دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی کنترل پرونده کسب و کار، شدت نظارت بر نمونه برداری و نوآوری پروژه - الزویر 2018

Abstract

Project management approaches are evolving to be more flexible and adaptive to meet the challenges associated with an increasingly complex and dynamic environment. However, potential changes in the underpinning logic supporting project decision making have scarcely been considered. We investigate the role of effectuation, a decision logic most commonly associated with entrepreneurship, as an alternative decisionmaking approach to the rational ‘causation’ logic that has traditionally underpinned project management processes. We develop and test a model to explore the portfolio- and project-level influences on the application of effectuation in project management. We find that portfolio governance mechanisms related to business case use and portfolio monitoring inhibit the use of effectuation, while project innovativeness is associated with increased use of effectuation. The paper contributes to research and practice by empirically investigating the antecedents to the use of effectuation decision-making logic in project and portfolio management through a multi-level model.

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.