In the Shadows of Time: A Case Study of Flexibility Behaviors in an Interorganizational Project

Abstract

We use a longitudinal examination of the production of a complex vessel to develop theory concerning operational flexibility behaviors within interorganizational projects. We find that operational flexibility behaviors are enabled by trust between project participants, sense of urgency, and the availability of resources. These enablers are in turn positively influenced by positive experiences in previous interactions (“shadow of the past”) and expectations of possible future collaboration (“shadow of the future”), the temporary nature of interorganizational projects and slack in project tasks, respectively. The positive effect of enablers on operational flexibility is weakened by the time pressure project participants experience. The latter is also caused by the temporariness of interorganizational projects. Based on our findings, we propose that the different time dimensions play a crucial role in explaining flexibility behaviors in interorganizational projects: the temporariness that is an essential characteristic of interorganizational projects has two potentially opposite effects on the behavior of its participants, and we argue that shadows of the past and future play a decisive role in which of the two effects will dominate. The theoretical framework based on our case study suggests that the temporariness of interorganizational projects is indeed important—as acknowledged in the literature—but that its effect is contingent on shadows of past and future.

Time to learn? Assignment duration in global value chain organization

“…They analyze the timing of a make-or-buy decision and the option to reverse this decision, but do not discuss the duration of each value chain activity as we propose. Scholars are also examining time, timing, and related concepts of flexibility in temporary organizational forms (Stjerne & Svejenova, 2016), interorganizational projects (Ligthart et al, 2016), and "project-based firms" (Hobday, 2000;Sydow, Lindkvist, & DeFillippi, 2004) to a greater extent, due to their increased occurrence in a broad range of industries such as construction, film-making, human resources, new product development, and software development (Bakker, 2010;DeFillippi & Arthur, 1998;Lakemond & Berggren, 2006;Zwikael & Unger-Aviram, 2010). These types of organizations are established to achieve pre-defined goals and are characterized by an ex ante defined limited time of interaction between members, but their connection to GVCs is not the focus of this research.…”

“…Other areas of research (e.g. information technology, project management, and supply chain management) have explored the role of contract duration and flexibility (Barry, Mukhopadhyay, & Slaughter, 2002;Ligthart, Oerlemans, & Noorderhaven, 2016;Susarla, 2012;Young-Ybarra & Wiersema, 1999), and the inherently temporal nature of competitive phenomena has brought the issue of time to the forefront of research on strategic management and in particular, competitive dynamics (Derfus, Maggitti, Grimm, & Smith, 2008;Nadkarni, Chen, & Chen, 2015).…”

The rise of project network organizations: Building core teams and flexible partner pools for interorganizational projects

“…Hobday, 2000;Geyer and Davis, 2000;Girard and Stark, 2002;Davies et al, 2011). CoPs include telecommunication exchanges, business information networks, flight simulators, high-speed trains, aircraft engines and ships (Levering et al, 2013;Ligthart et al, 2016). Unlike mass consumption goods, CoPS are often highly specific and customized products, whose development is project-based (Hobday, 2000).…”

Organizational Ambidexterity: A Critical Review and Development of a Project-Focused Definition

“…From Andriopoulos and Lewis (2009) therefore, we argue that project represent the most efficient approach to balance competing short (exploitation) and long term (exploration) demands that organisations face. While the majority of engineering endeavours are increasingly being organized and implemented as projects (Kuprenas et al, 1999), there is a view in the literature that the temporary nature of projects may hinder not only their efficiencies, but also the achievement of strategic business imperatives driving these projects (Bakker et al, 2016;Ligthart et al, 2016).…”