Project based organisations

In any organization, the purpose and vision are of vital importance to convey to all parties. Project-based organisations utilise organisational structures to enhance the vision and underlying goals of the organisation and its portfolio and thus enhancing the understanding of purpose across multiple project and programs. (Project Management Institute, 2017)

Project-based organisations create a specific context, thus setting a framework, in which selected tasks can be generalised and made easier for companies dealing with many projects as part of their program or portfolio management. However, project-based organisation in themselves can differ in context and can either be standalone, part of, under or in interaction with a permanent organisation.(Turner and Miterev, 2019) (Thiry and Deguire, 2007) This article investigates:

Big idea:

- how the creation of a project-based organisation can help stabilize specific factors whilst keeping flexibility for the changing nature of projects. (Jerbrant, 2013) (Jerbrant and Karrbom Gustavsson, 2013)(Pryke, 2017) - how the above mentioned structure influences the leadership, discussing both centralised and decentralised management (Project Management Institute, 2017) - how project-based organisation can be a supportive framework for program and portfolio management and its success. (Petro and Gardiner, 2015)

Application:

- how to utilise the benefits of having an project-based organisational structure, drawing on the theory above in the applied field. (Mahura and Birollo, 2021) - how knowledge sharing and learning can happen within the organisation to help learn across the project within the organisation. (Mahura and Birollo, 2021)

Limitations:

- how the framework has flexibility as a core, and this can also a limitation because project-based organisation can differ so much it becomes more difficult to understand and generalise across project based organisations (Turner and Miterev, 2019) - in line with the above and the theory how knowledge sharing could be a strength but if not done is one of the weak links of project-based organisations

References

Jerbrant, A., 2013. Organising project-based companies: Management, control and execution of project-based industrial operations. Int. J. Manag. Proj. Bus. 6, 365–378. https://doi.org/10.1108/17538371311319070

Jerbrant, A., Karrbom Gustavsson, T., 2013. Managing project portfolios: balancing flexibility and structure by improvising. Int. J. Manag. Proj. Bus. 6, 152–172. https://doi.org/10.1108/17538371311291071

Mahura, A., Birollo, G., 2021. Organizational practices that enable and disable knowledge transfer: The case of a public sector project-based organization. Int. J. Proj. Manag. 39, 270–281. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2020.12.002

Petro, Y., Gardiner, P., 2015. An investigation of the influence of organizational design on project portfolio success, effectiveness and business efficiency for project-based organizations. Int. J. Proj. Manag. 33, 1717–1729. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2015.08.004

Project Management Institute, I. (PMI), 2017. 1.8 Relationships among Portfolio Management, Organizational Strategy, Strategic Business Execution, and Organizational Project Management. Stand. Portf. Manag. (4th Ed.

Pryke, S., 2017. Managing Networks in Project‐Based Organisations, Managing Networks in Project‐based Organisations. Wiley-Blackwell.

Thiry, M., Deguire, M., 2007. Recent developments in project-based organisations. Int. J. Proj. Manag. 25, 649–658. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2007.02.001

Turner, R., Miterev, M., 2019. The Organizational Design of the Project-Based Organization. Proj. Manag. J. 50, 487–498. https://doi.org/10.1177/8756972819859746