http://www.diva-portal.org This is the published version of a paper published in Project Management Journal. Citation for the original published paper (version of record): Miterev, M., Engwall, M., Jerbrant, A. (2017) Mechanisms of isomorphism in project-based organizations. Project Management Journal, 48(5): 9-24 Access to the published version may require subscription. N.B. When citing this work, cite the original published paper. Permanent link to this version: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-217388 Mechanisms of Isomorphism in Project-Based Organizations PAPERS Maxim Miterev, Department of Industrial Economics and Management, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden Mats Engwall, Department of Industrial Economics and Management, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden Anna Jerbrant, Department of Industrial Economics and Management, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden ABSTRACT ■ INTRODUCTION ecent studies report that an increasing number of firms are using This article challenges the dominant assump- projects as the main organizing principle to achieve their strategic and tion of goal rationality behind temporary operational objectives (Cattani, Ferriani, Frederiksen, & Täube, 2011; organizations’ design in project-based orga- Lundin et al., 2015; Whittington, Pettigrew, Peck, Fenton, & Conyon, nizations (PBOs). While extant literature pos- R1999). This trend is reflected in the growing scholarly interest in project-based its that organizations strive to select the forms of organizing within the strategic management and innovation literature most appropriate project arrangements to (Blindenbach-Driessen & Van den Ende, 2006; Brady & Davies, 2004; Davies & fit particular task requirements at hand, find- Brady, 2000, 2016; Gann & Salter, 2000; Hobday, 2000; Keegan & Turner, 2002; ings from an in-depth ethnography-inspired Loufrani-Fedida & Saglietto, 2016; Nightingale, Baden-Fuller, & Hopkins, 2011; case study suggest that projects in PBOs Prencipe & Tell, 2001; Söderlund, 2005, 2008; Whitley, 2006). While their effects tend to imitate each other’s structures, strat- on innovation and learning remain an intricate matter (Burgers, Van Den egies, and practices with little consideration Bosch, & Volberda, 2008; Keegan & Turner, 2002; Sydow, Lindkvist, & DeFillippi, of the potential performance effects. Building 2004), project-based organizations are widely praised for their capacity to upon the new institutionalism, this article flexibly address changing customer demands, integrate diverse knowledge sets, conceptualizes the PBO as an organizational bypass barriers to organizational change and innovation, and deliver complex field of temporary and permanent organiza- non-routine tasks (Hobday, 2000; Nightingale et al., 2011; Sydow et al., 2004). tions embedded in wider organizational and The literature on project-based organizations has been pervaded by the institutional fields and explicates isomorphic implicit assumption of goal rationality (Weber, 1978) throughout the past half processes among temporary organizations century (c.f. Levitt, 2012; Middleton, 1967). For example, project-based firms in PBOs. adopt an array of learning mechanisms (Prencipe & Tell, 2001), integrate proj- ect and business processes (Gann & Salter, 2000), introduce new management KEYWORDS: project-based organization; practices (Bresnen, Goussevskaia, & Swan, 2004), and manage intra-firm insti- temporary organization; organization tutional contexts (Lindkvist, 2004; Morris & Geraldi, 2011) in order to build design; institutional theory; isomorphic up project capabilities and competences. Overall, current theory depicts this mechanisms process as a deliberate action, carefully designed by top managers to improve performance. In the same vein, one of the major advantages of the project- based organization is claimed to be that it creates idiosyncratic structures to fit specific project tasks (Bakker, 2010; Hobday, 2000). This perceived advantage is commensurate with the contingency perspective (Dvir, Lipovetsky, Shenhar, & Tishler, 1998; Shenhar, 2001; Shenhar & Dvir, 1996) and pinpoints perfor- mance pressure as the key determinant of project management structures and approaches. It also implies that structures and approaches are chosen by firms in a deliberate and rational way and that they exist in a rich variety in a PBO. To date, however, several empirical studies have reported opposite evi- dence. For example, despite the fact that project-based organizations are Project Management Journal, Vol. 48, No. 5, 9–24 theoretically well-suited to adapt structures and approaches when a new © 2017 by the Project Management Institute project starts from scratch, paradoxically, they