Special section editorial

Citation

Linger, H. (2011), "Special section editorial", International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, Vol. 4 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijmpb.2011.35304caa.002

Special section editorial

Article Type: Special section editorial From: International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, Volume 4, Issue 3

The project as a social system

Project management has developed in an evolutionary manner from a technical endeavour to a socio-technical process but has retained its focus on the delivery of project objectives. These objectives are still usually expressed in terms of physical artefacts and the interrelationship of those artefacts with their organisational and human contexts. Thus, project management can be conceptualised as a complex socially situated activity that involves organisational, behavioural and technical change. Thus, projects need to be seen simultaneously as delivery of objectives and facilitating organisational change. Complexity is inherent in the delivery of projects as ill-defined and unbounded issues emerge throughout the lifespan of the project while the scope, which is political, subjective and negotiable, also evolves throughout the project. As a consequence, many issues that emerge within the project need to be resolved outside the project boundaries through social processes that are capable of addressing the complexity inherent in those issues.

The complexity of projects is manifested in the technical domain as well as in the organisational context. On the technical side, increased technological affordance, rate of technological change, the geographic reach of project, the ambitious objectives of projects, especially reduced lifespans, and ever larger size or scope, all present challenges to the management of projects. The technical aspects are compounded by an organisational context that is characterised by high-velocity business environment, organisational instability and interdependence with other organisations.

The complexity of projects highlights the limitation of traditional, technically oriented tools and techniques and the need for approaches that specifically address complexity. The ground-breaking work of the “Rethinking Project Management” agenda (published in 2006), for example, see Winter et al. (2006a, b) and the “making projects critical” work (Hodgson and Cicmil, 2006, 2008) points to techniques such as experimentation, sensemaking and learning as innovative approaches to resolving the emergent issues in projects. Such approaches explicitly focus on knowledge-based practices in the management of project, supplementing the tools and techniques derived from traditional approaches underpinned by scientific management and the methods of soft systems. Knowledge-based practices draw on experiential knowledge of participant, their domain knowledge and emergent knowledge of the situation rather than relying on rational decision-making processes and relies on collaboration to construct knowledge that can address the complexity inherent in projects.

Conceptualising projects as social process allows the traditional project management model to be supplemented with knowledge-based practices. In project management practice, based on normative and deterministic tools, techniques and methodologies, emergent issues are resolves by applying the manager’s knowledge and experience to adapt these existing tools, techniques and methodologies to the current situation. However, emergent issues often impinge on aspects that are outside the project boundary. This requires a deeper, more strategic organisational and professional knowledge to be brought to bear on the emergent issue and on projects. Both adaptation and strategic rethinking of the project represent venues where social processes form the core of activities. These processes allow the complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity of the project to be explored, understood and resolved using tools and techniques that are appropriate to the issues. It also provides opportunities for participants to reflect and learn from their experience.

In this special issue section, we adopt the theme of “The project as a social system”. This was the theme of the inaugural Asia Pacific Research Conference on Project Management (APRPM) held at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia in February 2010 (http://infotech.monash.edu/about/news/conferences/aprpm/). The conference theme encapsulated and encouraged contributions from researchers on a broad range of topics that addressed social, human and context-centred phenomena within the project-based environment. The theme reflected strong contemporary trends in project management research worldwide as well identifying with the complexity of key performance and operational effectiveness dilemmas faced by project practitioners in the field. Acknowledging and better understanding this construct of projects as diverse and complex social systems, whilst relevant in any sector or country, has particular value in the Asia-Pacific. Many countries in this region are undergoing sustained rapid growth and change and project management effectiveness and skills are important in facilitating such development.

The special issue section consists of invited papers from APRPM that were revised, resubmitted and reviewed through the usual journal processes. Of the six invited papers, only three were accepted for publication. These papers reflect and highlight the key role of projects as a way of organizing work and how they interrelate with their social and contextual environments.

In their paper entitled “Breaking out of the straitjacket of project research: in search of contribution”, Mattias Jacobsson and Anders Söderholm argue that if project management research is to make an impact on management theory, projects need to be the object of the research, and one needs to understand the phenomenology of the field of project research. They adopt a critical stance in relation to the traditional research focus on efficiency and normative practice as a problem-solving method. In conceptualising “the project as a social system”, they propose a research orientation that would be of interest outside the narrow project community and address intrinsic issues in management and the social sciences.

In contrast to Jacobsson and Söderholm’s conceptual paper, Jocelyn Small and Derek Walker’s paper entitled “Providing structural openness to connect with context: seeing the project entity as a human activity system and social process” is based on reflective practitioner case study. Their paper adopts the perspective of the projects as social processes to emphasis human interactions within projects. This emphasis is critical in the multi-cultural project environment of the case study. The study, conducted in the Middle East, offers a representative picture of socio-cultural factors that seem to characterise most project, irrespective of their location, as they involve participants with very diverse backgrounds, languages and agendas. A significant factor of this paper is that it addresses complexity that arises from “a multiplicity of expatriate workers interconnected and embedded within an Arabic socio-cultural and political context” rather than the usual structural and/or functional aspects of the project. This orientation reinforces the imperative to see the project as a social system and the need for practitioners, and researchers, supplement traditional project management approaches with knowledge-based practices.

Michael Young, Jill Owen and James Connor offer a “Whole of enterprise portfolio management: a case study of NSW Government and Sydney Water Corporation” in their case study of the NSW Government and Sydney Water Corporation and suggest that this will allow organisations to more effectively control projects, programs and portfolios. In their approach, they view the multi-project environment as only one of the necessary “portfolios” that is required to deliver project objectives and the strategic intent of the project portfolio. They identify resources, assets, ideas and new products as the other portfolios necessary to deliver enterprise outcomes. Significantly, their model is focused on the interaction between these portfolios as well as their contribution to the ability of the organisation to respond to its environment. In broadening the portfolio concept, they are implicitly situating projects in the social context of the organisation.

We trust you will enjoy reading these papers and that they cause some reflection on the complex nature of projects, project teams and project management practice.

The next APRPM conference will be held in Hong Kong, China on 8-9 December 2011 at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The conference will be hosted by the Faculty of Construction and Land Use and the Knowledge Management Research Centre of Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The conference theme is “Knowledge and Project Management”. As well as international project management researchers delivering key note addresses, this next conference will provide great opportunities for researchers from across a number of discipline areas and countries to share knowledge about their research and to network and collaborate. We hope to see many of you there.

Henry LingerSchool of Information Management and Systems,Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

Jill OwenSchool of Business, Australian Defense Force Academy, University of New South Wales, Canberra, Australia, and

Andrew SenseSchool of Management and Marketing, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia