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Project management and organization theory: IRNOP Meets PMJ

Article  in  Project Management Journal · August 2014

DOI: 10.1002/pmj.21442

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 Guest Editorial
Jonas Söderlund, Department of Leadership and Organizational Behaviour, BI Norwegian
Business School, Oslo, Norway
Ralf Müller, Department of Leadership and Organizational Behaviour, BI Norwegian Business
School, Oslo, Norway

Project Management and Organization Theory: IRNOP Meets PMJ

This is the first Project Management Journal (PMJ) spe-

cial issue with papers from the International Research
® had an intention to move IRNOP forward by adding their
personal flavor. From the very early days, the intention
Network on Organizing by Projects (IRNOP) conference. was to improve the linkages between project manage-
IRNOP has established itself as one of the leading and ment and organization theory; later, some of the topics
most prominent meeting places for scholars in the realm added have been more specific, including innovation and
of project organizing. This loosely coupled network was business models. Over the years, IRNOP has accumulated
founded in 1993 and held its first conference in Sweden quite an impressive group of people who are currently
in 1994. Since then, the conference has been organized sharing the interest of making project management more
bi-annually and has travelled the world, with stops in connected to organization theory, and on the other hand,
France, Canada, Australia, and several other countries making organization theory more focused on projects and
on its way to Norway, where the conference was held in temporary organizations.
2013. Table  1 provides an overview of the conferences Indeed, quite a few publications have emerged from
organized since then. We were fortunate enough to host the series of IRNOP conferences. Perhaps one of the most
this conference and are now fortunate enough to edit this significant is the special issue that was published in 1995
special issue with some of the papers presented at the by the Scandinavian Journal of Management. In this issue,
2013 conference. we have some of the most cited works in the area of project
This introduction will give you some thoughts and management, including the articles by Lundin and Söder-
ideas on where IRNOP is heading and how we wanted holm (1995) and Packendorff (1995) on projects as tempo-
to affect its trajectory. Our goal with the 2013 confer- rary organizations. In addition, in the same issue, Midler’s
ence was to focus more on the methodological issues (1995) influential paper on the projectification of the firm
and at the same time stick to the conventional focus on appeared. Hence, already in the very beginning, publica-
project management research that draws on organization
tions from the IRNOP conference made powerful imprints
theory. All past organizers of IRNOP, we believe, have
and, over the years, have received quite impressive citation
scores from a wide range of scholars, not only within the
Year Venue project management community but also from scholars
1994 Lycksele, Sweden in the fields of innovation and management. From the
subsequent conferences came a series of books (Lundin &
1996 Paris, France
Midler, 1998; Lundin & Hartman, 2000) and a set of special
1998 Calgary, Canada issues addressing topics such as renewal and learning.
2000 Sydney, Australia Primarily, since the conference held in 2002, selected
2002 Rotterdam, The Netherlands papers from IRNOP have been published in special
2004 Åbo, Finland issues in the International Journal of Project Management
(IJPM). For the 2013 conference in Oslo, we have two spe-
2006 Xi’an, China
cial issues—one that will be published by IJPM and this
2007 Brighton, United Kingdom issue of PMJ. There is a difference between the two. The
2009 Berlin, Germany issue published by IJPM specifically addresses the meth-
2011 Montréal, Canada odological issues. The PMJ issue has a more conventional
2013 Oslo, Norway touch—it publishes a few select papers from the confer-
ence that the track chairs believe would be interesting
Table 1: Overview of past IRNOP conferences.
for researchers and reflective practitioners in the domain
of project management. The idea was to provide a broad
Project Management Journal, Vol. 45, No. 4, 2–6 view of what goes on in the area of project management;
© 2014 by the Project Management Institute hence, we have papers in this issue dealing with decision
Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com).
DOI: 10.1002/pmj.21442 making, portfolio management, ethics and governance,

2 August/September 2014 ■ Project Management Journal ■ DOI: 10.1002/pmj

complexity, risk, and improvements. In our opinion, these are
all ‘hot topics’ that currently attract a lot of attention among
scholars in project management, which might also spur
some interest from scholars in adjacent research domains.
Of course, the general idea with this special issue is not only
to show what currently goes on in the domain of project
management, but also to point out some directions for future
research. This is one of the main ideas in this introductory
paper. What goes on in the area of project management? What
are the paths ahead and research topics for the future?
