Synopsis
WHAT DOES A SUCCESSFUL KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT PRACTITIONER DO? Evolutionary Learning in Strategy-Project Systems explores the gap between the theory and practice of knowledge management in organizations and analyzes how learning happens and how knowledge is created. The authors take a practitioner-driven approach, one that unites organizational strategy with the learning of organizational lessons―the kind of knowledge management that enhances project performance and ultimately business success. Through a survey of the literature and an analysis of original case-study research, Evolutionary Learning in Strategy-Project Systems develops a model of learning capability that proceeds exactly as its title implies, not as a line, but as a cycle―from codifying individual knowledge and putting it into practice within a context that values social relationships and networks. The conclusions offered in this book build on the rethinking of project management literature in today’s world―creating a strategy-project learning model that not only improves current knowledge capabilities, but also develops new ones.
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About the Author
Antonio Calabrese is Associate Professor of “Industrial Plants” and “Industrial Plants Management” at Politecnico di Milano (Italy). He is Faculty member of the School of Management and Director of two masters degree programmes in project management offered by MIP, the graduate School of Business of the university: the MSPME (Master in Strategic Project Management European, for international students) and the MPM (Master in Project Management, for Italian students). Director of the MBA and Executive MBA programmes of the School (2013-2015) and of the Corporate Division (customized programmes for companies, 2010-2013), his main research interests are in project management and industrial engineering. Within project management he is mostly interested in project control, risk management, strategic project management, program and portfolio management, stakeholder management and the effects of cultural differences on the project success. Since 2006 he cooperates with some universities (Shandong University―China, Heriot Watt University―UK, Umea University―Sweden) both in master and PhD programmes. He is member of the Executive Board of IPMA Italy (International Project Management Academy―Italy) since 2008 and is the Editor of the IPMA Italy Journal of Applied Project Management. Reviewer at many congresses and chairman or co-chairman, he is author or co-author of 11 books and more than 70 publications. He consults for large, medium and small private companies in the field of management, project management and industrial engineering.
Dr Adil Eltigani is an active academic with solid professional experience as a consultant in strategy, project management and quality management. He worked as a Research Fellow at the British University in Dubai. Adil worked as a Visiting Academic at the University of Manchester, in the UK. The main research interest focus on the micro-foundations of dynamic capabilities in organisations and also the learning processes in project and programme management context.
Paul Gardiner is a Lecturer in the School of Management and Languages at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK.
Dr Kirkham is a Lecturer in Engineering Project Management. Prior to his appointment at the University of Manchester, he held the post of Lecturer in Quantity Surveying and Construction Management (Liverpool John Moores University, 2004-2008), Research Officer (School of Industrial and Manufacturing Science, Cranfield University, 2002-2004), and Research Assistant (School of Architecture, University of Liverpool, 2001-2002). He obtained a PhD in the application of stochastic methods in whole-life cost modelling at the University of Liverpool in 2002, and a BA in Construction Management in 1998. Dr Kirkham has published widely in the fields of whole life costs, stochastic service life prediction and quantitative techniques in performance measurement, and is co-author of two texts on building/engineering cost modelling. He is scientific secretary of CIB-TG62 Complex Systems and the Built Environment, and co-managing editor of RICS Research Innovation in the Built Environment. In 2005, Dr Kirkham was appointed as Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Liverpool. He is a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and immediate past-chair of the Liverpool Centre Chartered Institute of Building.
Jonas Söderlund is professor in the Department of Leadership and Organizational Behavior at the BI Norwegian Business School. He is educated at IMIE, Linköping University, and Harvard Business School. Söderlund has been a visiting scholar at MIT Sloan School of Management and Cranfield School of Management. He has been a Visiting Professor at l'Ecole Polytechnique in Paris and at LUISS, Rome. Dr Söderlund has published 10 books and more than 50 articles.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Evolutionary Learning in Strategy-Project Systems
A PMI Research Monograph
By Paul Gardiner, Adil Eltigani, Terence Williams, Richard Kirkham, Lixiong Ou Antonio Calabrese, Jonas SöderlundProject Management Institute, Inc.
Copyright © 2018 Project Management Institute, Inc.
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-62825-484-6All rights reserved.
