it was revealed that increased adjustment of project managers was associated with positive affect. It is concluded that the psychological adjustment of project managers is influenced by specific work‐related characteristics, the types of coping strategies they use and their affect state.     

Managerial agency (re)producing project governance structure and context: Public-private partnerships in the Netherlands

Project managers activate their agentic powers in the (re)production of project governance structure and the institutional context of projects. By examining three ongoing Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects within the Dutch policy path, we provide evidence that managers aim to improve their working conditions when enacting three project governing practices: upscaling issues, adapting, and reproducing. Additionally, we show that public project managers mobilized as a group of interest within the public parent organization are able to influence the policy context and improve their control position for future PPP agreements. We identify "emerging associativity" and "ideological legitimization" as core processes of managerial agency, deployed in project practice and influencing institutional contexts.     

对“城市综合体”项目质量监督管理工作的探讨

近年来,各地不断开工建设的大量“城市综合体”项目,普遍具有项目关注程度高、工程规模大、业态复杂、施工难度大、各工种穿插作业、分包单位多、工期紧等特点,对工程质量的监督管理工作提出了更高的要求。通过对“城市综合体”项目特征的研究分析,结合青岛市质量监督管理要求,从实际出发,以落实工程建设强制性标准、保障工程质量有效受控、杜绝工程质量通病为切入点,针对“城市综合体”项目质量监管过程中的突出问题,总结经验、研究方法、查找不足,在一定范围内对“城市综合体”项目的质量监管进行了探讨。     

Identifying,framing and managing uncertainties in project portfolios

Uncertainties in the organization, external environment and from single projects may hamper project portfolio performance unless managed properly. This paper introduces a framework on uncertainties and their management in project portfolios and pursues increased understanding on how managers can take uncertainty into account better. We explore uncertainties, how managers frame them as opportunities or threats, and the actual practice of managing them across ten R&D project portfolios. The framework on project portfolio uncertainties and their management is further refined based on the empirical results. As key contributions, we show evidence on the balanced existence of three types of uncertainties, the threat bias in their framing, and the dominance of rational, opportunity driven mechanisms of control in uncertainty management. We discuss the context-dependent practice of project portfolio management and the need to complement rational mechanisms with structural and cultural, for project portfolio management to become a dynamic capability.     

Beyond content and control: project vulnerability and the process agenda

Project management is conventionally defined in terms of deadlines, budgets and technical specifications. Project managers are normally chosen for their expertise in these areas. Research suggests, however, that the contexts of some projects demand a different set of priorities. The paper reports the findings of a competence-based study of the project-management role. The focus of the study was on projects involving strategic combinations of information technology and organizational change. With respect to the management of the implementation process, 15 competences are identified, in five clusters. The findings further suggest how the significance of these process competences depends on the project context, which is shown to vary between high and low levels of ‘vulnerability’. Vulnerability influences the project manager's ‘agenda priorities’, which in turn determine the competences that are critical to effectiveness. The implications of these findings are discussed, in terms of the selection of appropriately skilled managers for projects, the selection of appropriate projects for managers, and the design of relevant approaches to project-management development.