Projects

Working in projects is getting more and more attention because the complexity of society needs an organisational form that operates in a controlled way beyond traditional, bureaucratic and inflexible structures. Projects are more or less like freedom zones inside organisations, established to reach goals that cannot be realised in the day-to-day practices of the organisation.

“Projects may be defined as small, relative independent and temporary social systems, inside and between other social systems, with the following characteristics (…)

▼ aimed at more or less clear and

varying goals,

▼ that have to be attained within

a certain time frame that is

divided in phases, each phase

solving certain sub-sequential

problems decreasing the

degrees of freedom,

▼ with limited resources of

different kind,

▼ with project members who

might change,

▼ and controlled by one or more

commissioning

▼ organisations.” (Van Cleeff and

Van Nispen, 2016)

Projects are social systems, which implies interdependent aspects of structure and culture. They should deal with unknown or unstructured situation and need internal culture to compensate for a lack of structure.

Projects may be aligned with the culture of the parent organisation (fit) or not (anti-fit). Anti-fit is more or less required to realise change within the organisation as a whole. The project then shows a different way of doing things, which still needs to be accepted in the wider context.

The popularity of working in projects notwithstanding, the related research is limited to mostly project management styles. Additionally, some efforts have been made on the relation between national culture and projects, between organisational culture and projects, on multicultural teams (e.g. Mole, Lewis) and on culture and international negotiations.