As pointed out, we do not have a particular focus for this
special issue. Rather, the six selected papers demonstrate the
current breadth in the domain of project management and
deal with several different levels of analysis and a range of
different theoretical problems. It is quite interesting though to
see how the papers in a variety of ways respond to the calls for
rethinking project management research that was introduced
by Winter, Smith, Morris, and Cicmil (2006). In Winter et al.’s
paper, the general idea was to highlight a path ahead for proj-
ect management research. In particular, the authors pointed
out that there was a greater need to address the complexity
of project management; to investigate the social processes
of projects; to explore the value creation properties and
processes of projects; and to look at projects from a broader,
more holistic viewpoint. The papers included here contribute
to this agenda in different ways. They strengthen the call for
more research into these specific domains and also demon-
strate that project management research has moved ahead
to new territories and new calls for rethinking, including a
broader view on decision-making processes, a more dynamic
perspective on complexity, a greater interest into the value
created by innovation projects, and a more current take on
the improvements of the management of projects. These are
all topics that will be discussed by the papers presented in
this special issue. Following we summarize the main ideas
coming from these papers and the way we view them; then
follows our view on how they impact the way we should look
upon future research.
Optimism bias and decision making have always been
essential parts of project management research. One of the
most important contributions is probably the work by Staw
and Ross on escalating of commitment and why decision
makers stick to failing projects. This has been a popular
theme in research within the decision school of project man-
agement research (Söderlund, 2011). In recent years, this
and other studies have received renewed interest, which has
spurred the interest in decision making preceding projects.
Most notably, Bent Flyvbjerg has called attention to a series of
decision-making problems in the domain of projects. Nobel
Prize winner Daniel Kahneman has of course also influenced
a number of scholars in social science and, not surprisingly,
also scholars in the field of project management. One of his
main ideas with this stream of research is the delusions of
August/September 2014 ■ Project Management Journal ■ DOI: 10.1002/pmj
success and the optimism bias typically observed in a number
of decision-making situations preceding large-scale projects.
The first paper by Werner G. Meyer, “The Effect of Opti-
mism Bias on the Decision to Terminate Failing Projects,”
on the effects of optimism bias and how this affects the deci-
sions to terminate failing projects, draws on experimental
data involving 345 individuals. The paper makes a distinction
between two kinds of optimism bias: in-project optimism bias
and post-project optimism bias. The author demonstrates
that in-project and post-project optimism biases have effects
on the escalation of commitment of failing projects. The
study lends significant support for the two types of optimism
bias, indicating that decision makers were likely to escalate
commitment to a failing project. The main reason was that
they had the perception that the benefits from the project’s
product would exceed the benefits that were calculated in
the project’s business case. The study also shows that deci-
sion makers tend to be optimistic about the influence they
have over the outcomes of projects, in other words, what
the author refers to as in-project optimism. Decision makers
were also optimistic about the value that projects deliver. In
particular, they tended to be optimistic that projects deliver
better business benefits than what can be proven through the
business case. The latter is associated with what the author
refers to as ‘post-project optimism,’ which is an optimism
bias prevalent throughout the project. This bias increases as
the project approaches the end. The support for post-project
optimism bias indicates that decision makers believe that a
project will give better returns after the project is completed
than what was initially identified in the project’s business
case. Post-project optimism bias suggests that decision mak-
ers are either not well-informed about the project’s business
case, and what can realistically be achieved, or they choose
to ignore the facts of the business case in lieu of their own
assessment of the project benefits.
Tim Brady and Andrew Davies address the issue of
structural and dynamic complexity in projects in the second
paper, “Managing Structural and Dynamic Complexity: A
Tale of Two Projects.” The authors draw on in-depth findings
from two case studies of megaprojects in the United King-
dom: the Heathrow Terminal 5 project and the London 2012
Olympic Park project. The authors argue that prior research
has shown that complexity is a significant factor in a project’s
failure to achieve cost, time, and quality objectives. Based on
prior research, the paper initially makes a distinction between
structural and dynamic complexity. This distinction is then
used to compare the two projects. The paper reveals a num-
ber of differences in the approach to managing structural and
dynamic complexity. The paper also identifies several com-
mon factors that may help project managers achieve positive
outcomes for their complex projects.
