Discussion and conclusion
The objective of this study was to explore the use of effectuation in decision making in project environments. By considering factors at both the project and portfolio level, we contribute new findings to whether and how effectuation logic has a role to play in project and portfolio management. As the traditional planning approach in project management is being challenged leading to calls for more flexible and adaptive approaches (Huff 2016), effectual decision making may enable the creation of opportunities while maintaining flexibility in uncertain environments. Combining literature from effectuation, project management and PPM, we developed and tested a framework that explores new ground by investigating effectuation from a project portfolio context as well as from the project-level in a multi-level empirical analysis. Due to the importance of innovation and the strong support for managing innovative projects more flexibly, we considered the innovativeness of the project as a factor at the project level that could influence the degree of use of effectuation logic for decision making. At the portfolio level, we considered factors that affect project decision environments—in particular the use of business cases and the level of monitoring projects from a portfolio level. We based our hypotheses on the supposition that these portfolio level activities represent types of decision approaches that are largely characterized as causal and therefore may restrict the use of effectuation practices.
