Managerial ambidexterity and the cultural toolkit in project delivery

Research has established that ambidextrous organizations can successfully outperform their non-ambidextrous counterparts through exploitative and exploratory activities. However, there remains a scarcity of research on how managers orchestrate ambidexterity at the operational level, particularly in project delivery. Drawing on 55 qualitative interviews with middle managers on two engineering projects, we examine how managerial ambidexterity is enacted at the project level. We find that middle managers enable their own exploitative, exploratory and ambidextrous behaviors by invoking a repertoire of values selected from their organization's cultural toolkit, which serve as cultural resources for action. We discuss how the cultural toolkit perspective can inform the relationship between managerial actions in day-to-day operations and organizational ambidexterity. Implications for theory and practice are presented.     

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.     

Learning approaches for housing,service and infrastructure project organizations

Capturing and sharing experiences that may be applicable in several projects is generally recognized as a way of enhancing the performance of construction projects. Several studies have reported difficulties in applying learning approaches that could be applicable for a wide range of projects. The learning behaviour in three types of construction project: housing, service and infrastructure, is examined by the means of a questionnaire study including 51 construction projects and more than 800 responses from clients, designers, contractors’ managers, contractors’ workers and subcontractors. The effects of leadership, openness and influence are considered. Based on a factor analysis, three approaches to learning were identified: organizing for learning, experimenting and networking. While housing project organizations do not demonstrate any specific preferences, service project organizations show a focus on networking and infrastructure project organizations show the highest interest in experimenting. On the basis of these results it can be concluded that learning approaches are dependent on the type of project. Thus adopting different learning approaches for different types of construction project seems to be a more relevant strategy than implementing a ‘one size fits all’ learning approach for all construction project organizations.     

Co-design and urban resilience: visioning tools for commoning resilience practices

Abstract

In response to the environmental and social challenges of an uncertain future, practitioners and communities across Europe and beyond have started to engage with the concept of ‘resilience’ and experiment with forms of local resilience. However, many of these initiatives tend to remain localised, isolated projects, with little capacity to instigate broader change and at risk to disappear by not having the means to become sustainable in the longer term. We suggest that one way of sustaining and scaling local resilience practices is by developing digital tools that could enable connections and knowledge sharing across locations, through commoning in the digital realm. In this paper, we introduce the specific co-design process we devised with the aim to develop an initial ‘brief’ for potential tools. By creating a co-design process that is situated, mediated, networked and open-source, we argue that the commoning process initiated in this project has the potential to evolve and expand, beyond the project time and initial user base—an essential quality in the context of collectively enhancing urban resilience through knowledge sharing and mutual support.     

Not all project ambiguity is equal: A typology of project ambiguity and implications for its management

Ambiguity is integral to managing projects, yet little is currently known about the types of ambiguity faced by project managers, and how they respond to the different types of ambiguity. To contribute to knowledge on the nature and outcomes of ambiguity in the project management context, we conducted two studies to explore the types of ambiguity experienced by project managers (study 1) and how project managers experience and manage these ambiguities (study 2). In study 1, we used survey data from 312 project managers describing 704 discrete ambiguous situations in projects to construct a typology of ambiguous situations in the project management context. In study 2, we conducted 18 interviews with project managers to explore how they experience and manage ambiguities in their projects. Collectively, these studies revealed that 1) project managers face numerous types of ambiguities in projects, which we catalogued into seven higher order categories, 2) “task related” ambiguities tend to evoke more positive emotions in project managers, while “people related” ambiguities tend to evoke more negative emotions, and 3) experienced project managers tend to engage in a range of common practices that allow them to effectively manage ambiguity.  Our findings have a range of implications for how project managers can best be trained and supported in the context of high ambiguity.     

Shared and fragmented understandings in interorganizational IT project teams: An interpretive case study

Shared understanding is essential in interorganizational projects to integrate the divergent knowledge of individual team members and support collaborative knowledge building. This can nevertheless be a challenging undertaking in interorganizational projects as team members must continuously negotiate differences in their organizational and professional backgrounds during project work. In this paper, we explore how interorganizational IT project teams deal with sources of ‘fragmentation’ in their understanding, explicating the theoretical and practical implications that these have for project management. Our study is needed to explore the increasingly complex and emergent nature of interorganizational project management today where neither goals nor the means of attainment are known with precision at a project's launch. We analyze interpretive case study findings from an 8-month IT project involving diverse organizations from industry, academia, and healthcare. Based on our findings, we develop a framework which highlights the relationship between three sources of fragmentation of understanding (interpersonal, technical, and contextual) across key project activities. We contribute towards project management literature by revealing how these sources of fragmentation might be overcome through framing project activities (the problem, method, and solution formulation) differently. While fragmentation may characterize any, or all, of these key activities, it is not without remedy.     

