Search results

This study aims to understand how project leaders' interactive use of the project management control systems (MCS) impact IT project performance, by examining the mechanisms through which this relationship is enacted.

Data were collected from a cross-sectional survey of 109 IT project managers working in Canadian and USA-based organizations. A moderated mediation model was analysed by hierarchical component reflective-formative measurement modelling using PLS-SEM.

Results suggest that the leader's interactive use of project MCS is associated with IT project performance, and this relationship is partially mediated by team learning behaviour. In addition, the relationship between the interactive use of project MCS and team learning behaviour is moderated by the organization's emphasis on process accountability, with the effect being stronger under the conditions of higher emphasis on process accountability.

This study contributes to the literature on the use of controls in the IT project-based business environments by explaining how the project leader's style of use of controls influences project team learning behaviour that in turn impacts project performance. Additionally, this study extends the project governance and accountability literature by identifying and empirically examining how the perceptions of project leader's institutionalized organizational accountability arrangements moderate the impact of the interactive use of control systems on team learning behaviour. A methodological contribution of the study is the scale development to measure leader's perceptions about the organization's emphasis on process accountability.

This paper aims to unpack the relationship between the interactive use of project control systems (PCS) and project performance by examining the role of stakeholder analysis effectiveness in enacting this relationship. A conceptual framework was developed based on the stakeholder theory and the levers of control framework.

Partial least square-structural equation modelling analysis was conducted on the cross-sectional questionnaire data collected from 109 information technology (IT) projects.

The interactive use of PCS enables project managers to effectively deal with the stakeholders-related uncertainty, and stakeholder analysis effectiveness partially mediates the positive relationship between the interactive use of PCS and IT project performance.

This study extends the project control literature by explaining the positive relationship between the interactive use of PCS and project performance. The findings contribute to the stakeholder analysis literature by operationalizing the stakeholder analysis effectiveness construct and identifying it as a new mediator between the interactive use of PCS and project performance.

Governance of projects is a dynamic process that involves the interaction of agents, opportunities, rules, instruments and legitimacy. The authors conducted a case study of the governance of exploratory projects in public procurement of innovation in a local government. The authors consider both contextual aspects that impose requirements on the procurement process and procedural aspects of how the different actors interact with each other. In particular, the purpose of this study is to investigate how actors make sense of the projects and how governance evolves over their lifetime.

To engage in an open-system investigation of exploratory public procurement of innovation (PPI) projects, the authors adopted a case study approach in which they collected a variety of data including publicly available documentary evidence, interviews with project participants and project evaluation reports. The authors used transcripts of 17 interviews with project participants conducted independently to gain an initial understanding of the case. They conducted additional semi-structured interviews with projects’ participants (ten interviews in total) and used theory-driven analysis (Pawson and Tilley, 1997) based on Borrás and Edler’s (2014) model of governance.

The authors identified four stages – problem identification, partner selection, partnership development and evaluation and commercialization – these projects. The case demonstrates how governance changes in each stage and at the three levels of policy, network and projects. Each level has its own governance pillar. The results suggest that a multi-level perspective (MLP) can be a fruitful framework to study governance of projects in these contexts.

The authors note that the number of participants in the network of this case is not very large. Other organizations that aim to adopt PPI may need to pay attention to the complementarity and the number of partners in the network. In this case, organizations were motivated to collaborate as each had its own objectives which were distinct but complementary.

Co-creation of value is currently a topic of interest for public policy reform across the globe. The case indicates that procurement for innovation requires a degree of coordinated change across governmental departments, such as planning, legal and procurement to implement the policy and related support systems. Furthermore, the authors observed that a portfolio approach to inter-organizational collaboration with different partners was effective. Each partner has its own objective, but they complement one another. A portfolio of different, though complementary, inter-organizational arrangements enables various complementary instruments and various logics to be used.

The public sector is an important actor in driving innovation in products and services that fulfill societal needs. This is explored in public procurement of innovation. In this process, several partners from private and public sectors are involved. This partnership is mainly used to co-create the value and encourage innovation to benefit the citizens. However, to serve this goal, the case indicates that procurement for innovation requires a degree of coordinated change across governmental departments, such as planning, legal and procurement to implement the policy and related support systems. For this phenomenon MLP should be used as an inclusive framework to study socio-technical change.

The analysis of the case presented in this study demonstrates that even in the case of temporary public procurement of innovation projects, governance is layered. The three pillars of governance not only interact at each layer but also communicate across layers. Even though the interaction of the three pillars of governance is well established in the literature on socio-technical change, the interaction across levels in the context of temporary projects is novel. The authors contribute to the literature on governance of such projects by highlighting the stratification of governance.

Ethics and leadership are ongoing topics in high performance sports. The purpose of this paper is to provide an insight into the relationship between coaches’ ethical leadership behaviour, as perceived by athletes, and its impact on student-athlete accountability, voice and performance.

The paper examines the constructs of coaches’ ethical leadership behaviour, felt accountability and voice behaviour. The authors surveyed student-athletes from a variety of sports who compete in the Ontario University Athletics Regional Association. A total of 303 respondents (n=303) completed the survey. Partial least squares path modelling algorithm was utilised for testing hypotheses.

The results of the study indicate a significant relationship between a coach exhibiting ethical leadership behaviour and student-athlete voice behaviour and performance. Felt accountability mediates the effect of ethical leadership on voice and performance.

This study provides support for the hypothesis that coaches who behave ethically and whose actions represent their words create an environment where a student-athlete feels accountable. This is a powerful concept as it can positively impact individual and team success. The findings suggest that one of the ways that coaches can impact athletes’ performance is to demonstrate and model ethical conduct, and reward ethical acts.

