"Between Success and Failure: Imperfect Projects as Common Practice" –
Call for Papers for a Special Issue of the Project Management Journal (PMJ)
Guest-editors:
Alfons van Marrewijk, BI Norwegian Business School Oslo, a.h.van.marrewijk@vu.nl
Iben Sandal Stjerne, Copenhagen Business School, isst.ioa@cbs.dk
Jörg Sydow, Freie Universität Berlin, joerg.sydow@fu-berlin.de
Over the past decade there has been growing interest in theorizing and researching temporary organizations (Bakker, DeFillipi, & Sydow, 2016; Burke & Morely, 2016), including recognizing the relevance of temporary organizing forms – in particular of projects – in society (Jensen, Thuesen, & Geraldi, 2016). One of the key challenges that has remained underexplored so far, and holds opportunities in this field of study, is the frequent failure of projects to meet their goals (Brown & Jones, 1998). Since projects, and in particular complex projects, frequently fail (Flyvbjerg, 2016), a debate has unfolded looking at the disappointment and perception of failure, resulting in harsh criticism of project management.
Projects fail to live up to expectations or to deliver their promised transition for various reasons, depending on the level of analysis. Looking at explanations from within the project, notwithstanding the principal uncertainty of planning, failure results from a lack of clear goals, fuzzy role expectations, internal power dynamics, or inappropriate evaluation measures (Van Marrewijk, Ybema, Smits, Clegg, & Pitsis, 2016). A broader explanation of project failure is a lack of managing the project embeddedness in relation to more permanent structures, e.g., ensuring strategic relevance and political backing within an organization (Engwall, 2003) or a larger project network (Sydow & Staber, 2002). Temporal misfits between partners or the temporal shadows of past and future projects may also arise (Stjerne, Söderlund, & Minbaeva, 2018) and lead to the early closure or 'dying' of a project (Novy & Peters, 2012).
However, even though these failures, breakdowns and early project deaths, as well as unrealized ventures may be perceived as imperfections of projects, they hold an opportunity to prompt project managers and other project members to improvise, experiment and learn (Stjerne & Svejenova, 2016). But how can individuals and, even more important as well as more complicated, organizations learn from near misses and even complete failures of projects? As the transfer of knowledge from the temporary to the permanent is difficult to organize (Wiewiora, Smidt, & Chang, 2019) and vicarious learning does not seem to work, either (as the decontextualized idea of "best practices" is inappropriate), does each individual, team, organization, network or community have to learn for itself?
Our answer is that more serious, theory-informed empirical research of imperfect projects, including near misses and complete failures, would help to improve our collective understanding of this topic. Assuming that imperfect projects are the opposite of perfect projects, we suggest regarding the positive assertion of imperfection as a rich source of insights, necessary to learn from in order to improve temporary organizing in general and project management in particular. In perfect project management thinking it is assumed that project goals can be formulated and met by thoroughly planning, integrating tasks, coping with risks, managing stakeholders, and thus knowing the future (Sanderson, 2012). Imperfect project management thinking adopts a more realistic view, which is informed by project practice and considers, among other things, internal power dynamics, barriers to obtaining project goals, and strategic behavior of project actors (e.g. Willems, van Marrewijk, Kuitert, Volker, & Hermans, 2020). We would like to encourage project scholars to develop imperfect project management thinking by exploring what can be learned from near misses or failing projects.
Therefore, we will guest edit a PMJ Special Issue "Between Success and Failure: Imperfect Projects as Common Practice". Please submit your full paper to https://www.pmi.org/learning/publications/project-management-journal/guidelines by September 30, 2022. You are more than welcome to join this important conversation.
References
Bakker, R. M., DeFillipi, R., & Sydow, J. (2016). Temporary organizing: Promises, processes, problems. Organization Studies, 37(12), 1703-1719.
Brown, A. D., & Jones, M. R. (1998). Doomed to failure: Narratives of inevitability and conspiracy in a failed IS project. Organization Studies, 19(1), 73-88.
Burke, C. M., & Morely, M. J. (2016). On temporary organizations: A review, synthesis and research agenda. Human Relation, 69(6), 1235-1258
Engwall, M. (2003). No project is an island: linking projects to history and context. Research Policy, 32(5), 789-808.
Flyvbjerg, B. (2016). The fallacy of beneficial ignorance: A test of Hirschman's hiding hand. World Development, 84, 176-189.
Jensen, A., Thuesen, C., & Geraldi, J. (2016). The projectification of everything: Projects as a human condition. Project Management Journal, 47(3), 21-34.
Novy, J., & Peters, D. (2012). Railway station megaprojects as public controversies. The case of Stuttgart 21. Buildt Environment, 38(1), 128-145.
Sanderson, J. (2012). Risk, uncertainty and governance in megaprojects: A critical discussion of alternative explanations. International Journal of Project Management, 30(4), 432-443.
Stjerne, I. S., Söderlund, J., & Minbaeva, D. (2018). Crossing times: Temporal boundary-spanning practices in interorganizational projects. International Journal of Project Management, 37(2), 347-365.
Stjerne, I. S., & Svejenova, S. (2016). Connecting temporary and permanent organizing: Tensions and boundary work in sequential film projects. Organization Studies, 37(12), 1771-1792.
Sydow, J., & Staber, U. (2002). The institutional embeddedness of project networks: the case of content production in German television. Regional Studies, 36(3), 215-227.
Van Marrewijk, A. H., Ybema, S., Smits, K., Clegg, S. R., & Pitsis, T. (2016). Clash of the Titans: Temporal organizing and collaborative dynamics in the Panama Canal Megaproject. Organization Studies, 37(12), 1745-1769.
Wiewiora, A., Smidt, M., & Chang, A. (2019). The 'how' of multilevel learning dynamics: A systematic literature review exploring how mechanisms bridge learning between individuals, teams/projects and the organization. European Management Review, 16(1), 93-115.
Willems, T., van Marrewijk, A. H., Kuitert, L., Volker, L., & Hermans, M. (2020). Practices of isolation: the shaping of project autonomy in innovation projects. International Journal of Project Management, 38(4), 215-228.
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Joerg Sydow
Freie Universitaet Berlin
Berlin
49-30-838-53782
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