Discussion: View Thread

EGOS Colloquium, Naples, Italy, 7-9 July, 2016

Sub-theme 43: Projects, Knowledge and Time

Deadline for short papers (3000 words): January 11, 2016

Convenors: Jonas Söderlund, Andrew Davies, Paolo Canonico

[Apologies for cross-postings]

Dear colleagues,

we invite you to submit a paper to our session at the upcoming EGOS Colloquium in Naples, Italy in July next year. The focus of our sub-theme is on "Projects, Knowledge and Time". We hope that this sub-theme will attract a lot of interest from the field of project studies and organization theorists interested in the context of projects. We hope to invite a selected group of papers that will allow authors to interact and discuss novel and interesting research perspectives and findings.

If you have a paper that fits our theme, we encourage you to submit it. The deadline for submission is January 11, 2016.

In connection with this subtheme, there will be a special issue of the Project Management Journal to be published in 2017 (guest editors Jonas Söderlund, Andrew Davies, Paolo Canonico). After the EGOS 2016 Colloquium, selected authors will be invited to submit their papers for inclusion in this special issue. All papers to be considered will undergo a double-blind review process.

More information about the EGOS Colloquium and the sub-theme is found on www.egosnet.org.

We hope to see you in lovely Naples this summer.

Yours sincerely,

Jonas Söderlund, Professor, BI Norwegian Business School - jonas.soderlund@bi.no

Andrew Davies, Professor, University College London - a.c.davies@ucl.ac.uk

Paolo Canonico, Associate Professor, University of Naples Federico II - paolo.canonico@unina.it

Call for Papers

Projects as an organizational form play a critical role in many industries and societal contexts. Recently, the scholarly investigation of projects has advanced considerably through theoretical perspectives highlighting the close linkages between projects and innovation, the difficulties of managing complexity in practice, and the nature of new forms of organizing. Research has also investigated the role projects play in triggering learning and developing organizational capabilities. This sub-theme seeks to advance our knowledge about organizing by projects by seeking to combine the knowledge and time dimensions in projects.

Indeed, knowledge integration has always been a critical part of organizing by projects. People join projects to integrate their diverse and uniquely held knowledge. However, knowledge integration in the context of projects is closely associated with time and timing. For instance, the ideas of knowledge integration as a matter of "knowledge entrainment" as well as the effort of synchronizing time perspectives and time orientations among the actors willing to achieve knowledge integration at the right point in time are increasingly central issues. This observation was already apparent in the classic work by Lawrence and Lorsch (1967) but there are still much more to do on this particular subject. Knowledge integration requires a deep understanding of the speed and tempo of different knowledge processes, of different players' cycles of problem solving, and the ability for people to take part in organizational processes. Accordingly, we believe that project scholars interested in knowledge processes and knowledge integration should be more aware of the time dimensions.

Time limits bring about different reactions in project team members, depending on individual perceptions and attitude towards deadlines (Packendorff, 1995; Orlikowski & Yates, 2002). Gersick (1994), building on Clark (1985), distinguishes between chronological pacing, elapsing on conventional clock measures, based on the achievement of milestones, on the one hand, and entrainment-based pacing, on the other hand, in which the key concept is the alignment with external markers and field configuring events. This distinction underlies the subsequent redefinition of non-linear learning patterns. The plurality of approaches to the role of time in projects may help in providing insights on knowledge integration, but need to be developed further through in-depth empirical research.

The sub-theme invites contributions that focus on one or several of the following topics, addressing the intersection of issues related to projects, knowledge and time:

The above should only be intended as a tentative list; we would also encourage authors to explore issues that extend beyond these initial suggestions. The aim of this sub-theme is to attract conceptual and empirical research able to increase our understanding of the role of time and timing in knowledge integration in the context of projects. We are particularly interested in research that draws on a variety of organizational theories and perspectives.

We welcome contributions at multiple levels of analysis – on individuals in projects, on processes at the project level, and on firms organized through projects. Given that much theorizing at present has been relatively static we are interested in contributions that explicitly seek to uncover the emergence and dynamics of projects and project-based firms – how knowledge is developed over time, how knowledge is integrated over time, and how projects change over time.

All presentations will be commented by a discussant from the group. Session chairs will be asked to provide a friendly and constructive atmosphere for discussion.