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1、精选优质文档-倾情为你奉上 外文文献：The project management office as an organisational innovation Brian Hobbs *, Monique Aubry, Denis ThuillierUniversity of Quebec at Montreal, Department of Management and Technology, PO Box 8888, Downtown Station, Montreal, Que, Canada H3C 3P8Received 15 May 2008; accepted 20 May 2
2、008Abstract The paper presents an investigation of the creation and the reconfiguration of project management offices (PMOs) as an organizational innovation. The analysis of 11 organisational transformations centred on the implementation or reconfiguration of PMOs is presented. The objective of the
3、paper is to contribute to a better understanding of PMOs and of the dynamic relationship between project management and the organisational context. The aim is also to integrate the examination of PMOs as an organisational innovation into the mainstream of research on the place of project management
4、in organisations and more widely to the rethinking of project management.”1. Introduction Quite often over the last decade, the observation has been made that organisations are facing a new context characterized by increased competition, increased rates of product, service and process innovation and
5、 an increasing emphasis on time to market. Organisations have responded to these challenges by developing new, more flexible organisational forms 1 in which projects are both more numerous and more strategically important 2. As part of the response to these new challenges and as part of the movement
6、 to increase both the number and the strategic importanceof projects many organisations have implemented a new organisational entity the most common name for which is the project management office or PMO. The PMO has been addressed extensively in the professional literature 35. However, there has be
7、en very little theoretical or empirical research on the topic. In addition, this organisational innovation has not been examined extensively within the literature stream described above.2. Recent survey-based research on PMOs Arecent survey-based on the synchronic description of a large number of PM
8、Os and their organisational contexts has shown extreme variety in both the form and function of PMOs 6. Attempts to date to reduce this variety to a limited number of models have failed. In addition, the research showed that in the majority of cases PMOs are unstable structures, organisations often
9、reconfigure their PMOs every few years. This instability can be interpreted as both an illustration of structuring as an ongoing organisational process 1 and as an illustration of organisational experimentation as organisations search for an adequate structural arrangement 7. Half of the respondents
10、 to the survey report that the legitimacy of their PMO in its present form is being questioned. This is consistent with both the interpretation in terms of experimentation and a search for best practices and with the interpretation as an instance of the inherent instability of an ongoing process of
11、structuring. In the survey-based research cited above, correlation analysis found no systematic relationships between the external context in terms of economic sector or geographic region or internal organisational context, on the one hand, and the structural characteristics of PMOs on the other. No
12、ne of the classic contingency factors from organisational theory correlated strongly with the form or function of the PMOs. A positivist, synchronic approach has provided a rich description of the great variety found in the population but has failed, so far, to provide an adequate understanding of P
13、MOs. The present paper reports the result of an effort to come to a better understanding of PMOs as an organisational innovation based on the in-depth investigation of eleven cases.3. The literature on organisational innovation Four subsets of the literature on innovation are examined to identify al
14、ternative approaches relevant to the examination of PMOs as organizational innovations. First, the general literature on innovation is examined. This is followed by an examination of the literature based on evolutionary, co-evolutionary and institutional isomorphism approaches. All are sensitive to
15、evolution over time.3.1. The general literature on innovation Early research on innovation had operated mostly from an economic perspective and a general assumption of growth 8. The interdisciplinary curriculum has developed over time with the contribution of new knowledge stemming from a variety of
16、 sources: economics 911, organisational management 12, sociology 13 and social ecology 14. Others provide a categorization of innovation based on product, process or architecture 15,16.In this perspective, organisations are considered to be very similar, responding to the same incentives. The object
17、ives of research are often to provide organisations with practical solutions determining factors to innovative success. Innovation theory is now shifting to a social innovation approach, broadening the concept of technological innovation to a social system. .the sociological crucial point is that or
18、ganisations have not only become prominent actors in society, they may have become the only kind of actor with significant cultural and political influence. Yet, recent organisation theory has surprisingly little to say about how organisations affect the society.” 13, p. 148 New questions have emerg
19、ed which lead to motivation theory and to the context of innovation that rehabilitates history along with innovation, thus introducing the temporal element to the social innovation system 17,18. This historical perspective was a natural step after the ecological model which demonstrated the usefulne
20、ss of the biological metaphor with the concepts of evolution and co-evolution 19. This social approach paved the way for looking at organisations as part of the social innovation system and new forms of structure as innovations. Along this line of thought, innovation is viewed as an art or, more exa
21、ctly, as a craft 18. Innovation then becomes a creative act, the dynamic construction of something new in which it can be difficult to discern any regular pattern 1 20.3.2. From evolutionary theory to co-evolution The evolutionary theory was developed in the theory of organizations based on a biolog
22、ical metaphor. A basic evolutionary model of an organisation envisions it as a collection of routines or stable bundles of activities. With time, variation occurs within these routines with the result that any given set of routines evolves, whether intentionally or not. A certain number of new routi
23、nes are then adopted as temporarily permanent practices. This simple variationselectionretention repeats continuously 21, p. 76. Evolutionary theories are made up of two major groups: contingency theories and social theories. Contingency theories consider technological change as an exogenous phenome
24、non which triggers organisational evolution 8,22. This deterministic approach makes structural arrangements predictable from variables such as complexity, uncertainty and interdependency, which can be integrated into a single dimension the ability to treat information 23. Social theories view organi