The authors are particularly interested in the condi-
tions under which megaprojects can achieve cost, time, and
3
 Guest Editorial
quality objectives. They argue that the two selected projects
are examples of successful construction megaprojects. Both
projects involved the integration of different types of infra-
structure, including a variety of buildings, transport systems,
energy and waste systems, and IT systems. The authors are
particularly interested in understanding why the projects
were able to achieve cost, time, and quality objectives. The
paper shows how complexity associated with the two projects
was addressed by creating distinctive organizational struc-
tures and processes. The analysis reveals a set of differences
with regard to the approaches taken by the people manag-
ing the two projects. In the Heathrow T5 project, the client
created a controlled and tightly integrated umbrella frame-
work based on a consistent and standardized process and a
common code of behavior, which was used across all major
projects and sub-projects. The Olympic construction project
and its delivery partner adopted a tight–loose approach to
managing the project to establish consistent processes for
managing change across the entire project while adopting
different approaches to individual sub-projects and provid-
ing contractors with the autonomy required to developing
specific solutions to dealing with problems encountered in
each project.
The authors point out that dynamic complexity is often
overlooked in large-scale construction projects. The authors
stress that managing such complexity is a process that, to a
great extent, depends on finding the right balance between
control and interaction and of being able to “do the extraor-
dinary.” Balancing requires the project organization to find a
suitable structure to fit the project context that can accom-
modate the needs for both interaction and control. Doing the
extraordinary, it seems, sometimes means developing new
and creative ways of maintaining progress in the face of major
obstacles that can arise during the course of a complex proj-
ect. Brady and Davies show that a higher order of cooperation
among stakeholders, project champions, highly competent
individuals; and the ability to discover unique solutions
and seeing events as opportunities rather than threats are
all important factors in successfully managing complexity
in large infrastructure projects. The authors identify a set of
common patterns across the two cases with regard to strong
client leadership and capabilities, collaborative behaviors, the
ability to be adaptive and responsive, innovative approaches,
and the use of digital technologies.
The third paper, “Ethics, Trust, and Governance in
Temporary Organizations,” by Ralf Müller, Rodney Turner,
Erling S. Andersen, Jingting Shao, and Øyvind Kvalnes,
reports on findings from an investigation on the types and
severity of ethical issues project managers face in different
governance settings and how managers deal with these ethi-
cal issues. The study also looked at how the governance par-
adigm influences the trust among stakeholders in a project.
In that respect, the paper participates in the ongoing debate
4 August/September 2014 ■ Project Management Journal ■ DOI: 10.1002/pmj
about the importance of different governance structures
for the management and leadership of projects and adds
an ethics and trust dimension. Initially and based on the
literature on project governance, the authors make a distinc-
tion between four types of governance paradigms to which
organizations are expected to adhere. The study is based
on a global, web-based survey with 331 responses. One key
observation from this study is that the types of ethical issues
vary by governance paradigm, country, and project type; in
addition, the behavior of managers varies a great deal by
the governance structure, as does the managers’ willing-
ness to resolve ethical issues and the trust among stake-
holders. The study indicates that higher levels of trust are
typically observed in predominantly stakeholder-oriented
governance structures. In accordance with agency theory
and stewardship theory, the study showed a dominance of
transparency issues in projects governed from a shareholder
perspective and a dominance of optimization issues (the
ethically correct distribution of benefits and risk among
project participants) in stakeholder-dominated governance
paradigms.
In the fourth paper, “Value Management for Exploration
Projects,” Rémi Maniak, Christophe Midler, Sylvain Lenfle,
and Marie Le Pellec-Dairon investigate some of the innova-
tion challenges associated with the management of projects.
The authors argue that a greater focus on innovation-based
competition has led to a paradox for project management.
On the one hand, the authors point out that firms have been
continuously streamlining their new product development
process and have integrated their project management into
a strongly standardized model of project management. This
standardized model puts much attention on the elimina-
tion of risk and the achievement of cost, quality, and lead
time optimization. In that respect, this model focuses on the
convergence of activities toward a predefined goal. On the
other hand, the authors note, firms cannot only rely on stan-
dardized projects to renew their products and capabilities.