Contents
Acknowledgments,
Abbreviations,
Foreword,
Chapter 1: Introduction,
Chapter 2: Literature Review,
Chapter 3: Pilot Study,
Chapter 4: Refining the Conceptual Framework,
Chapter 5: Research Methodology,
Chapter 6: Results and Data Analysis,
Chapter 7: Discussion,
Chapter 8: Conclusions,
References,
Appendix 1: Interview Protocols,
Appendix 2: Full Set of Data Analysis Tables,
Appendix 3: Data Analysis Cards,
Glossary,
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
The origins of this research lie in an event organized by an oil and gas company in the United Arab Emirates, at which one of the authors — Paul Gardiner — was invited to speak about the challenges of project management in the company and how the company could learn to do projects better. The event was a part of the company's strategic focus, which at the time was on knowledge sharing throughout the organization. As an oil and gas company, the company knew very well how to find oil reserves and how to get oil out of the ground. What it realized it was less good at was how to manage the internal strategic projects that were becoming more frequent, more complex, and more important to remaining competitive in the market. The company in question was not alone in this regard. Companies across the world continue to recognize the possibilities of project management as a core capability to extend their market grasp and consolidate their competitive position in a global marketplace.
Although project management is a relatively young discipline in academia and has only recently been recognized by the Privy Council in the United Kingdom as a profession, with the Association of Project Management (APM) receiving its Royal Charter in 2017, the need to manage projects — and hence, the practice of project management — has been an ongoing activity since antiquity. Societies have undertaken projects from time immemorial across different continents, from the Great Wall of China to the Great Pyramids of Giza to Chand Baori in India, to mention just a few.
In all of these great projects, the takeaway message is that projects make the impossible possible; they get the job done, particularly when there is challenging and non-routine work, although often with these ancient projects, the cost in terms of human life was high. Nevertheless, the consistent pattern throughout history is that projects — and project management — have contributed to the great achievements and survival of societies. So, projects were an important innovation long before project management arose as a science and industry. This research is grounded in the philosophical tradition and historical recognition of the value and relevance of project management to the development of sustainable social structures and societies.
In the modern world, all organizations seek to use and develop their project management resource assets effectively (Crawford, Hobbs, & Turner, 2006). The role and function of project management in successful organizations has evolved from simply "doing" projects to "how" to do projects — the birth of project management as a discipline — to doing projects "better," then to selecting "which" projects to do, optimizing "business value" from multiple-project portfolios, and finally to optimizing "customer value," which is a moderating variable for business value. Congruent with this evolution has been a parallel evolution of the organizational landscape and the position of the project organization within that landscape, e.g., from functional to project to matrix structures; from ad hoc occasional projects to semi-projectized organizations to fully projectized organizations; from U-form, to H-form, to M-form; and more recently, to P-form organizations (Holian, 2010; Söderlund & Tell, 2009). Alongside these developments, another area of evolution has been the relentless march toward recognizing complexity in projects and their environments and all the implications that brings, including advances in complex adaptive systems, enterprise risk management (ERM), and organizational resilience.
One of the challenges for project management researchers is that there is still no single theory of project management. As recently as the International Research Network on Organizing by Projects (IRNOP) 2017 conference plenary in Boston, on theory development in project management, there was a lack of unity from the participants on where we are and where we are going. We continue to explain and develop project management theory (Söderlund, 2011). However, there seems to be little doubt when looking at the project management literature that we are at a turning point in project management research. Many old assumptions have had to be questioned and discarded and new thinking has been created to take project management and its practice into the future: a future focused not just on project management but on the relationship between project management and other domains, such as strategy, organization learning, knowledge management, and value creation (Bredillet, 2013, 2015; Bredillet, Thiry, & Deguire, 2005; Canonico, Söderland, De Nito, & Mangia, 2013).
This research draws on several theories explained in Chapter 2 to connect project management to the wider strategy-project system and establish a basis for more holistic and systemic thinking than project management research has traditionally adopted. The overarching aim of this research is to explore and understand the mechanism by which evolutionary learning takes place in the strategy-project system and to examine how this relates to sustainable competitive advantage. The approach used was to study, at a micro-level, multiple "learning episodes" in time, within a unit of analysis called activity configuration, found in the strategy-project system of organizations in several countries.
With this in mind, the specific objectives of the research were to do the following:
1. Study the patterns and mechanisms that characterize the strategy-project system in organizations of various sizes from different countries. This would include identifying learning and dynamic capabilities and processes that shape and implement strategy and help deliver customer value (Easterby-Smith & Prieto, 2008; Nielsen, 2006; Petit & Hobbs, 2012).
