Search results

This paper highlights that extant project management (PM) bodies of knowledge have not fully addressed organisational transformation enabled by information systems projects. The purpose of this paper is to examine the transformation context in the PM disciplines. The authors argue that the execution-oriented PM bodies of knowledge are limited, as they place too much emphasis on the delivery outputs by the supplier rather than the achievement of beneficial outcomes by the project owner.

As a conceptual paper, this paper reviews extant PM bodies of knowledge, life cycle models, the context of organisational transformation and benefits realisation, and the distinction between a project owner’s and the project supplier’s capabilities.

A new PM knowledge framework is provided as an advanced research frame for future works by enhancing Peter Morris’ Management of Projects framework by employing the conceptual lens of Winch’s Three Domains of Project Organising model.

The advanced model emphasises the necessity of distinguishing a project owner’s and a supplier’s PM capability and knowledge to achieve successful IS-enabled organisational transformation. Through this effort to resolve the fragmentation and specialisation problems in PM disciplines, the model can be used as a theoretical groundwork for the advancement of PM research.

This study aims to investigate how the processes of memory acquisition, retention, retrieval and application occur in project-based organizations (PBOs). In this kind of organization, the nature of corporate memory is influenced by the transience, uniqueness and independence of the project portfolio. Such understanding may help practitioners to mitigate the effects of project transience and promote knowledge sharing among project teams.

An empirical and qualitative study was carried out through a multiple case study approach conducted in three Brazilian Engineering Design Firms, which are organized by projects. Document analysis, direct observation and semi-structured interviews with engineers, project managers and executives were conducted.

The memory acquisition process takes place in five forms which have different sources and destinations when comparing PBOs with traditional organizational settings. Memory retention in PBOs crosses organizational boundaries and establishes a knowledge network of former employees and third parties. The PBOs project memory can be divided into volatile and perennial memory, where the former can be lost throughout project execution and the latter is internalized, becoming an inseparable part of the corporate memory. Memory retrieval in PBOs is also distinct since it has particular mechanisms depending on whether the knowledge is technical or administrative.

The research investigates the corporate memory processes within the volatile context of PBOs in a Latin-American developing country whose culture favors tacit knowledge exchange. The paper proposes a framework that unveils different patterns of knowledge acquisition, temporary and perennial retention structures, intensive usage of external knowledge in memory retrieval and particular memory applications in PBOs. The framework may guide scholars, project managers, engineers and practitioners in navigating through the uniqueness of organizational learning flows and structures in PBOs.

The purpose of this conceptual paper is to describe and explain how organisations use internal projects to implement organisation-level strategy objectives.

Theory development with an emphasis on explaining key constructs and their mutual relationships. The theoretical contribution is represented in a diagram along with a detailed verbal account.

The paper develops a dynamic, cross-level framework to illustrate the organisational processes and outcomes that determine project-based strategy implementation within a single organisation. The interplay between the base organisation and the project, and benefits realisation were singled out as key future research areas. The proposed framework engages with central discourses in the fields of project management, strategic management, innovation studies, knowledge management and organisation studies.

Only the contours of an organisation-level theory of strategically motivated internal projects are outlined. Future research must elaborate on the complexities, the non-linear relationships and the boundary conditions that follow from the proposed framework.

Managers are alerted to the strategic role of internal projects, how these projects help connect strategy and performance and what the accompanying organisational processes and outcomes look like.

The paper constitutes an early conceptual treatment of strategy-driven internal projects as a distinct project category, thus addressing a major knowledge gap in project studies. Organisational project-management theory is extended with suggestions for future research.

Although knowledge transfer in the context of projects and project-based organizations (PBOs) has gained increasing attention from academia and industry, it is not clear how knowledge transfers from projects to their parent PBOs. This research aims to explore the main factors influencing knowledge transfer from projects to their parent PBOs, and analyze how these factors integrate the transfer process as system components using the system dynamics (SD) method.

Based on the literature review, investigation and interview, this paper adopts the event analysis to obtain the influencing factors from historical cases and establishes a conceptual model of knowledge transfer from five dimensions, which simultaneously considers the knowledge sender, knowledge receiver and the relationship between the knowledge sender and receiver, knowledge features and transfer context. Then, the relationships between variables in the qualitative model were clarified, and a quantitative model including seven feedback loops was established using the SD model. Lastly, the system simulation and sensitivity analysis of the main parameters were realized in Vensim PLE software.

