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Project Organization (project + organization)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting	50%

Selected Abstracts

Organizational emergence in networked collaboration

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS, Issue 7 2002
Ari-Pekka Hameri
Abstract Research on complex adaptive systems has generated several conceptual parables to explain systems with emergent behaviour. One prominent use for terms such as self-organization, evolutionary trajectories, co-evolution and punctuated equilibrium has been in understanding human organizations. In such systems, emergent behaviour is demonstrated in novel structures, processes and spin-offs that cannot be explained just by studying single components of the organization and the intelligence embedded in them. Instead of solely exploiting the qualitative explanatory power of the evolutionary concepts, this paper focuses also on quantitative methods to track emergent behaviour in a globally distributed, constantly fluctuating and highly networked project organization. The underlying case is that of CERN (CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, has its headquarters in Geneva. At present, its Member States are Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, the Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Israel, the Russian Federation, Turkey, Yugoslavia (status suspended after the UN embargo, June 1992), the European Commission and UNESCO have observer status.) and its decade long accelerator project, which strongly relies on electronic communication and networking to achieve its major objectives due to be accomplished by the year 2006. By using time series and self-organizing maps to analyse the global interaction among project groups and individuals the paper provides new insight to the understanding of emergent behaviour in human organizations. The key result of the study concerns the rigid deep structure of each case organization that seems to remain intact for the duration of the whole project. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Are we getting any better?

PROJECT MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, Issue 4 2010
Comparing project management in the years 2000
Abstract This paper presents a study on the progress of project management. Descriptions of projects from 2000 and 2008 are studied. The study concludes that the field of project management is moving ahead. Project team members are more knowledgeable about project work, project objectives are more clearly expressed, project organization is more appropriate, most work processes are improved, and team members experience project work as rewarding and are more motivated for future projects. However, the project results are not fully satisfactory. It is shown that stakeholders' satisfaction could be improved by better decision processes, better management and leadership, and closer cooperation with the stakeholders. [source]

Temporary organisations and spatial embeddedness of learning and knowledge creation

GEOGRAFISKA ANNALER SERIES B: HUMAN GEOGRAPHY, Issue 2 2002
Bjørn T. Asheim
It is the overall aim of this article to investigate theoretically how spatial embeddedness of learning and knowledge creation might be challenged by alternative organisational forms (i.e. temporary organisations). The article presents development coalitions as an alternative to projects as a form of temporary organisation. They are potentially able to combine the promotion of radical change with collective and localised learning, thus eliminating some of the characteristic shortcomings of project organizations with regard to collective learning and transfer of knowledge. [source]

Managing complex development projects: arenas, knowledge processes and time

R & D MANAGEMENT, Issue 5 2002
Jonas Söderlund
The literature on project management has been dominated by techniques and methods for separating activities and making thought out plans. Closely related to this research stream is the research on product development, which seems to advocate somewhat of a different strategy where managing projects is a matter of enabling the crossing of functions and knowledge bases. This paper attempts to integrate these two lines of research. The paper is based on two in,depth case studies of project management in product development contexts. The projects under study were highly complex and consisted of multiple interrelated parts, which called for ,tightly coupled' organizational solutions. From our point of view, much effort by the project management teams was put into establishing a project that was responsive and where participating local units were oriented toward various ,global' measures. In our conception, the overall deadline seemed to have played an important role for promoting communal and interactive problem solving. Furthermore, the deadline emphasized the need for global arenas where the interactive problem solving could take place. It is argued that time,based controls set a global time for the project. The paper also demonstrates the importance of various global arenas, such as testing activities and project management forums, in order to keep track of time limits and to trigger global knowledge processes. Furthermore, based on the notion of ,separation' and ,coupling' of sub,systems and project phases, the paper suggests a model identifying four types of project organizations. The paper contributes to the knowledge on project management in complex product development. [source]