In such settings, the authors claim, there is a need to launch
and implement breakthrough innovation projects—projects
that, in the literature, are typically referred to as “exploration
projects” (Lenfle, 2008). Such projects struggle with unfore-
seeable uncertainties in which both the goals and the means
are difficult to define at the outset of the project. According
to Maniak, Midler, Lenfle, and Le Pellec-Dairon, one of the
most interesting and pressing issues with such projects is that
they should not only deliver a new product, they should also,
and—in some cases this might be the primary outcome—
deliver a novel organizational capability. The authors argue
that it is well recognized that the project evaluation and value
management methodologies are likely to kill exploration
projects. By relying on in-depth longitudinal studies of three
exploration projects in the space and automotive industries
and the aftermath of these projects, the authors document
how value creation can be regarded and managed as a dual
process of potential value creation and value realization.
The inherited rational approach widely relies on the ex-
ante definition of a given set of performance (price and vol-
ume, lead time, and customer willingness to pay for a given
set of functionalities). These theories hardly take into account
the serendipity required to reevaluate during the project the
set of performance settled at the beginning. Thus the project
reaches the objectives or fails, but does not map how it could
build on the ongoing experience to redefine its value and its
ability to open new business avenues. Even if the capability
building approach now clearly identifies the importance of
the learning cycle occurring from one project to another, it is
right now far from being used in the concrete value manage-
ment toolbox.
More and more organizations and scholars show an inter-
est in developing their capability of managing project port-
folios. In the last few years, this area of research has perhaps
been the most vivid one in the area of project management.
In the fifth paper, “Risk Management in Project Portfolios
Is More Than Managing Project Risks: A Contingency Per-
spective on Risk Management,” Juliane Teller, Alexander
Kock, and Hans Georg Gemünden seek to integrate the
emerging literature on project portfolio management with
the literature on risk management. As the authors state, many
studies have indicated a positive relationship between project
risk management and the success of R&D and IT projects.
However, the reality might be very different at the portfolio
level and it might be quite insufficient to only look at the indi-
vidual project risks. As the authors argue, risk management
at the project level aims at reducing the likelihood of project
failure; however, to manage risk at the project portfolio level
requires a broader perspective. The authors present a study
of 177 project portfolios. The results suggest that formal risk
management at the project level and integration of risk infor-
mation at the portfolio level are positively associated with the
overall success of the project portfolio. The authors also dem-
onstrate that simultaneous risk management at both levels
increases the positive effect. In addition, risk management at
the project level is more important for R&D-dominated proj-
ect portfolios, whereas the integration of risk information is
more important with high levels of turbulence and portfolio
dynamics.
In the sixth paper, “Developing a Framework for Embed-
ding Useful Project Management Improvement Initiatives
in Organizations,” Gabriela Fernandes, Stephen Ward,
and Madalena Araújo introduce a framework to improve the
analysis of project management improvements. The general
idea is that the management of projects needs to be improved,
but practitioners have little understanding of what initiatives
are worth pursuing. Hence, the authors argue, there is a need
for a more elaborate framework to guide scholars and prac-
titioners to better target improvement initiatives. Fernandes,
August/September 2014 ■ Project Management Journal ■ DOI: 10.1002/pmj
Ward, and Madalena Araújo develop such a framework to
guide the analysis of the most worthwhile improvement
efforts. The framework is based on a literature review and a
large-scale interview study involving project management
practitioners worldwide. The resulting final framework high-
lights 15 key project management improvement initiatives
and 26 embedding factors grouped by the factor analyses into
three improvement themes and six embedding themes. The
paper addresses two primary questions: (1) What improve-
ments are the most useful? And (2) What factors can facilitate
how improvements are embedded into project management
practice?
Future Research
The six papers in this special issue address a wide range of
topics—topics that are important to managers as well as
scholars in the field. We would like to point out a few areas for
future research, which we believe emanate from these papers;
of course, there is much more to be said about the subject,
and indeed more details are found in the various papers
included in this issue.
First, we believe there is a need to better link governance
issues with issues linked to the management of projects: What
governance paradigms exist and how these various paradigms
affect such things as decision making in the early and later
stages of a project. We also think that there is a need to better
understand the impact of corporate governance on project
governance and from there what actually affects the ethical
behavior and various unethical behaviors in a project context.
