Managing time pacing in organizations transitioning to a project-based mode – 3 cases studies of two multinational companies

Abstract

This paper aims to better understand how teams create new knowledge to adapt their work processes as they move from managing ongoing and well-defined operations to a project mode. We particularly focus on major events affecting projects and demonstrate that temporality influences actors' willingness and ability to generate new knowledge within the team and to diffuse that knowledge at different levels in the organization. Results show that time is mostly not considered as linear but rather in its subjective dimension. Thus, subjective perceptions of time such as temporal compression or flow enhance the generation of tacit or explicit knowledge. In this study, we study three projects by two multinationals to show the different reactions and perceptions of timing of team members. Our research brings new insights on organizations that moved from a mode based on ongoing operations to a project-led mode as well as knowledge generation.

The project managers’ challenges in a projectification environment

“…In any event, the high frequency of appearance of this word (51 times makes it the word that is most repeated) confirms that communicating can be a real challenge that PMs should address, keeping in mind cultural aspects and the particularities of communicating to virtual teams. This is in line with previous literature, giving communication skill a relevant position for being a competent PM (Alioua and Simon, 2017;Bird and Mendenhall, 2016;Müller and Turner, 2007).…”

“…All of these words were mentioned four times. Communication skills have been one of the most commonly studied and sought management in recent years (Alioua and Simon, 2017;Bird and Mendenhall, 2016;Müller and Turner, 2007). The lack of these communication skills causes insecurity.…”

“…Working with virtual teams means considering new ways of communication and providing feedback. The capacity to synchronize internal communication within the team with external actors (Alioua and Simon, 2017) poses another important challenge. Global markets and real-time global communication with all stakeholders have become the norm today (Bird and Mendenhall, 2016).…”

Crossing times: Temporal boundary-spanning practices in interorganizational projects

“…Furthermore, given their set deadlines (Lindkvist et al, 1998) and task-related interdependencies (Thompson, 1967), IOPs are likely to be characterized by conflicting pressures and priorities, as they involve actors and organizations with different temporal understandings and temporal regularities (Ancona and Waller, 2007;Dahlgren and Söderlund, 2001). Thus, the various degrees of temporal embeddedness in IOPs makes "temporal pacing" a core activity of managing such projects (Alioua and Simon, 2017). This activity includes setting clock-time demarcations, deadlines, milestones, and targets as well as matching project temporalities to the environment (Jones and Lichtenstein, 2007).…”