Project-Based Organizations, Embeddedness and Repositories of Knowledge: Editorial

Project-based organizations refer to a variety of organizational forms that involve the creation of temporary systems for the performance of project tasks (Lundin and Soderholm 1995; DeFillippi 2002). Project-based organizations have received increasing attention in recent years as an emerging organizational form to integrate diverse and specialized intellectual resources and expertise (DeFillippi and Arthur 1998; Hobday 2000; Gann and Salter 2000; Keegan and Turner 2002; Lindkvist 2004). Recent interest in the emerging knowledge economy has reinforced the view that project organizations in their many varieties are a fast and flexible mode of organizing knowledge resources. Project-based organizations can circumvent traditional barriers to organizational change and innovation, since each project is presented as a temporary, relatively short-lived, phenomenon. As such, it does not pose the same threat to vested interests as would the creation of a permanent new department or division. Moreover, project-based organizations allow for low-cost experiments. Because of their limited duration, project-based organizations do not constitute irreversible resource commitments of fixed costs. Hence, companies and other types of organization may launch a variety of ventures through project-based organizations and may terminate unsuccessful ventures at low cost and little disturbance to the organizational sponsor (DeFillippi 2002). Project-based organizations are found in a wide range of industries. These include consulting and professional services (e.g. accounting, advertising, architectural design, law, management consulting, public relations), cultural industries (e.g. fashion, film-making, video games, publishing), high technology (e.g. software, computer hardware, multimedia), and complex products and systems (e.g. construction, transportation, telecommunications, infrastructure). For many of these industries, project-based organizations are employed to meet the highly differentiated and customized nature of demand, where clients frequently negotiate and interact with project organizers over the ofteninnovative design of products and services (Hobday 1998). However, firms in all types of industries are undertaking projects as a growing part of their operations even while their primary ‘productive’ activity might be volume-based or operations-oriented (e.g. Midler 1995; Keegan and Turner 2002). Hobday (2000) refers to these as project-led organizations and Organization Studies 25(9): 1475–1489 ISSN 0170–8406 Copyright © 2004 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA & New Delhi) 1475 Authors name

[1]  L. Lindkvist Knowledge Communities and Knowledge Collectivities: A Typology of Knowledge Work in Groups , 2005 .

[2]  Lars Lindkvist,et al.  Governing Project-based Firms: Promoting Market-like Processes within Hierarchies , 2004 .

[3]  Hans Wirdenius Neo-industrial organising - issues and challenges , 2003 .

[4]  Robert DeFillippi,et al.  Organizational Models for Collaboration in the New Economy , 2002 .

[5]  J. Swan,et al.  The Construction of `Communities of Practice' in the Management of Innovation , 2002 .

[6]  Elaine K. Yakura,et al.  Charting Time: Timelines as Temporal Boundary Objects , 2002 .

[7]  Gernot Grabher Cool Projects, Boring Institutions: Temporary Collaboration in Social Context , 2002 .

[8]  Anders Söderholm,et al.  Beyond Project Management: New Perspectives on the temporary – permanent dilemma , 2002 .

[9]  M. Grant,et al.  Communities of practice. , 2020, Health progress.

[10]  A. Prencipe,et al.  Inter-project learning: processes and outcomes of knowledge codification in project-based firms , 2001 .

[11]  J. Sydow,et al.  Project Networks and Changing Industry Practices Collaborative Content Production in the German Television Industry , 2001 .

[12]  Jonas Söderlund,et al.  Managing inter-firm industrial projects — on pacing and matching hierarchies , 2001 .

[13]  Robert DeFillippi,et al.  Introduction: Project-Based Learning, Reflective Practices and Learning , 2001 .

[14]  J. Brown,et al.  Knowledge and Organization: A Social-Practice Perspective , 2001 .

[15]  J. Rodney Turner,et al.  The management of innovation in project-based firms , 2000 .

[16]  A. Davies,et al.  Organisational capabilities and learning in complex product systems: towards repeatable solutions , 2000 .

[17]  D. Gann,et al.  Innovation in project-based, service-enhanced firms: the construction of complex products and systems , 2000 .

[18]  M. Hobday The Project-Based Organisation: An ideal form for managing complex products and systems? , 2000 .

[19]  R. Gulati,et al.  STRATEGIC NETWORKS , 2000 .

[20]  Morten T. Hansen,et al.  What's your strategy for managing knowledge? , 1999, Harvard business review.

[21]  Fredrik Tell,et al.  Managing Product Development Projects: On the Significance of Fountains and Deadlines , 1998 .

[22]  M. Porter Clusters and the new economics of competition. , 1998, Harvard business review.

[23]  Carla O'Dell,et al.  If Only We Knew What We Know: Identification and Transfer of Internal Best Practices , 1998 .

[24]  M. Hobday Product complexity, innovation and industrial organisation , 1998 .

[25]  M. Arthur,et al.  Paradox in Project-Based Enterprise: The Case of Film Making , 1998 .

[26]  E. Wenger Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity , 1998 .

[27]  Anders Söderholm,et al.  A theory of the temporary organization , 1995 .

[28]  C. Midler “Projectification” of the firm: The renault case , 1995 .

[29]  R. Whitley European business systems : firms and markets in their national contexts , 1994 .

[30]  Peter W. G. Morris,et al.  The management of projects , 1994 .

[31]  Daniel A. Levinthal,et al.  The myopia of learning , 1993 .

[32]  W. H. Davidow,et al.  The Virtual Corporation: Structuring and Revitalizing the Corporation for the 21st Century , 1992 .

[33]  D. Dougherty Interpretive Barriers to Successful Product Innovation in Large Firms , 1992 .

[34]  D. Wegner,et al.  Transactive memory in close relationships. , 1991, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[35]  J. Brown,et al.  Organizational Learning and Communities-of-Practice: Toward a Unified View of Working, Learning, and Innovation , 1991 .

[36]  Susan Leigh Star,et al.  Institutional Ecology, `Translations' and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-39 , 1989 .

[37]  C. Gersick Time and Transition in Work Teams: Toward a New Model of Group Development , 1988 .

[38]  Mark S. Granovetter Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness , 1985, American Journal of Sociology.

[39]  A. Giddens The Constitution of Society , 1985 .

[40]  Sebastiano Brusco The Emilian model: productive decentralisation and social integration , 1982 .

[41]  E. Shils The Constitution Of Society , 1982 .

[42]  W. Powell,et al.  The iron cage revisited institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields , 1983 .