Reducing the use of resources in medium-sized Swedish construction enterprises: production managers’ views

What construction firms do—and do not do—to reduce the use of resources in construction projects is explored by adopting production managers’ views of their firms’ onsite activities. A literature review and empirical data are combined; 15 production managers have been asked how they perceived their company’s compliance with 31 recommendations to reduce the use of resources. The managers perceived their firms to primarily focus on identifying their customers’ real needs, stimulating employees to undertake further education, and striving for long-term customer–supplier relationships. In contrast, they perceived that less attention was directed to making use of all of the week’s hours, to supporting their main suppliers in their development, and planning feedback and training after project completion. The use of resources is examined by focusing on the perceived low priority given to gathering information and knowledge, as well as to reducing time and the need for long-term relationships with customers in contrast to short-term relationships with suppliers. The managers adopted a project-specific approach mainly to the use of material resources. A more holistic view of resources could enable the development of novel solutions in construction.     

Project manager's perception of the local communities' stakeholder in megaprojects. An empirical investigation in the UK

Based on an exploratory study conducted in the UK using thematic and cluster analysis, this paper investigates how the local communities' stakeholder is perceived, defined and categorized by project managers in major public infrastructure and construction projects (MPIC), and how their involvement could improve the performance of these projects. Due to the perceived benefits shortfall of MPIC, well organized actions from ‘secondary stakeholder’ groups have led to delays, cost overruns, and significant damage to the organization's reputation. Stakeholder management is an essential process which aims to maximize positive inputs and minimize detrimental attitudes by taking into account the needs and requirements of all project stakeholders. However, current project stakeholder management mechanisms are reactive rather than proactive, mainly offering an instrumental perspective, which aims to make the stakeholders comply with project needs. Therefore, a broader inclusiveness of secondary stakeholders who could be harmed by the organization's strategy, such as the local communities, is required to enhance the performance of MPIC.     

The five modes of comportment for project managing: Disclosing the tacit in project work

This study makes two contributions to the discussion of tacit knowledge in project managing. Firstly, it provides a framework to examine the tacit aspects of project managing based on the Heideggerian concept of comportment. Secondly, it identifies five modes of comportment that are common across the study participants. Comportment is concerned with what humans are directed towards and how their attunement with equipment in their day-to-day life of coping reflects this directedness. Our study uses photo elicitation and semi-structured interviews to reveal the comportments that practicing project managers adopt towards the equipment in their practice. We propose that the framework and modes of comportment will provide a useful research tool for exploring the tacit in project work and an alternative framework for project management education that aligns with both the ‘lived experience’ and critical project management agendas.     

Modeling managerial behavior in real options valuation for project-based environments

Project valuation, as a decision-making tool for initiating investments in projects, should be able to value project flexibilities and incorporate reasonable risk preferences of relevant decision makers. Real options valuation methods are the available approaches for valuing project flexibilities, whereas they have shortcomings in considering managers’ reasonable risk preferences in project decisions. Therefore, researchers have suggested approximating the perspective on risk of real options methods and practitioners in project management. This study proposes a fair real options valuation for project-based environments by a behavioral economic approach, which adopts binomial lattice method, Monte-Carlo simulation, and cumulative prospect theory. The results show that behavioral factors such as ‘risk attitude’ and ‘loss aversion’ should be accepted in project investment decisions while limited to an acceptable amount depending on the project conditions (e.g. uniqueness of decision-making scenarios). This research contributes to the project management domain by enhancing project investment decisions that include project flexibilities.     

How projects co-create value with stakeholders: The role of ideology and inquiry in spanning the temporary-permanent boundary

Projects transform organisational processes as they deliver physical artefacts and spaces. Yet in the existing literature, there is relatively little attention to how project delivery professionals engage members of an organisation to co-create value. Building on research on stakeholders and organisational boundaries, an empirical study of the renewal of a large Finnish hospital is used to develop new insight into value co-creation between temporary and permanent forms of organisation. In this hospital case study, we find a framing ideology that supports value co-creation is provided by the project practitioners’ commitment to ‘service design’, and an enquiry that enrols organisational stakeholders’ participation and reveals temporal tensions at the temporary-permanent boundary. As the emergent temporal tensions are managed, ideas flow across the boundary and new artefacts and spaces are designed by the project team concurrently with, and are informed by, the implementation of new organisational processes. This study's contribution is to explain how project delivery professionals use ideology and enquiry to engage and co-create value with organisational participants.     

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.     

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.     

