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 Söderholm 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

The notion of a 'community-of-practice' (CmP) has become a highly influential way of conceptualizing how decentralized sub-units or groups within firms or organizations operate. CmPs refer to 'tightly knit' groups that have been practising together long enough to develop into a cohesive community with relationships of mutuality and shared understandings. The CmP notion, however, does not fit squarely with how temporary organizations or project organizations operate. Typically these kinds of groups consist of diversely skilled individuals, most of whom have not met before, who have to solve a problem or carry out a pre-specified task within tightly set limits as to time and costs. As a result they tend to become less well-developed groups, operating on a minimal basis of shared knowledge and understandings. Such a group, I suggest, constitutes a 'collectivity-of-practice' (ClP). Mirroring the above distinctions, two ideal-type notions of epistemology are developed. The one inspired from the CmP literature is discussed in a 'knowledge community' terminology, whereas the one associated with ClPs is conceived of as a 'knowledge collectivity'. Finally, I outline some new options for organizational analysis made possible by recognizing these as two different and complementary notions.

Product development in high-technology industries is often carried out in projects. Managing such projects is a matter of both promoting creative knowledge generation processes and controlling progress towards global goals and time limits. From such a dual perspective, we discuss the meaning and suitability of organizing product development projects in a concurrent rather than a sequential fashion and the use of deadlines as control mechanisms. The empirical case is about the breakthrough in Japan for the Swedish company Ericsson. The system was to be fully operative in 1994. This project forced management to reconsider their traditional way of working with projects and to try a new one instead — labelled the 'fountain model' — which relied more on concurrent work and inter-functional cooperation. As a result, they managed to shorten development time quite considerably and deliver the system on time. The fountain model of project organization is interpreted as expressing a 'coupling logic' suitable for error detection in a systemic complexity context. We also suggest a model, identifying four different project organization logics, that may be used contingent upon the type of error problematic and complexity involved. Using the garbage-can metaphor, we also discuss how deadlines and other time-based controls may support the fountain model by promoting inter-functional responsiveness and 'global' reflection.

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