Second, we believe there is a general need to investigate
the potential difficulties and clashes between the project level
and the portfolio level. Risk management is one example.
Innovation is another example. What activities might work at
the project level and what activities might work at the portfo-
lio level? What activities might produce effective outcomes at
the project level but may lead to deteriorating results at the
portfolio level?
Third, how do organizations build project capabilities?
There seem to be two specific areas of importance in that
respect: One area relates to the role of innovation projects in
developing project capabilities in building improved perfor-
mance in projects. The second area relates to the improve-
ment initiatives in project operations and what specific
improvements that have the best effects on project capa-
bilities. These and many more questions are up for discussion
and need answering. There is a lot to research out there. We
look forward to the next IRNOP conference in London to hear
some of these answers.
Acknowledgments
The authors are grateful for help and support from the
®
Editor-in-Chief of Project Management Journal , Hans Georg
Gemünden, who handled the editorial responsibilities for the
5
 Guest Editorial
paper by Müller et al., who is co-editor of this special issue
and whose paper had to be handled by an editorial board
member other than himself. The authors also acknowledge
the help and support from a large number of reviewers who
reviewed the papers that were considered for publication.
We also acknowledge the financial support from the Project
Management Institute, the International Project Management
Association, the Norwegian Center of Project Management,
and BI Norwegian Business School.
References
Lenfle, S. (2008). Exploration and project management.
International Journal of Project Management, 26(5), 469–478.
Lundin, R. A., & Hartman, F. (Eds.). (2000). Projects as
business constituents and guiding motives. Boston, MA: Kluwer
Academic Press.
Lundin, R. A., & Midler, C. (Eds.). (1998). Projects as arenas for
renewal and learning processes. Boston, MA: Kluwer Academic
Publishers.
Lundin, R. A., & Söderholm, A. (1995). A theory of the
temporary organization. Scandinavian Journal of Management,
11(4), 437–455.
Midler, C. (1995). Projectification of the firm: The Renault case.
Scandinavian Journal of Management, 11(4), 363–376.
Packendorff, J. (1995). Inquiring into the temporary orga-
nization: New directions for project management research.
Scandinavian Journal of Management, 11(4), 319–334.
Söderlund, J. (2011). Pluralism in project management:
Research at the crossroads of specialization and
fragmentation. International Journal of Management Reviews,
13, 153–176.
Winter, M., Smith, C., Morris, P., & Cicmil, S. (2006).
Directions for future research in project management:
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638–649.
6 August/September 2014 ■ Project Management Journal ■ DOI: 10.1002/pmj
View publication stats
Jonas Söderlund is Professor at BI Norwegian Business
School and a founding member of KITE at Linköping University.
Dr. Söderlund has researched and published widely on the man-
agement and organization of projects and project-based firms, time
and knowledge integration in complex projects, and the evolution
of project competence. He has written about the fundamental
questions of project management research, the schools of project
management research, human resource management in project-
based firms, the P-form corporation, the pressing challenges for
business schools, and teaching project management in busi-
ness schools. His work has appeared in Advances in Strategic
Management, International Journal of Management Reviews,
Organization Studies, Human Resource Management, International
Journal of Human Resource Management, R&D Management,
International Journal of Innovation Management and International
Business Review. His most recent books are the Oxford Handbook
of Project Management (Oxford University Press), Human
Resource Management in Project-based Organizations: The HR
Quadriad Framework (Palgrave), and Knowledge Integration and
Innovation (Oxford University Press). He can be contacted at
jonas.soderlund@bi.no
Ralf Müller is Professor of Project Management and former
Associate Dean at BI Norwegian Business School. He is the (co-)
author of more than 150 academic publications, including the
first book on methods for project management research: Novel
Approaches to Project Management Research: Translational and
Transformational (published in 2013 by CBS Press), which he co-
edited with Nathalie Drouin and Shankar Sankaran. In 2012 he was
awarded the IPMA Research Award, together with Monique Aubry
and Brian Hobbs. Before joining academia, he spent 30 years in
the industry consulting with large enterprises and governments
in more than 50 different countries for their project management
and governance and also held related line management positions,
such as the Worldwide Director of Project Management at NCR
Corporation’s Teradata Business Unit. He can be contacted at ralf.
muller@pm-concepts.com