| 1. |
- Bergman, Inger, 1948, et al.
(författare)
-
Decoupling and standardization in the projectification of a company
- 2013
-
Ingår i: International Journal of Managing Projects in Business. - : Emerald. - 1753-8386 .- 1753-8378. ; 6:1, s. 106-128
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyse the change trajectory in a large, global, project‐oriented company, with focus on standardization of project work, and on how the company's structure, processes and employment‐base changed in line with the company's increasing volume of projects. Design/methodology/approach – The stance taken is to define firm‐based projects as temporary organisations embedded in, and coupled to their parent company. Narratives of employees' working history were combined with historical company data. The outcome is a trajectory of the company's history from four different perspectives, shown in parallel with the development of the company's project operations. Findings – The projectification history was found to be connected with two parallel movements: a push towards project decoupling countered by a pull towards standardization of project management practices to tighten the coupling. The direction of the movements was influenced from current project management trends. Research limitations/implications – The model of a projectified company as a loosely‐coupled system provides a novel way of analysing an organisation and its interfaces to its projects. Even though the work focuses on a unique company's projectification history, the intention is to provide a means to better understand the forces impacting the transformation of organisations increasingly using projects as a work‐form. Originality/value – Adding the notion of coupling gives a new dimension to the transformation of project‐oriented companies. The model for analysing projects by means of their patterns of loose and tight coupling provides arguments for the shift in focus from the individual project to the interplay between structure, people and processes in the project‐oriented company.
|
|
| 2. |
- Bergman, Inger, 1948, et al.
(författare)
-
Teaching Organizational Project Management at Postgraduate Level
- 2014
-
Ingår i: Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences. - : Elsevier BV. - 1877-0428. ; 119, s. 446-455
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- At postgraduate level, students expect more than basic project management education. Therefore a course called “Organisational Project Management” (OPM) was introduced in an international master's program in project management. The intention with the course was twofold: Firstly, to introduce OPM as a research field in organization theory; secondly, to prepare the students for working in a multi-project environment. In this paper we present how the course was designed to fulfill the students’ demands on an academic course at this level, while at the same time giving them practical experience of how OPM is implemented in the industry. Hence, the course is divided in a theoretical part presenting current theories in OPM, and a practical part, in which the students study how these theories and practices are applied in different companies. The students are working in a project spanning from initiation to closure, in which they prepare for and perform a maturity assessment of a company of their choice. The course has been run in six consecutive programs. From start, feedback from the students has shown that they consider the learning outcome very high and useful for their future work life. For some of the students, this is the first time that they have been provided an opportunity to discuss organizational issues and concepts such as project governance and project portfolio management with a manager in the industry. For students with work experience, the course has provided means to reflect on their previous work life.
|
|