rarely do so (Ekstedt, Lundin, Published online at www.pmi.org/PMJ & Wirdenius, 1992). Moreover, even obvious improvements are often not October/November 2017 ■ Project Management Journal 9 Mechanisms of Isomorphism in Project-Based Organizations introduced to ameliorate a challenging temporary organizations in project- emphasize the linkages to the parent PAPERS project situation (Brady & Maylor, 2010). based organizations often compete for organization and its business processes Furthermore, project-based manage- a limited centrally distributed pool of (Gann & Salter, 2000). However, project- ment practices can be adopted by orga- resources (Engwall & Jerbrant, 2003), to-project institutional mechanisms nizations even when they do not fit in which enables coercive isomorphism. are generally overlooked. On the con- well (Martinsuo, Hensman, Artto, Kujala, In addition, the ‘one-off’ character of trary, this study puts forth the lens on & Jaafari, 2006). Thus, in order to explain projects and the impermanence of their the project-based organization as an such phenomena, the literature needs to organizational forms result in high uncer- organizational field of temporary and build on a different set of theories. tainty, which is positively associated with permanent organizations. Second, the New institutionalism in organization mimetic processes. Finally, the profes- study challenges the goal rationality studies represents a promising candi- sionalization of project management assumption behind temporary orga- date to provide an alternative explana- (Hodgson, 2002) creates preconditions nization design and calls for a more tion of project-based dynamics (Henisz, for normative isomorphic processes; nuanced understanding of institutional Levitt, & Scott, 2012; Lampel, 2011; thus, in the context of a project-based processes within the PBO. Finally, the Manning, 2008; Sydow & Staber, 2002; organization one would expect rather article explicates the isomorphic pro- Windeler & Sydow, 2001), because, as strong isomorphic processes in projects. cesses at the level of temporary orga- explained further, it successfully deals In order to investigate how such nizations in the particular context of with similar issues within organization processes shape project management project-based organizations. theory. With regard to the enactment structures and approaches, this study The article is structured as follows. of structures and approaches, projects employed an ethnography-inspired in- The second section discusses the theo- as temporary organizations experience depth case study approach. By concep- retical background of the study; specifi- pressure from their institutional envi- tualizing the project-based organization cally, it starts by discussing the concept ronment (Lundin & Söderholm, 1995). as an organizational field of temporary of temporary organization design by Such pressure might result in a rela- and permanent organizations embed- building on the notion of the project as tively low variation among temporary ded in wider organizational and institu- a temporary organization and several project organizations (Kadefors, 1995), tional fields, the study findings question models from the organization theory since availability and familiarity heuris- the implicit rationality assumption and design literature. Then, it critically tics affect their structures and routines dominant across the literature on PBOs. evaluates the goal rationality assump- (Eriksson & Kadefors, 2017). Specifically, by applying an institutional tion in the literature on project-based In order to explain what they called lens, the article explicates isomorphic organizations and introduces the insti- the “startling homogeneity” of organiza- processes (i.e., coercive, mimetic, and tutional perspective as the theoretical tions, DiMaggio and Powell (1983) built normative) in the context of project- lens of the study. The section concludes on the notion of organizational field, in based organizations and shows how by developing a novel conceptualiza- other words, “those organizations that, projects as temporary organizations tion of the PBO that is used in the study. in the aggregate, constitute a recognized ‘imitate’ each other, often with little or The third section describes in detail the area of institutional life: key suppli- no focus on efficiency. research design and methodology; the ers, resource and product consumers, The article’s contribution to the liter- fourth section presents the empirical regulatory agencies, and other organi- ature is threefold. First, building on the findings; and, finally, the fifth section zations that produce similar services notion of a project as a temporary orga- concludes the article with a discussion or products” (ibid,