2. Investigate at a micro-level the nature of these patterns of influence by studying the results chains that are found in activity configurations in the strategy-project system. This objective acknowledges the temporary-permanent duality of the strategy-project system in which the permanent organization finds sustainable competitive advantage though learning mechanisms that facilitate flexibility and adaptability (Eltigani, Lawlor-Wright, Gardiner, & Gale, 2014; Regnér, 2008; Sage, Dainty, & Brookes, 2010; Scarbrough et al., 2003).
3. Showcase examples of evolutionary learning episodes and look for patterns in the strategy-project system that can help direct further research to investigate important relationships more fully and to evaluate more extensively the practical implications for industry of systemic evolutionary learning in different sectors and contexts (Crawford & Cooke-Davies, 2012).
The literature review, which is presented in Chapter 2, begins by considering project management as a strategic resource within a systemic strategy-project system, capable of adding value to the business and to customers, both internal and external. The linkages of this research study to the resource-based view from the strategy domain are discussed, leading to a fuller consideration of the nature of projects within a landscape characterized by increasing complexity. At this point, the literature review presents a discourse on theories of learning in organizations and introduces the construct of evolutionary learning, which is at the heart of this research study. Knowledge management is explained as part of the formal structure of the organization and as a contributor to learning processes. Chapter 2 concludes with a consideration of project-related dynamic capabilities and capability building, which is a value-based outcome of effective evolutionary learning in organizations.
The details of a pilot study are presented in Chapter 3. In this chapter, we begin to test the purpose and rationale of the research, drawing up an initial conceptual framework and conducting a mini-empirical study to test the structuring of the interview protocol used in the main phase of the research. The results of the pilot study played a significant role in the validation and further refinement of the conceptual framework, which is delineated in Chapter 4. The full methodology is developed in Chapter 5, which also draws significantly from the pilot study. The presentation and analysis of the results are given in Chapter 6; this includes a cross-case analysis, although the bulk of the data analysis tables and their immediate derivatives are found in the Appendices, as they were deemed too voluminous to incorporate in the main body of this monograph. Chapter 7 contains a discussion of the key findings integrated with the relevant literature from Chapter 2 and a few additional sources considered important in light of the discussion. In addition to the main discussion sections, a small number of emerging themes that we considered to be of interest to the project management community of practice are also located here. Finally, the conclusions of the research and their theoretical and practical implications and some limitations are considered in Chapter 8.
CHAPTER 2Literature Review
Introduction
This chapter weaves together the various strands of literature to support the development of the conceptual framework in Chapter 4 and to give a reference base to the discussion in Chapter 7. Although there are many interconnections among the various themes presented here, there is also a logical sense of development starting from a justification of the research by qualifying project management as a strategic asset. One of the goals of this research was to take a more systemic worldview than is typical in project management research. The next section pushes out the boundaries of interest of the research to what we have termed the strategy-project system. This raises the importance of integrating project management with other disciplines — in this case, strategic management. The wider implication of this has been identified later from the data analysis as an emerging theme from the research.
Next, we move into the realm of complexity, which has been a key driver in the movement to rethink project management in recent years. An increasing awareness of complexity and its influence in business and management propels practitioners and researchers to explore new paradigms and avenues of practice. This is also true for our research as we seek a new understanding of how organizations can use project management systemically to foster learning and capability development, in order to address the growing challenges of greater operational efficiency while delivering organizational benefits and increased customer satisfaction.
The final sections delve into evolutionary learning and the basis of organizational capabilities as a key for tackling the challenges presented in the earlier sections. These final sections open up the gaps and possibilities from the literature that the current research is designed to help fill.
Qualifying Project Management as a Strategic Asset
One of the features of this new thinking referred to in Chapter 1 has been the recognition of the critical relationship between project management and strategic management and the notion of dynamic capabilities combined with practice-driven research approaches. Organizations seek to survive and become better than their rivals, to gain competitive advantage. This, then, begs the question: Does project management satisfy the conditions of being a strategic resource as set down by Barney (1991, 2002) in his so-called VRIO checklist? The argument is that if project management is a strategic resource, then we can usefully go to the strategy literature to learn from it and discover insights into how to improve project management theory and practice. In the discussion that follows, we will develop an understanding of the importance of context, culture, and specific industry requirements for project management and its interpretations. The starting point, however, is Barney's checklist of four (VRIO) questions: Does project management add Value to organizations? Is project management Rare? Is project management Inimitable? Does project management have Organizational support? These questions are answered below and the outcomes support the rationale for this research study.