Complex project conceptualisation and argument mapping

The conceptualisation of complex projects requires an ability to manage the contradictory claims of stakeholders. Argument mapping provides one means of helping with this problem, offering a scientific mutable mobile or collaborative cartography. It structures what is known from the warrants and rebuttals inherent in what is said. It also offers opportunity to give voice to all stakeholders, thus aligning with and giving acknowledgement to the Australian cultural norm of a ‘fair go’. In this paper we explain why and how argument mapping using Toulmin's model can be used to help project managers conceptualise complex projects. This includes explaining the long association between dialectic argument and knowledge claims, presenting a common pedigree between argument and the philosophy of science. Following that, we explain the means and motive behind putting dialectic arguments into a graphical form. Next, the paper provides an illustration of an argument map drafted to highlight the concepts involved in managing an Australian mining export project. Australian mining projects dependent on the China market need to be aware of the growing geo-political tensions between the US and China. The mapping is used to emerge some planning concepts, providing a means of sense-making or structuring, a complex Australian project.     

Practice world

Despite the market significance of the ‘mobile home’ — which is in fact a factory-made dwelling that can be transported as a complete unit for permanent location on a site — the technology involved has attracted little interest from the orthodox building industry. A research and development project in America, ‘Project Manufactured Housing Industry’ (PMHI), suggests that such disinterest is misplaced.

We invited the author to explain some of the possible lessons to be drawn from the project. He discusses here how alternative materials and different structural concepts — such as post and beam, stressed skin and monolithic volumetric components — are compatible with the already cost-effective technology and offer potential for the use of these factory-made units in higher-density and high-rise forms.

Professor Bernhardt is President of the consultancy firm PIIHS which is responsible for the R &; D project described.     

Participatory business modelling

How to generate business is at play in most innovation projects today. Not only Internet-based businesses, but also traditional manufacturing companies with conventional product sales are currently challenged to consider alternative business models: service design, project sales, direct sales, etc. In participatory innovation the core assumption is that a broad spectrum of people, including users, can contribute to innovation. But is it possible to open up the process of business model innovation to participation from a wider circle than those marketing managers who typically devise new business schemes? In this article we discuss two participatory approaches to business modelling that move beyond spreadsheets and Post-it^® Notes: one of using tangible objects to redefine business elements, and another of people themselves role-playing how an organisation can create, deliver and capture value. These approaches were developed in companies and educational settings and have proven extraordinarily successful in initiating conversations about how to innovate business in cross-disciplinary and cross-functional groups of participants. Relying on design theory, we study the ‘moves’ that participants make towards a new network configuration; in particular as such conceptual ‘moves’ are likely to be associated with the concrete, physical movements of people and objects. We claim that these approaches prove very engaging because business model innovation needs a focus on redefining the concepts we use and the roles that actors play in relation to each other.     

The fate of ideals in the real world: A long view on Philip Selznick's classic on the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)

Philip Selznick’s first book—TVA and the Grass Roots: A Study in the Sociology of Formal Organization, 1949 TGR—tells the story of how the the ideals of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) were thwarted by the reality of political pressures from its environment. Although TGR boasts one of the highest citations for a scholarly work in management, project management scholars do not cite it. Why has project management scholarship lost one of its founding classics? We investigate why TGR meets the criteria of a classic. We show that TGR’s focus on societal outcomes and ideals is an improvement on conventional project management’s focus on technical outputs and efficiency. Moreover, TGR contributes process theories—e.g., goal displacement and values depletion—for how major projects often fail. We conjecture that project management scholars ignore TGR because it represents uncomfortable knowledge. Project management discipline is in a crisis. We call for a humanist paradigm shift.     

A fuzzy multi-criteria approach for critical path definition

This paper focuses on the identification of the critical path in complex projects networks. To extend the capabilities of the traditional project-scheduling approaches an innovative framework is presented, which integrates Fuzzy Logic and Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) techniques. The aim is to determine the critical path taking into account not only the expected duration of the tasks, but also additional critical parameters such as: ‘duration variability’, ‘costs’, ‘shared resources’, ‘risk of major design revisions’ and ‘external risks’. To this scope, all the previously mentioned parameters are evaluated following a mathematical approach based on Fuzzy Logic and are aggregated using the ‘Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution’ (TOPSIS) to define the resulting critical path. An example concerning an engineering project is also presented to better explain the potentials and the capabilities of the proposed approach.     

Project management as a tool in the underwater contracting industry

Project management is considered from the broader perspective of general management fundamentals. These act as the necessary foundation stones on which more specialized project management techniques can be based. Fundamentals such as proper accounting, budgeting, administration and quality assurance are described briefly, before some more specific concepts are advanced. The project team, the phasing of projects, planning the cost—time relationship and general management involvement are all discussed. Finally, a ‘plan for action’, for those wishing to implement project management, is suggested.