About this issue

Citation

Walker, D.H.T. (2011), "About this issue", International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, Vol. 4 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijmpb.2011.35304baf.001

About this issue

Article Type: From the Editor From: International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, Volume 4, Issue 2

We present nine papers in this issue. There are seven research papers, one extensive practice note and one thesis research note.

This issue has a distinct Nordic feel about it. It always strikes me that many of the papers IJMPiB receives from this part of the world are interesting and an honest appreciation of the messiness of project work and how plans are guides not just prescriptions. It reminds me of a visit of mine to a loo in a pub in London, Ontario in Canada when I lived there in the 1970s. Somebody wrote on the wall “time is nature’s way of stopping everything from happening at once”. Quite a philosophical view, and one that has remained with me since – perhaps its those cold and harsh winters that help people from those lands to better understand the realities of life! We see in this issue an extension of the notion of PM as coping and further refines our concepts of planning. It fits in well with expanding our PM repertoire of actions and ways of thinking through situations.

The issue begins with a paper “Opportunities for learning from crises in projects” authored by Markus Hällgren and Timothy L. Wilson from Umeå School of Business in Sweden. Markus has contributed papers on deviations to plans and crises and learning both in this journal and others and this paper continues with the valuable work on a better understanding of the reality and lived experience of project work and how we can and should learn from experiencing crises, problems and deviations from our project plans.

The second paper “The Norwegian front-end governance regime of major public projects: a theoretically based analysis and evaluation” by Tom Christensen from the University of Oslo in Norway presents a theoretically based analysis and evaluation of the Norwegian quality assurance scheme (QA1 and QA2) for major public projects (MPP). It not only draws on a number of different perspectives from organisation theory and decision-making theory, but also from insights gained from two major public reform waves – new public management (NPM) and post-NPM. It analyses the scheme as a governance system using two case studies as illustrations. This paper fits into the dominant theme of this issue by recognising that being a political or administrative leader is not only about control of decision-making processes, like MPPs, but also about knowledge and insights about the effects of designing QA systems. Knowledge about how MPPs fit into a larger societal frame, where QA system-related elements have to be balanced with other major considerations, is also important. This paper will be valuable to anyone interested in project governance as well as the effectiveness of thinking through project scope, methods and real objectives at the front end.

The third paper “Supportive culture for efficient project uncertainty management” by Jan Terje Karlsen from the Norwegian School of Management BI, in Oslo, Norway, is aligned with this issue’s theme in its treatment of culture, complexity and managing uncertainty. It uses perspectives from interviewees from three project-oriented organisations in Norway. The analysis results in an uncertainty management culture model that helps us crystallise our understanding on what is needed to develop a supportive culture that is best suited to dealing with uncertainty in project environments.

The fourth paper, “The significance of formal training in project-based companies” by Heli Aramo-Immonen, Kaj U. Koskinen and Pasi L. Porkka from Tampere University of Technology in Finland, has its focus on the significance of learning and the learning environment in project-based organisations. It tests the interesting hypothesis that “people working for project-based organisations are not interested in formal training”. Implications drawn from this work includes the observation that people do not necessarily have time to reflect because they are being bombarded by urgent problems and pressing deadlines. The authors suggest that effective training methods utilise, interaction between trainers and project people, together with a focus on relevancy and efficiency of formal training offered by training organisations to the project-based companies. It is a timely reminder that if project teams do not feel that they have time to think and reflect then much of our training and development initiatives are likely to be based on a false premise that people can practice and ingrain new learning.

The fifth paper, “How actor-network theories can help in understanding project complexities” by Daniel Sage, Andrew Dainty and Naomi Brookes from Loughborough University in the UK provides a re-thinking of project complexity using the Skye road bridge as an illustrative example to learn from. They argue that front-end planning and stakeholder analysis is shown to be only one narrow element of four moments through which actors apprehend and stabilise project complexities. Their actor-network theories approach of the interaction between human and non-human actors in a project is novel and links in well with the unintended consequences and unpredictability theme of this issue and offers further interesting avenues for research. It also introduces us to the concept of “interessement” which, having hopefully spiked your interest I leave you to read the paper to find out more.

