Building Project Capabilities in PBOs: Lessons from the French Special Forces

The project manager cannot be a hero anymore! Understanding critical competencies in project-based organizations from a multilevel approach

“…Some authors have insisted that various competencies are critical for managing in a PBO (Bredillet et al, 2015;Bredin, 2008;Brière et al, 2015;Crawford, 2005;Danneels, 2002;Frame, 1999;Gareis and Huemann, 2000;Medina and Medina, 2014;Melkonian and Picq, 2011;Muffatto, 1998;Ruuska and Teigland, 2009;Söderlund, 2005;Suikki et al, 2006;Verona, 1999). More generally, and basing our assumptions on the work of many authors (Drejer, 2001;Le Deist and Winterton, 2005;Nordhaug, 1998;Sanchez et al, 1996), we define "competence" as the ability of an individual, a team, or a company to mobilize and combine resources (i.e., knowledge, skills, and attitudes) in order to implement an activity in situation.…”

“…This organizational level has been described as the aggregated learning in an organization, including the coordination and integration of various production skills and numerous types of technology (Prahalad and Hamel, 1990). Specifically in PBOs, according to Melkonian and Picq (2011), this organizational level concerns the systems of selection and individual training or various routines and programs evolutions and changes. In other words, in the context of PBOs, the organizational level concerns competencies that are beyond one project's boundaries.…”

“…The density of prior research has been mainly organized into three levels of analysis: individual, collective, and organizational. Although a few studies (Frame, 1999;Gareis and Huemann, 2000;Melkonian and Picq, 2011;Muffatto, 1998;Ruuska and Vartiainen, 2003) have considered that a simultaneous approach to the three levels of competencies appears fundamental to a relevant analysis of competencies implemented in PBOs, nothing is said about how to integrate the three levels (Thiry and Deguire, 2007). There is a lack of empirical studies that reveal how these three levels of competencies can be combined and coordinated.…”

“…Instead, the four companies studied conduct the majority of their activities in project mode and/or privilege the project dimensions over functional dimensions in their structure and processes (Lindkvist, 2004). Here, even though project is the primary business mechanism for coordination and integrating all the main competencies of the firm, there is a need for some functional support and coordination (Melkonian and Picq, 2011). More specifically, in the four PBOs, our study focuses on the activities of new product development projects (NPD) and services.…”

Developing Organisational Capabilities through Customer-Led Systems Integration Projects: The Case of the Major Project BT 21st Century Network in the UK

“…One of the reasons for the growth of projects seems to be that the customer-focused or customer-centric approach (see, for example, Galbraith (2005)) in dynamic markets is becoming a necessity in order to remain competitive. Thus project capability has acquired momentum in various instances of project business in various contexts (see, for example, Davies and Brady (2015), Melkonian and Picq (2011), Ghapanchi and Aurum (2012))(2015; Ghapanchi & Aurum, 2012;Melkonian & Picq, 2011). A project can be seen as a dynamic capability (cf.…”