Program integration in multi-project change programs: agency in integration practice

Multi-project change programs pursue challenging goals and may suffer from uncertainty and conflicting interests. To achieve their goals, such programs need integration both with the parent organization and between projects. There is a need for knowledge on how program actors implement integration. This study pursues new knowledge on program actors' agency in program integration in the context of multi-project change programs. Two case programs in different contexts were explored, to map their integration mechanisms and program actors' integration activities during the program lifecycle. The results reveal five integration tasks, the program-specific use of integration mechanisms, differences in the integration approach between the two programs, and the parent organization's input at the program front end in defining the program's requisite autonomy. The organization's maturity in project-based organizing, the program and project managers' competence, and the autonomy enabled at the program front end are shown to define the programs' integration practice.     

Program management organization maturity integrated model for mega construction programs in China

Maturity models can improve the effectiveness and capability of the organizations. However, the existing maturity models are only for one single organization and cannot deal with the specific problems of mega construction programs (MCPs) in China. The program management subjects of MCPs in China consist of the owner, the general design contractor, and the general construction contractor, which are not mature in the organizational management and process management. This paper presents a program management organization maturity integrated model for MCPs (PMOMIM-MCPs) in China, which integrates the program management subjects of MCPs and can improve the capability of them. Two submodels of PMOMIM-MCPs—Organizational Management Submodel (OMS) and Process Management Submodel (PMS) are given. In the end, a case study is given to justify and optimize the model.     

The development of constructs of program context and program success: A qualitative study

Growth in the use of programs to achieve organizational strategy has led to a requirement to understand the leadership competences of effective program managers. This paper presents the results of the first stage of a larger study on the influence of leadership on program results. A qualitative, inductive interview-based approach was used with 15 program managers from a range of industries in China, Sweden, The Netherlands and the UK. The purpose of this qualitative study is: a) to develop the constructs for program context and program success in the research model in order to design a questionnaire for the subsequent quantitative study; b) to collect data from program managers on the magnitude and mix of leadership competences needed for successful program management. In addition to the development of measurement dimensions for program context and program success, the results also show that program managers' leadership competences are a key success factor in program management and program managers' leadership styles are contingent on program context.     

The moderating effect of program context on the relationship between program managers' leadership competences and program success

We investigated the moderating effect of program context on the relationship between leadership competences of program managers and program success. Leadership competence was measured as the combination of intellectual competence (IQ), managerial competence (MQ) and emotional competence (EQ). A worldwide cross-sectional survey using the Leadership Dimensions Questionnaire (LDQ) and a program context and success questionnaire yielded 79 responses. Moderated hierarchical regression analyses (MHRA) were used to test the moderating effect of program context, which is characterized by organizational fit, program flexibility, organizational stability and resource availability. Results showed that program context positively moderates the relationships between program managers' IQ respective MQ with program success. However, the relationship between EQ and program success is lowered to insignificance in the presence of context. Managerial and theoretical implications are discussed.     

Change program management: Toward a capability for managing value-oriented,integrated multi-project change in its context

Program management has taken its position in project management research and in public and private organizations as a successful method for managing complex, uncertain, and large-scale changes. During the past 25 years, research has evolved from programs as the conceptual extension of projects to a rich field of empirical studies reflecting the special natures and contexts of change programs and their management, with unique theoretical foundations. To take stock of this recent history, in this article we analyze the patterns of previous empirical studies on change program management and their theoretical foundations. The goal is to identify and summarize proposals to guide forthcoming program management research. The results reveal three main themes of ongoing research: managing over the change program lifecycle, managing programs in their context, and program managers' capabilities. The roots of change program management in organization theories are apparent; structural contingency theory and information processing theories have dominated in previous empirical research, but are clearly being extended to agency, stakeholder, and actor-network theories. New research ideas are proposed for the use of programs in various types of changes, value creation and delivery through change programs, the profiles and capabilities of different actors in program management, the coexistence and interplay of multiple programs, and the complex stakeholder networks involved with change programs. When change becomes more prevalent in the organizations' dynamic contexts, there is an increasing need to develop program management toward an organizational capability for managing value-oriented, integrated, and multi-project change in complex stakeholder contexts.     