25、sations as technological social constructions in which the community of organisations determines the nature of technological evolution 22. In this approach, organisational structures are seen as processes in action which are continuously built and rebuilt 23. Scott argues that these approaches are t
26、wo sides of the same coin 23. On the one hand, technology can be considered the causal agent which shapes the structure of organisations; while on the other hand, to reverse this causal effect, organisations influence the innovation process with either the creation of a new technology or its early a
27、doption 23. This complementarity is recognized in the co-evolution theory in which technological innovations are believed to give the impetus that initiates new cycles of variationselectionretention and in which a dynamic process of evolution with innovation constantly feeds organisation 22,24. Mass
28、ini et al. 19 confirm that evolutionary theory is capable of explaining changes in organisational structures and routines. They conclude that organisational adaptation is a consequence of changes related to the adoption of technological innovations. Looking at large Western and Japanese firms at two
29、 different periods in time (1992, 1996), their research confirms both the progressive adaptation over time and the tendency to adopt organisational routines associated with a higher capacity for flexibility. This also confirms the selection and emergence of dominant routines suggested by the evoluti
30、onary theory. They also confirm that these changes are context-dependant: the institutional context in which organisations are embedded defines patterns of organisational structures and strategies.3.3. Co-evolution In biology, co-evolution is defined as evolution involving successive changes in two
31、or more ecologically interdependent species (as of a plant and its pollinators) that affect their interactions. (Merriam-Webster, 11th Collegiate Dictionary) The relation could be of a predator-prey nature or of a symbiotic nature. Co-evolution is also used in a narrower context when it refers to a
32、specific form of relation (inside or outside of a company) adopted for short term results. Eisenhardt and Galunic 25 refer to co-evolution (of a symbiotic nature) when they argue that multi-business corporations are co-evolving ecosystems. From that viewpoint, collaboration occurs only when it gives
33、 a positive performance result in terms of growth, shares and profits. Co-evolution helps us understand the evolution of complex systems. At a macro-level2, Rosenkopf and Tushman 22 propose a framework to examine various stages of co-evolution of organisational and technological forms. These authors
34、 argue that there are two different interlinked processes the evolution of community organization and the evolution of technology within one cycle of variationselectionretention. Organisations are part of their community and they contribute to the evolutionary process of community organisation which
35、 simultaneously drives and is driven by cyclical technological progress through eras of ferment followed by eras of incremental change. At a micro level, there are numerous technological (variation) events, rule-making (selection) events, and institutional rule-following (retention) events that occu
36、rred and co-evolved over time to facilitate and to constrain the development and commercialization of an innovation. Van de Ven and Garud 24 analyzed the case of cochlear implant development within this perspective. They scrutinized this innovation for a period of 35 years to identify events and fou
37、nd that they can be grouped in three time periods: initiation, expansion and stabilization. The initiation period was marked by technological events originating in basic research, while both rule-making and rule-following events were important in the expansion period. Not surprisingly, during the st
38、abilization period, rule-following events were dominant. It is also worthwhile noting that the evolutionary theory suggests a progression towards some more evolved state. Evolution provides regularity and a certain form of predictability. In complexity theory, this could be associated with random ti
39、me series of longitudinal data in which there is no pattern such as life cycle, but rather a tendency to follow itself”, to repeat a movement towards the same direction, for example. This randomness is associated with brown noise 20 and is different from a periodic pattern. In conclusion, technology
40、 and organisation are parts of a common social system in which innovation breaks a temporary equilibrium and launches an unpredictable journey through a process of variationselectionretention. Some criticisms have been aimed at the evolutionary theory in relation to its inability to provide an appro
41、priate analysis of the context of technological evolution. De Bresson 27 suggests we turn to the historical perspective in order to get the broader picture of technological evolution. This implies that researchers have to look at processes rather than ad hoc events. One good example of looking at th
42、e innovation process is Van de Ven 28 who concluded that what is encountered in the life of an organisation does not match any regular pattern.3.4. Institutional isomorphism Institutionalism theories propose to understand changes at the organisational field level where the evolution of a population
43、of organisations can be observe 29,30. In this perspective, organisational survival is based upon the capacity to adapt to the environment through the evolutionary process of variationselectionretention forming what has been called the Population Ecology of Organisations 30. Some authors have worked
44、 to explain the diversity of organisations and to identify criteria that make some survive while others disappeared 1. Based on this biological metaphor, DiMaggio and Powell observe instead a tendency toward greater homogeneity and ask a basic question from this perspective: What makes organisations
45、 so similar?” 29, p. 147. Their research leads to a questioning of rationality in decision making process on organisational structure. They argue that market competition and efficiency has not so much to do with the resulting organisational structure. They found instead that institutional isomorphis
46、m can better explain the form organisations take on. The level of analysis is situated at the organisational field defined as a dynamic network of organisations that is recognized as having an institutional life. DiMaggio and Powell 29 identified three mechanisms of institutional isomorphic change:
47、coercive isomorphism, mimetic processes and normative pressures. In their seminal work, they also propose hypothesis to predict which organisational fields will be most homogeneous in structure, process and behaviour.3.5. Organisational innovation in the project management literature Innovation in t
48、he project management literature refers most often to product and process innovation and is often classified using the bipolar model of radical and incremental 31,32 using the typology from Nelson and Winter 33. Turner and Keegan 34 suggest that product and process innovations require a creative env
49、ironment with specific characteristics. Elsewhere, Duggal 35 proposes a next generation PMO where a R&D function exists for specific purposes of project management innovation. We argue that organisation itself is worth considering as the object of innovation and not only a means for product or process innovation (Schumpeter 1934 cited in 36