The simulation analysis results show that the model can simulate the knowledge transfer process from projects to the PBO to a certain extent. This research fully demonstrates the impact of variables from five dimensions on knowledge transfer and incorporates the knowledge gap and transfer threshold in the research category. Moreover, the rationality of seven feedback loops proposed in the model was verified. And the effects of various factors on the amount of knowledge transferred and the PBO's knowledge stock were examined through sensitivity analysis. Furthermore, recommendations for developing an integrated knowledge transfer mechanism of PBOs and projects to enhance transfer effect are offered.

This research provides other researchers with a systematic understanding of transfer process from projects to PBOs, and insight for further research on knowledge transfer in project and organization contexts. Furthermore, this study guides researchers to focus on the causal processes that constitute knowledge transfer and explores the expected and unexpected phenomena generated over time. However, some variables involved in the transfer process are simplified, and the establishment of a more complex dynamic model needs further research and discussion.

By establishing a simulation model for knowledge transfer from projects to their parent PBOs, this study helps project teams and PBOs grasp the overall picture of the transfer process. Especially, this paper provides target-oriented recommendations for project and PBO managers to implement effective knowledge transfer practices, which have certain practical values for knowledge cultivation, coordination, reuse and innovation in the organization.

This study contributes to knowledge management and project management literature by simulating the knowledge transfer process from projects to their parent PBOs. Additionally, this paper provides a reference for PBO and project managers to establish an integrated knowledge-transfer mechanism in the work process and comprehensively implement effective knowledge transfer practices.

Effective leaders have emerged as the cornerstone of project success. The major purpose of this paper is to propose a framework to categorize and prioritize leadership competencies for project managers in megaprojects.

In the first stage, this study utilizes PMBOK 6th Edition, IPMA ICB 4.0 frameworks to develop a hierarchy-based four clusters of leadership competencies. In the second stage, a Fuzzy-AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) approach was employed to prioritize the leadership competencies for an organization dealing in megaprojects. Finally, using ordinal priority approach (OPA), the results of Fuzzy-AHP method are validated.

Based on PMBOK, IPMA and literature, the proposed framework deduced twenty-four leadership competencies and grouped them in four clusters. The Fuzzy-AHP results indicate that among clusters, people competencies cluster is ranked most important, followed by perspective, practice, and innovation competencies. Considering the sub-categories and global weights, culture/values, governance, interpersonal skills, and development and growth emerged as the most important leadership competencies. The results from OPA corroborate the findings of Fuzzy-AHP method.

Megaprojects are characterized by massive investments and extensive economic and social impact. The proposed framework would be an important aid for policymakers to develop suitable strategies and programs to inculcate leadership competencies that would lead to successful project managers and improved project performance.

The need for this research stems from the need to integrate popular project management frameworks in leadership competencies development in project based organizations. The proposed integrated framework, based on PMBOK 6th Edition and IPMA ICB 4.0 competency frameworks, is an original contribution to understand and prioritize leadership competencies for megaproject success.

This study focuses on the dynamic relationship between organizational actors and engaged scholars involved in a normative assessment conducted in a public organization managing major projects.

We build on a 15-month engaged scholarship experience carried out in the Ministry of Transport of Quebec. We explain and analyze the normative assessment process, using a storytelling approach and vignettes to explore four situated learning moments.

This study offers a deeper understanding of how normative assessment is conducted, and how situated and collective learning occur throughout. We find that both organizational actors and researchers learn through this process and synchronize their mutual learning such that researchers actually participate in a larger organizational transformation.

Like any qualitative endeavor, this research is context-specific. We offer several research avenues to extend the applicability of findings.

This article could inspire organizations and scholars to collaborate on normative assessment during organizational transformation. This approach is of particular interest in the context of a worldwide pandemic where public and private organizations all have to adapt to new sanitary, economic, technological and social realities.

In a context marked by growing concern for the research-practice gap and the relevance of scholarship, our study illustrates the development of a mutually beneficial collaboration between practitioners and researchers that enhances understanding of complex organizational phenomena and issues.

This research highlights the relevance of engaged scholarship and supports normative assessment as a social process to generate mutual learning.

Previous research within the dynamic capabilities literature has primarily targeted the strategic innovation of technology firms and significantly less interest has been given to project-based organizations that operate in the construction sector. A recent study by Davies and Brady (2016) places the dynamic capabilities concept in a project-based context, drawing upon research on dynamic capabilities and organizational ambidexterity. The purpose of this paper is to apply the aforementioned framework in a case involving public construction clients with the aim of examining their approaches for maintaining or developing project capabilities depending on the volatility of the environment.