Value creation dynamics in a project alliance

Project alliance requires all parties to work together in good faith, share project risks, and make unanimous decisions for the betterment of the project. A key feature of successful implementation of a project alliance is a focus on value creation and value for money. This paper proposes a qualitative system dynamics model to specify and explain dynamics of value creation processes in the context of project alliance. By synthesizing the existing literature and reports on project alliancing, this paper identifies four processes that have a strong influence on the value created in the project alliance context: work progression, rework, redesign and innovation, and rescheduling. In addition, we show how these value creation processes are interrelated and evolve over time. The effectiveness of these processes is influenced by the capability and motivation of the project alliance partners to discover works that do not fully utilize the available resources, and make quick decisions to capture these benefits.     

Rethinking organizational design for managing multiple projects

This paper aims at positioning organizational design as an important phenomenon in the field of project management with a high potential of contributing to organizational theory. While organizational design has been neglected by scholars of management and organizational theory, it has been of great interest to those from the project management field. This incongruence—comprising the focus of this study—calls for new insights on theorization in context. The paper provides a preliminary theoretical framework combining contingency theory, the historical approach and social theory to understand organizational design, both as a thing and as a process. It provides empirical evidence from three case studies in healthcare. Findings confirm the specificity of each design while at the same time adopting a similar temporal pattern. We take this opportunity to highlight the seminal work of Rodney Turner on project-based organization and design.

Individual,project and organizational learning flows within a global project-based organization: exploring what,how and who

Project learning is a function of individuals’ internal cognitive processes, interpretation and integration of learning at the team and project level, and the organization's ability to institutionalize learning into practices. However, understanding of how learning unfolds between these levels remains limited. Using a single in-depth case study, this paper reports on how learning occurs between levels in a global project-based organization (PBO). Six bridging mechanisms are identified: (1) networks, (2) organizational initiatives, (3) power and politics, (4) coaching and mentoring, (5) culture of empowerment, and (6) temporality. The temporal nature of the projects paired with the global context offers the opportunity for a stable workforce to be deployed across geographical regions to form formal and informal networks that offer a parallel organizational structure for multilevel learning. Project managers (PMs), senior leaders and the project management office (PMO) engage differently in the learning process, depending on their degree of connectivity and power within the global organization.     

Integration of an exploration program with its parent organization: A lifecycle perspective

Exploration programs are collections of interconnected exploration projects that are identified, coordinated, and managed in order to pursue a strategic objective of exploring radical innovations to be developed by the parent organization. Based on a longitudinal fine-grained study of a firm that has launched such an initiative, we offer a characterization of an exploration program and outline the coexistence of its integration with, as well as its isolation from, its parent organization. This is achieved through mechanisms and boundary activities complementing each other and undertaken by actors involved in the program and located at different levels of the parent organization. We show how this integration with the parent organization evolves between the program initiation and its implementation and how the differences lie in its exploratory nature, i.e., the definition of its scope, which is not known at its launch, the potential leveraging of the firm's existing resources to execute the exploration projects and then to further develop them, and the capitalization on the projects’ outcome and the use of the knowledge that has been built in excess.Thus we further bridge the literature on project and program management with the literature on innovation management and show how an exploration program can contribute to achieving ambidexterity at the firm level.     

Value creation using the mission breakdown structure

The modern concept of project success includes the project contributing to the value creation of its base organization. We need tools to discuss what the project itself and the base organization should do to enhance this value creation. The Mission Breakdown Structure tool helps a company set up a project with a clearly defined mission and secures an effective interplay between the base organization and its project. This article presents the tool in principle and use an illustrative real-life case. The case looks like an IT project at the outset, but when using the Mission Breakdown Structure tool, we recognise that it is much more than that and that different stakeholders need to be involved to secure a successful project. Advice on how to use the Mission Breakdown Structure tool is also provided.     

Planning a Countryside for Life

The paper demonstrates that organizational landscapes play a central role in planning processes, and presents an analysis of the complex interrelationship between organizational structures and political, economic, and social factors. Using the redevelopment of the Toronto waterfront as a case study, the paper explores how organizational conflicts among levels of government and their agencies led to a fragmented redevelopment process and a planned environment that failed to meet public expectations. The narrative also highlights the generally unpredictable nature of organizational effects, often resulting from the dynamics of self-interested organizations. The final conclusion is that organizational crafting plays an essential role in the achievement of planning objectives, despite difficulties in predicting and controlling its long-term consequences.     