Almost 10 years ago, a survey conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit (2009) showed that 90% of global senior executives and project management experts say good project management is key to the delivery of successful results and gaining a competitive edge. However, there is still a lack of consensus on how project management contributes to competitive advantage, and there have been few empirical studies on project management as a strategic asset (Bredillet et al., 2005; DeFillippi & Arthur, 1998; Jugdev, 2004; Jugdev & Mathur, 2006), although new studies are now starting to emerge (Kim, Lee, & Shinm, 2015; Mathur, Jugdev, & Tak, 2013; Young & Grant, 2015). Our research set out to contribute to the growing understanding of the strategic function of project management and how project management can systematically combine with other parts of the organization to achieve learning, change, and long-term survival in a global society.
Does project management add value? In 2004, Söderlund published on adding value through project management; this was followed in 2006 by research that recognized value creation as the prime focus of projects, programs, and portfolios (Winter & Smith, 2006). The concept of project management as a means to add value was extensively explored in the PMI value project (Thomas & Mullaly, 2008) and also demonstrated by Mir and Pinnington (2014) in a study based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Other key studies on the competitive value of project management include those of Killen, Jugdev, Drouin, and Petit (2012); Mathur, Jugdev, and Fung (2007); and Söderlund (2005).
Value can be expressed and defined in many ways — for example, economic value, ethical value, market value, personal value, reputational value, and functional value in mathematics. This research draws on the concept of business value, shaped by the works of Drucker (management by objectives) and Porter (value chain analysis) in which a resource-based view of the firm is used to provide a balance between the internal and external processes in which a business operates (Tywoniak, 2007). These effects are typically moderated by structuration (Giddens, 1984) in which dynamic tensions influence the ability of resource assets to reach their full potential because of the restraining effect of structural mechanisms such as an organization's culture, design, norms, and various levels of governance. These influences are explored later in the development of the conceptual framework in Chapter 4.
In Barney's (1991, 2002) checklist, the concept of appropriating business value is a necessary condition for achieving competitive advantage. In this sense, value creation is seen as part of a team process in which a configuration of activities works together, drawing from the organization's resources, and influence one another, creating opportunities for synergy rather than a purely mechanistic process. We explore the concept and role of activity configurations later when discussing the conceptual framework, drawing from the pioneering work of Patrick Regnér (2008).
The concept of business value as described above is linked to business strategy (e.g., Kaplan & Norton, 1992; Wongrassamee, Gardiner, & Simmons, 2003) and includes stakeholders in the firm's value chain as well as the resources directly employed in the organization. More recently, the role of absorptive capacity has been studied, in which a firm can recognize the value of new information, assimilate it, and apply it to commercial ends (Cohen & Levinthal, 1990; Scarbrough et al., 2003). In the contemporary strategy literature, value is often discussed alongside dynamic capabilities, which many consider prerequisites to achieving sustained competitive advantage in turbulent environments (Teece, 2014).
Is project management rare and inimitable? In Barney's (1991, 2002) analysis, the basis of competitive advantage lies in the resources that are nonheterogeneous and not perfectly distributed among competitors. Although project management is a relatively young discipline, it has become widely disseminated through the efforts of its professional associations and a gradual realization has arisen among industry leaders that project management is necessary to deliver strategic imperatives. One could easily argue that project management — expressed as conforming to the PMI standard A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide)–Fifth Edition (PMI, 2013) or a published methodology such as PRINCE2 or more recently AgilePM®, or indeed, aligned to ISO 21500:2012 — is largely homogeneous and almost perfectly distributed, all of which would mitigate against it contributing sustained competitive advantage to companies.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Evolutionary Learning in Strategy-Project Systems by Paul Gardiner, Adil Eltigani, Terence Williams, Richard Kirkham, Lixiong Ou Antonio Calabrese, Jonas Söderlund. Copyright © 2018 Project Management Institute, Inc.. Excerpted by permission of Project Management Institute, Inc..
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Evolutionary Learning in Strategy-Project Systems
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