The study is based on a case study of a decentralized association of 16 healthcare client organizations in Swedish counties, which was compared to a centralized unit for healthcare planning and construction in Norway. In total, 19 interviews were conducted, alongside two workshops and a feedback questionnaire.

The interviewees emphasized the lack of adequate support to handle the increasingly more complex projects. Results indicate the need for a more segmented approach for understanding how dynamic capabilities are managed in client organizations based not merely on the level of stability in the environment, but also taking into account the resources that are utilized. It is further argued that there is a need for a more granular research approach to studying the development of capabilities in a case-based setting, an approach that more specifically links the development of dynamic capabilities with their relevant antecedent activities.

The study sheds light on how the various approaches for maintaining/developing project capabilities available to the public sector construction client depend on the volatility of the environment and the resources they require.

The purpose of this paper is to summarize an information technology (IT) initiative at Hilti Corporation that began with a local IT need and ended with the global transformation of the company’s customer service processes and infrastructures. The authors highlight 12 lessons learned from the transformation, which Hilti referred to as the Global Contact Center (GCC) program.

The authors analyze Hilti’s GCC program based on first-hand experience. Hilti applied an innovative, wave-like implementation approach that facilitated a fast roll-out, fostered peer-to-peer knowledge transfer, and helped to overcome reluctance to change.

The analysis of Hilti’s approach to its new customer service management reveals a number of simple, yet, critical lessons learned regarding leveraging IT-driven business value through global process transformation.

The case report can help researchers to further theorize about IT-enabled process transformation. The GCC program resulted in significant improvements in the performance and quality of customer service processes and enabled transparent reporting and performance measurement on a global scale.

Overall, the GCC case provides an illustrative example of successful process transformation at the global level that also demonstrates implementation challenges. As such, the case report can help practitioners in planning and executing similar projects toward customer service excellence.

Hilti’s GCC case not only provides fresh insights into a successful process transformation. As it focusses on customer service, it also concerns an application area that has received little in the way of attention from process transformation research.

The impact of information technology (IT) on the agility of supply chain management (SCM) systems is very noticeable in the business world nowadays. Competition and constant changes, including product/technological innovations, decreasing product lifestyles and product proliferation, create pressure that affects the business environment. Organizations are required for answering the changes in the market to gain a competitive advantage and business success. The organizations are able to answer to unexpected market changes through supply chain market, and these changes are converted to business opportunities. Using IT to achieve the agility of SCM is one of the important factors to help the organizations. Therefore, the adoption of IT and its efficient implementation can improve the cooperation between supply chain agility through the rapid transfer, the distribution of accurate information and the use of information. This paper aims to investigate the impact of IT on the agility of SCM.

A total of 120 employees of the Golasal firm are involved in collecting data using a questionnaire. Measurements were performed in all questionnaires using a five-point Likert scale. The causal model is evaluated by structural equationmodeling technique, which is used to examine the reliability and validity of the model.

The results have shown that IT has positive influences on the agility of SCM systems. In addition, the obtained results have shown that four variables, namely, IT skills and knowledge, IT-based systems integration, IT infrastructure and design of global position system and geographic information systems, affect the agility of SCM systems.

In this paper, the agility of SCM systems is pointed out and the approach to resolve the problem is applied into a practical example. The presented model provides a complete framework to examine the impact of IT on the agility of SCM systems.

The mega railway infrastructure projects are faced with complex environments and multi-level management challenges. Thus, the mega railway infrastructure project management system not only needs to focus on its composition, but also needs to consider changes and impacts of internal and external environment.

This study attempts to introduce the concept of dissipative structure from the perspective of complexity theory and constructs a positive entropy and negentropy flow index system for mega railway infrastructure project management system in order to analyze the factors of management system more deeply. The Brusselator model is used to construct the structure of the mega railway infrastructure project management system, and the entropy method is used to calculate the positive entropy and negentropy values to verify whether the management system is a dissipative structure.

A plateau railway project in China was used as an example for an empirical study, not only its own characteristics are analyzed, but also the role of constraints and facilitation of the internal and external environment. Based on the research results, several effective suggestions are put forward to improve the stability and work efficiency of mega railway infrastructure project management system.

This study demonstrates that mega railway infrastructure project management system has the characteristics of dissipative structure. It can provide theoretical support for the development of mega railway infrastructure project management system from disorderly state to orderly state.