Re-situating the Project

Citation

(2011), "Re-situating the Project", International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, Vol. 4 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijmpb.2011.35304caa.009

Re-situating the Project

Article Type: Calls for papers From: International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, Volume 4, Issue 3

Guest Editors: Markus Hällgren, Umeå School of Business, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden, andMarcus Lindahl, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

Several claims have been made that projects must be seen in the context in which they are executed (Cicmil and Hodgson, 2006; Blomquist et al., 2010). Following these attempts to uncover the relationship between the project and the environment, the academic community and practitioners working with projects have come to see projects less in terms of the traditional time, scope and resource-restricted execution of a unique task and more as a social accomplishment that is firmly established in a certain context. As a result, notions of the multi-project firm, project portfolios and project management offices – to name but a few structurally induced environmental features – have emerged, as have social processes such as team formation and project life cycles. As Cicmil and Hodgson (2006) and Blomquist et al. (2010) have recognised, these developments have been important for an understanding of projects. Nevertheless, they still fall slightly short of examining the inner life of project work. This call for papers is motivated by a desire to understand what is done in projects in the situation in which they occur.

There have been two major developments in the literature. First, the scholarly eye has gradually moved away from singular projects towards broader contextual issues concerning projects and temporary organizations (Engwall and Jerbrant, 2003; Aubry et al., 2007; Artto et al., 2009). In this sense, the understanding has made great strides in terms of planning techniques and the follow-up and risk management present in the understanding of isolated projects. This contextualisation has put projects in a wider setting, opening up the closed boundaries of the project, while also maintaining that a project is more of a technical phenomenon and less of a social phenomenon. These projects consist of and are executed through everyday micro-activities by actors such as engineers, project managers, line managers, consultants, etc. in the project environment. This development has led to the project being contextualised but not situated (situatedness, in this context, means the ability to understand an event in the social situation in which it is an inherent part (compare Schatzki, 2005)). The development facilitates an understanding of the conditions around the project and their impact on the specific project but not necessarily what is happening in that project as a consequence of the environment. Second, most of the empirical evidence is still generated from the construction and service industries (Kloppenborg and Opfer, 2002), while the theoretical side includes more and more material from less traditional sources, such as public organizations and expeditions (IJMPB, Vol. 3 No. 1, 2010). These developments are admirable and, indeed, efforts to broaden the industrial searchlight should be increased further. However, it could be argued that the dispersion upwards (contextual) and outwards (other industry or activity areas) has left the nitty-gritty details of the single project (for example, the project’s detailed planning and follow-up procedures) alone for too long. Therefore, this call for papers aims to move beyond the historical point of departure in terms of vertical and horizontal dispersion. Instead of striving for greater contextualisation, it calls for greater situatedness; the project in and as practice.

The situatedness of the activities required to execute a project is essential to an understanding of the project. Without it, the social and physical environment is not combined and, therefore, offers less of an explanation. The importance of situatedness is recognised in what has been called “the practice turn” within social sciences in general (Schatzki et al., 2001) and more recently in relation to projects and project management (Lindahl, 2003; Engwall and Westling, 2004; Sapsed and Salter, 2004; Molloy and Whittington, 2006; Bechky, 2006; Blomquist et al., 2010). The practice approach assumes that, in order to fully understand a phenomenon, recognition must be given to both the praxis (the situated action, such as developing a Gantt chart), the practices (the norms, traditions, rules, etc. that are drawn upon while acting, such as a company’s template for a project plan) and the practitioner (the individual who does something; for example, the engineer who develops the Gantt chart). The situatedness of the phenomenon can be explained when these three concepts meet in episodes of practice (Hendry and Seidl, 2003; Whittington, 2006). In general, the practice turn interests itself in the “doings and sayings” in projects.