The paper examines how coaches’ ethical behaviour might impact individual processes of accountability, voice and performance. Second, the paper uses the construct of accountability to explain how coaches’ ethical leadership impacts student-athlete behaviour. The accountability literature indicates that followers’ behaviours can be understood as the consequences of his/her perceived accountability towards the leader.

Despite the importance of accountability for the oversight of projects, few studies have directly examined accountability mechanisms at the project level. While the literature already provides descriptions of governance and mechanisms of accountability, the purpose of this paper is to examine how project managers view their accountability relationships within their organizational context.

The study is guided by critical realism as a philosophy of science. The authors interviewed 15 project managers from 12 organizations and analyzed the transcripts in the light of existing project management accountability literature.

The authors observe the practice of socializing accountability through face-to-face negotiation and symmetries of power due to interdependencies happen to some extent in management of projects. This suggests ambidexterity in accountability in project-based organizations. Therefore, the current models of project accountability and governance that are solely based on the agency theory are not sufficient to explain the accountability relationships in such organizations.

Accountability arrangements happen within a system for steering projects. Managers should be aware of how project managers view their accountability and how socializing practices of accountability can help the project’s management and the organization’s management interact in order to transform organizational systems by regulating issues of project concern and defining the process and direction of how project deliverables are produced, introduced, absorbed and used within the organization.

“Theory driven” interviews and analysis are used to confirm or refine conceptualization of accountability in management of projects. Most models of project governance are based on the agency theory or governability theory. The authors have demonstrated that socializing practices of accountability should be included in investigating project governance. The authors observe that project managers are often concerned with the interdependence with their principals and the socializing processes of accountability that arise from this interdependence.

This paper aims to examine the levers of control (LOC) framework in the context of managing projects. The authors explore the impact of diagnostic systems, interactive systems, beliefs systems and boundary systems on project performance and explore the association between control levers.

Using data gathered from 113 project managers representing 38 organizations, the authors used the partial least squares path modelling algorithm to analyse the data.

The analysis validates the LOC framework in the context of managing projects and reveals the interrelatedness of control systems and their impact on project performance.

The conclusions support the current emphasis on performance reporting and change control and highlight the need to consider the interdependencies between control levers.

This study re-conceptualizes project control by using the LOC framework in the context of managing projects as temporary organizations. This provides a model for investigating and understanding project management control systems that consider the interaction of control mechanisms. Furthermore, the associations between the four control systems and project performance are examined, rather than individual mechanisms in isolation.

This review aims to summarize the extent to which sustainability dimensions are covered in the selected qualitative literature, the theoretical and ontological underpinnings that have informed sustainability research and the qualitative methodologies used in that literature.

This study uses a systematic review to examine prior empirical studies in sustainability reporting between 2000 and 2021.

This review contributes to sustainability research by identifying unexplored and underexplored areas for future studies, such as Indigenous people’s rights, employee health and safety practice, product responsibility, gender and leadership diversity. Institutional and stakeholder theories are widely used in the selected literature, whereas moral legitimacy remains underexplored. The authors suggest that ethnographic and historical research will increase the richness of academic research findings on sustainability reporting.

This review is limited to qualitative studies only because its richness allows researchers to apply various methodological and theoretical approaches to understand engagement in sustainability reporting practice.

This review follows a novel approach of bringing the selected studies’ scopes, theories and methodologies together. This approach permits researchers to formulate a research question coherently using a logical framework for a research problem.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework for project managers and team coaches to help them coach their team.

A team is provided with a measurement of actual experience of teamwork juxtaposed with its ideal experience of teamwork.

The paper finds that self‐discrepancy theory helps us explain that this triggers self‐directed learning in the team.

A more comprehensive picture of team learning that takes into account non‐measurable dimensions of interaction might be of value in a framework for team coaching.

Using such a framework, a team leader can help team members to develop both their individual and team skills. This would create far more knowledgeable and skilled individuals who can contribute to an organization within their sphere of influence.

This paper extends current methods of coaching and offers practical help to team coaches.

The purpose of this research is to study the ad hoc problem of developing capabilities for knowledge transfer between various constituencies of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation project. The paper studies how an ERP project develops ability to network, link, and integrate its various knowledge resources over time.

The paper conducted a case study of an ERP project, from its initiation in 2008 to its completion in 2011.

The case demonstrates the dynamics of development of knowledge transfer capacities through ad hoc problem solving. The paper identifies five mechanisms used in this case for the development of knowledge transfer capacities.

Ad hoc problem solving mechanisms demonstrated in this paper can be intentionally planned and utilized in similar projects to enable interaction, integration, and institutionalization.

Even though ad hoc problem solving as a model for change is prevalent in many organizations, studies of ad hoc problem solving capabilities as a mechanism for change are not extensive. This case describes ad hoc mechanisms that foster change and development of knowledge transfer capacities during large IT project implementations.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a detailed explanation of a design toolkit for coaching project teams.

It is first explained that approach to coaching teams using a measure that captures the real and ideal interactions for the 12 information technology (IT) project teams in this paper.

Based on the analysis of data from the coaching sessions, characteristics of a design toolkit are proposed for coaching IT project teams.

A more comprehensive picture of team learning that takes into account non‐measurable dimensions of interaction might be of value in the kernel theories. More cases are required to verify the design theory in other contexts.

Project managers and team leaders can benefit form this design toolkit to approach coaching their teams.

This approach complements current models of team coaching.