A conceptual construct on value for infrastructure asset management

Understanding the meaning of value to asset-intensive organizations and their stakeholders has been a long-standing goal of researchers and managers of the asset management community. These issues have become particularly prominent with the publication of the ISO 5500x series of standards on asset management. These standards are intended to guide asset-intensive organizations of different types towards realising value from their asset base. However, value can be defined and shaped in various ways, and a high-level conceptual construct to frame these differences is needed. Because such a construct has not yet been established, organizations have no standard guidance to systematically achieve and demonstrate that value is derived from their assets. The paper also discusses the impact of cognitive and motivational biases as well as the complexity of operational and business context while determining the meaning of value. This article presents an overview of theories on value and proposes an original high-level conceptual construct to be used by decision-makers in infrastructure organizations. This holistic proposal provides a structured understanding of the value concept and intends to assist infrastructure asset managers in establishing or developing their decision making processes at all levels of the organization. It enables decision-makers to factor in the benefits and impacts of competing decision options in organizational objectives and stakeholders’ needs and expectations and promotes the grasping of opportunities and an enhanced balancing of costs, risks and performance throughout the life cycle of infrastructures.     

Megaprojects as organizational platforms and technology platforms for value creation

Megaprojects are multi-actor and multi-technology constellations that create value for society. Previous research on joint and coordinated activities to create value for multiple actors in megaprojects over system lifecycle is scarce. This study explores how the actors in a megaproject jointly create value. We analyze value creation in megaprojects by theorizing on the research on organizational platforms, which draws together knowledge from research on other types of platforms, ecosystems and networks. In our empirical study, we analyze a city district renewal megaproject, by focusing on the actors' joint activities that contribute to synergetic project processes, solutions and outcomes both tangible and intangible that participating actors find beneficial. We derive five propositions that explain how actors in a megaproject create value through jointly planned and governed design principles, and through value-leveraging activities. Jointly planned and governed design principles include inter-organizational coordinating bodies and joint activities that share ownership and decision-making. In value-leveraging activities, leader actors facilitate megaproject actors' competition and value capture that determine most suitable participants to value-creating activities.     

Project governance interface and owner organizational identity: The Venice Biennale case

There is a considerable body of work on managing the governance interface in project organizing, yet there has been little consideration of how the organizational identity of the project owner might shape the design of that interface. This is important because organizational identity is known to shape various aspects of project organizing, such as how an organization is perceived by team members, so we might expect it also influence the performance of projects. We explore this question through a case study of how the Venice Biennale owner organization governs one of its temporary project events – the 2019 Venice International Film Festival. Through our empirical fieldwork, based on multiple data sources including a participant ethnography of the 76th Venice International Film Festival and semi-structured interviews, we found that the organizational identity of the project owner organization influences choices made for the governance of a delivery project. The study contributes to theory on project organizing by highlighting the importance of owner organizational identity for the design of the governance interface in project organizing and identifying the importance of an interpersonal approach to governance interface design for an owner organization with an identify of innovation and experimentation on its delivery projects.     

Navigating multiple contexts to integrate system transformation programs

This paper unpacks how actors navigate the multiple organizational, interorganizational and industry contexts that are associated with system transformation programs for addressing wicked, societal problems. Because system transformation programs can only succeed when changes are implemented by multiple organizations, an increased understanding of integrating programs in multiple contexts is needed. We draw on a qualitative field study of an interorganizational program designed to help transform the Dutch healthcare system. We identified three practices of context navigation that actors used to integrate the program into multiple parent organizations and address emerging incongruencies among contexts. These are aligning contexts, prioritizing contexts, and adding contexts. Over time, these navigating practices promoted progress towards program objectives via multiple parallel collaborative paths. Our findings shed new light on the role of breakdowns and decoupled collaborative paths in programs oriented at contributing to system transformation.     

CITIZEN PARTICIPATION IN NEGOTIATED INVESTMENT STRATEGY

Public administrators exercise professional discretion. Citizen participation is affected by this discretion in two ways. Public administrators often design programs with citizen participaiton processes, and they also implement these processes. In both cases, citizen participation may be increased or decreased depending on how programs are designed and implemented. Negotiated Investment Strategy is presented as a specific case illustrating how such program design and implementation influenced citizen participaiton. As a result of design concessions, the administrators who implemented Negotiated Investment Strategy were constrained in their ability to share information with the citizenry and from assisting citizen organizations.     