With an interest for the doings and sayings, as well as the assumption that mundane details have an explanatory value, it could be argued that projects ought to be revisited with a touch of determined and conscious naïveté, observing mundane things and asking simple questions about seemingly straightforward occurrences. For instance, it is quite acceptable to ask what people actually do and say and to whom. Second, more attention should be directed to coming to grips with how project professionals reason when giving accounts on the whys and hows of decision making and certain activities.

Therefore, this call for papers strongly encourages quasi-naïve and empirically grounded papers that focus on the practice dimension of project management, its tools, techniques and practices. One fruitful enquiry would be to address standard operating procedures of project management in use; that is, how structural and normative models are actually used. Papers concerned with day-to-day performance of project management models are also welcome. Such a line of inquiry might be “how are Gantt charts developed, used and interpreted during projects?” A second line of inquiry could be to analyse how operational measures of coordination and control are developed and maintained during project execution. While all types of project happenings are welcome, papers that cover “old-school” projects such as construction, engineering, product development or software development from a practice perspective are particularly encouraged.

Potential areas of quasi-naïve inquiries:

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  Project management bricolage – using usable material for project management and using project management material to do other things.

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  Project management and materiality – how do things such as concrete, laptops or, for instance, the JAVA programming language influence project management practice?

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  What do project managers actually do when they manage projects?

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  How do project managers use project management techniques when they manage projects?

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  What do line managers do when they manage projects?

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  What do consultants do in projects?

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  Which tools are used and for what detailed purpose when managing projects?

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  How does a Gantt chart come about?

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  Realising company strategy in everyday project work.

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  How is project management practice spread through an organization?

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  How does one make sense of the project? The idea is not to reiterate assumptions that are taken for granted. The intention is to focus on what is done, rather than what people are expected to do. Theoretically, the intention is not to add to “project theory” as such. Instead, the idea is to bring in understandings that have been developed in general organisational theory for a long time and have come to be accepted as valid explanations of occurrences but have not necessarily been adopted within a wider audience of project academics. The idea, therefore, is to further the understanding of the situatedness of projects, rather than as a theory, thereby adding to the general notion of organisational theory and behaviour instead of developing a project theory.

In keeping with the intention to turn things “inside out”, this call for papers emphasises “classic” project environments, rather than “non-traditional environments”, “practice” over “models” and “situation” over “context”. Following this emphasis, the call has the following requirements:

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  A broad entanglement with literature outside traditional project theory is encouraged. This is defined as literature that is not the following: project management textbooks (Turner, 2008; Meredith and Mantel, 2006; Nicholas, 2001; Gray and Larson, 2008, etc.), articles (defined as written in International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, International Journal of Project Management and Project Management Journal) or articles with the term “project” or similar variations thereof, such as “project management offices” in the title, books (defined as books with the term “project” or variations thereof in the title).

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  The study should recognise and relate to “classic” project environments such as engineering, software development, organisational change and product development (following Turner and Cochrane, 1993), not expeditions, NGOs, etc.

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  Emphasis must be given to doings and sayings in projects; that is, the practice of project management. In other words, it is OK to relate to a certain model (for example, a Gantt chart) or a structure (for example, project management offices) but this should be done in such a way that it is used in reality, not how it should be used without further understanding of the situation to which it is applied.

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  Although most practice research is done through contextually sensitive methods such as observations, interviews, etc. participants are encouraged to utilise other methods in order to further widen the understanding of the practice. An example of this would be Besner and Hobbs’ (2006) study of tools that are used.

Some useful information about a work-based/practice-based approach can be found at: www.0823.se; www.sasp.org

Submission details

For author guidelines and online submission procedure, please visit the official web site of the journal: http://info.emeraldinsight.com/products/journals/author_guidelines.htm?id=ijmpb

Key date

Full paper submission deadline: July 1, 2011.

Journal information

Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing

Editor: Professor Derek Walker, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia

The journal is indexed and abstracted in INSPEC database: www.emeraldinsight.com/1753-8378.htm