Paper 6, is entitled “Development of relationships and relationship competencies in complex projects” by Anne Live Vaagaasar from the Norwegian School of Management BI, in Oslo, Norway. This is an important and developing area of interest in PM as we now understand that the linear and more prescriptive approach to PM is seen as highly limited. People who cope well in complex and uncertain projects have strong relationship competencies. This is because having a wider appreciation of tacit knowledge embedded in other team members (and their technical knowledge) requires if not demands a lot of interpersonal communication. This paper’s contribution is its presentation of the concept of relationship competencies, as the situated knowledge, skills and aptitudes of a project to handle its stakeholder environment and the research methods used. Students of PM would find her approach interesting and worth considering when formulating research topics.

Finally, paper 7 is entitled “Post-project changes: occurrence, causes, and countermeasures” by Bjørn Andersen, Nils O.E. Olsson, Lars E. Onsøyen and Ingrid Spjelkavik, from SINTEF – Technology Management Trondheim and NTNU in Trondheim Norway. This paper has an interesting dimension of post completion coping with changes and alterations made after the project completion (often to overcome project deficiencies) that should have been remedied during project execution but for a range of reasons are left until completion of the project. Often, we see the kinds of changes discussed in this paper being “hidden under the carpet” so to speak. It brings to our attention a very important and under discussed aspect of PM.

The practice note presented as the 8th paper “Assuring the managerial capability of public organizations implementing projects: the Greek case” is written by Panos Fitsilis from the Technological Educational Institute of Larissa, Konstantinos Kirytopoulos from the University of the Aegean in Chios and Vrassidas Leopoulos from National Technical University of Athens. It presents the case of Greece, and the family of newly developed set of standards concerning the managerial maturity of public organisations and the management of projects funded by European Union support frameworks. The paper presents the current status of PM in Greek public administration. Further, it presents how the new set of standards improves public management and public organisation maturity for managing projects. This practice note provides us with insights into PM work undertaken across Greece. IJMPiB welcomes insights in PM practice that we can gain from an increasing number of countries that tend to be less reported upon in the English language PM literature.

We include a Doctoral Thesis Research Report Note in this issue, submitted by James Harley of RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. I must add, as Editor, that I welcome seeing these doctoral research report notes from a range of countries and institutions. RMIT has a solid track record of delivering on average four or five doctoral graduates a year and I know of many other universities that exceed this specialised PM graduation outcome. I use this opportunity to ask readers who have completed their thesis or are supervising doctoral thesis to make a contribution and submit one of these papers. In many universities, it is not uncommon to find that somebody in an IT, construction or engineering and social sciences school graduating PhDs on PM topics.

In this issue, a doctoral thesis research report note is presented, entitled “Collaboration and the use of online collaborative toolsets in the project management environment” by James Harley. There has been scant academic treatment or quantifiable analysis that reviews online collaborative toolsets (OCTs) to assess their use in the project management environment and as such this thesis contributes specific knowledge and intelligence to organisations using OCTs. The collaboration scale has been specifically designed for this thesis.

This issue also contains two book reviews. The first book to be reviewed is Project-Oriented Leadership authored by Ralf Müller and J. Rodney Turner and the second is Autopoitic Knowledge Systems in Project-based Companies authored by Kaj Koskinen.

We also provide a call for papers for a special issue to be presented in 2012. An update on forthcoming events, conferences and useful PM links is, as usual, provided.

Finally, I would like to thank contributors and reviewers who have generously given time and energy to make this second issue possible for 2011. I trust that IJMPiB will continue to deliver ideas that will stimulate debate, discussion and controversy. In this second issue of 2011, we hope that the research note papers will spark some follow up research note papers.

Derek H.T. Walker