Johann Packendorff

Social constructionism and entrepreneurship: Basic assumptions and consequences for theory and research

Purpose - The purpose of this article is to develop a social constructionist approach to entrepreneurship and to discuss its consequences for entrepreneurship research. Design/methodology/approach ...

Learning from Renewal Projects: Content, Context and Embeddedness

During the last decade there has been an increasing awareness of the importance of “embeddedness” as an important dimension in analysing projects. While traditional project management theory presupposes that projects are clearly defined and separable from the context in which they are implemented, the notion of embeddedness implies that contextual factors affect the project organisation throughout the whole project. In the most embedded kind of projects, renewal projects, most actions are in fact taken with the learning context in mind rather than the project contents.

Project leadership revisited: towards distributed leadership perspectives in project research

While project management research in general has become a rapidly expanding field during past decades, scientific inquiry into project leadership has not been a major issue. The extant literature on project leadership also does not make much use of the current developments in leadership research in general – not even those appearing as suitable, such as distributed leadership perspectives. The aim of the paper is threefold: (1) to review the existing research literature on project leadership, (2) to summarise and discuss this research and (3) to make some notes towards a new research agenda built on the current debate in leadership studies on distributed leadership perspectives. Current project leadership research is found to focus exclusively on individuals and their leadership competencies rather than the leadership practices in project settings and does not fully use the perspectives in current leadership research. We then outline a distributed leadership perspective on project leadership research, including the practical consequences of such an ideal and the basic assumptions for future research.

A Project-Based View of Entrepreneurship: Towards Action-Orientation, Seriality and Collectivity

Traditional entrepreneurship research often tends to view entrepreneurship in terms of individual actors starting enterprises, an approach which might limit further development of entrepreneurship ...

Thrilled by the discourse, suffering through the experience: Emotions in project-based work

In this article, we study emotional processes associated with the project management discourse. Employing a constructionist approach where emotions are experienced within an ordering discursive context, the study identifies four distinct emotional processes associated with the invocation of the project management discourse in daily work practices. From a study of theatre and opera house employees, we suggest that the project management discourse tends to normalize feelings of rigidity and weariness in project-based work, while emphasizing projects as extraordinary settings creating thrill and excitement. Moreover, we argue that this discourse is invoked in ways that lead individuals to internalize emotional states related to chaos and anxiety, while ascribing feelings of certainty and confidence to external organizational norms and procedures. The study highlights how employees construct project-based work as a promise of exciting adventures experienced under conditions of rational control, but also how the negative and suppressed aspects of project-based work are constructed as inevitable and to be endured. Through these emotional processes, the project management discourse is sustained and reinforced.

Relational dysfunctionality : leadership interactions in a Sarbanes-Oxley Act implementation project

Extant leadership literatures tend to favour the positive and the normative over the negative and descriptive, and context-free individuals over situated organisational interaction. Dysfunctional leadership thus usually becomes a matter of evil individuals deviating from established norms, rather than how leadership interaction processes unfold. In this paper, we view leadership interaction processes in terms of construction of direction, coorientation and action space. We apply this perspective to an empirical study of an organisational change project in a sub-unit of a multinational corporation. Conceptual consequences of the proposed perspective are discussed in terms of confused direction, deteriorating coorientation and delimited action space.

Issues, Responsibilities and Identities: A Distributed Leadership Perspective on Biotechnology R&D Management

The aim of the research reported here is to contribute to the ongoing development of R&D project leadership studies by applying a distributed leadership perspective in the analysis of a product development project in a small biotechnology venture. A distributed leadership perspective implies that leadership is studied as a process of social interaction, involving several individuals who continuously construct leadership activities together. From a case study of a bio-tech venture, we conclude that leadership work in R&D projects implies construction of issues, responsibilities and identities. That is, what people do – seen from this perspective – when performing leadership activities in this project is that they gradually move the project and the organization forward by processing issues, resolving ambiguities concerning responsibility, and develop their understandings on the identity bases involved.

Woman, teacher, entrepreneur : On identity construction in female entrepreneurs of Swedish independent schools

Life can be seen as an ongoing process of identity construction, where individuals try to understand herself from the various identity bases to which she is exposed. Here, we focus on the identity construction of women who have started independent schools in Sweden. The independent school sector emerged after a political reform in 1992, allowing privately owned schools to operate with public funding. The women are subject to gendered expectations on how they are supposed to behave, and they are teachers, part of a profession with strong traditions. They have also become entrepreneurs through starting new independent schools. From a narrative analysis of their individual identity construction, we identify four different narrative strategies used to combine identity bases with differing norms and expectations.

Leadership cultures and discursive hybridisation: On the cultural production of leadership in higher education reforms

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of leadership culture and analyse how leadership cultures are produced in higher education reforms, in a hybridised discursive context of traditional academic values and emerging managerialism and leaderism. Design/methodology/approach – Building on a perspective on leadership as a cultural phenomenon emerging in processes in which societal, sectorial and professional discursive resources are invoked, this study adds to earlier studies on how notions of leadership are involved in the transformation of higher education organisations. To this end, the method combines a traditional qualitative study of change initiatives over a long period of time with participative observation. Focusing on two vignettes, the analysis centres on how several discursive resources are drawn upon in daily interaction. Findings – The emergence of hybrid leadership cultures in which several discursive resources are drawn upon in daily interaction is illustrated. This pa...

Leadership virtues and management knowledge : Questioning the unitary command perspective in leadership research

Leadership virtues and management knowledge : Questioning the unitary command perspective in leadership research