Hooked on a feeling? An interpretive study of organizational identity (dis)continuity during strategic change programmes

This paper explores how organizational members perceive identity (dis)continuity when they are caught in the crossfire during strategic change programmes. Illustrative data stems from a Finnish company that underwent a change from family ownership to corporate investor ownership, resulting in a broad organizational transformation. The findings indicate that organizational members perceive identity (dis)continuity during strategic change programmes in many ways, influenced by both the organizational context and personal experience. The organization's ability to signal continuity and the strength of the individual member's emotional bond to the old organization seem to be key elements in directing member perceptions towards identity continuity or discontinuity – in other words, liminality. The organizational identity perspective improves our understanding of the individual-level dynamics of strategic change programmes, helping managers engage and motivate members to execute the change. In effect, strategic change programmes where programme management understands and acknowledges the role of identity may improve organizational outcomes.     

Balancing value creating logics in construction

Construction companies apply different logics to create value. Some companies are organized according to one primary logic, while others are based on multiple logics. Different value creating logics have different cost and value drivers according to the type of activities involved and the interdependencies between them. Where multiple logics coexist, the different cost and value drivers may generate tensions. The purpose of the paper is to study how construction companies maintain a balance between multiple logics and how they handle tensions between them through a case study from the Norwegian construction industry. Both project management and supply chain management perspectives have been used to explain construction practice. By applying a ‘value configuration analysis’, it is clear how value creation is achieved in construction practice by balancing the needs of both the project and the supply chain. Both intra‐ and inter‐organizational interactions are vital in creating value across different logics. The contribution of the study lies in applying this framework to the construction area by adding knowledge about the underlying principles of different logics, including the tensions between them. Furthermore, the case study illustrates how these may be handled in order to create value in construction.     

Why and how do project management offices change? A structural analysis approach

The growing popularity of Project Management Offices (PMOs) as organizational structures is grounded in the assumption they support more efficient and effective project management for better strategy implementation. However, research emphasizes they fail to deliver expected value: their unstable nature precludes the delivery of long-term benefits. This is compounded by the absence of a theory of PMO change and adaptation. Recent research, taking a co-evolution lens rooted in evolutionary theory, suggests that PMOs should be studied in relation to the broader organizational context, in order to better capture the dynamic interplay and fit between them. In this study, taking a routine perspective as micro-foundation and unit of analysis, we focus on the co-evolution between PMO and Project Portfolio Management (PfM) as organizational capability for six case studies. A structural analysis of the relational routines' system between PMO, PfM and the Organizational context allow us to unveil dynamics at stake, i.e. why and how changes occur, as well as eigen behaviors and the changing states of various routines elements (influential, mediating, dependent or not-influential). This study makes five contributions. We show that: 1) PMO and PfM can be conceptualized as collections of routines, 2) PMO and PfM co-evolve over time to adapt to organizational context influence, 3) the co-evolution of a routines' system, abstracted as a non-trivial machine, exhibits an eigen behavior, 4) applying a structural analysis approach allows to simulate the dynamics of a routines' system and to unveil the role of key routine elements and 5) eigen values of routines' systems allow to characterize their eigen behavior.     

‘Playing back-spin balls’: narrating organizational change in construction

What does change mean for organizational members? Although researchers have attempted to capture its intrinsic complexities, there remains uncertainty as to what change really is and how it happens. Drawing on a longitudinal interpretative case study of change in a large Swedish construction company, a narrative approach is used to elicit middle managers’ stories of change episodes over the past two decades. These stories have then been compared with the narratives of the same episodes in governing documents. We found that the lived and the formal narratives, respectively, depicted two very different interpretations and enactments of change: the former described a discontinuous process of discrete contingencies demanding immediate short-term responses whereas the latter described a proactive incremental strategic plan. A narrative approach to the study of organizational change contributes to deeper insights into the ramifications of an organization’s socio-cultural system by enabling the capture of significant variations, contradictions and tensions, both for organizational members and for the researchers who study change.