Perttu Dietrich

The Dynamics of Collaboration in Multipartner Projects

In many project-based industries, there has recently been an increased tendency for collaboration and cocreation of value with the customers. However, many existing studies report inherent challenges and complexities related to multipartner collaboration. This article presents a conceptual framework that explains the focal collaboration-related elements and their interdependencies in multipartner projects. The elements in the framework and relations between them are derived from the existing empirical studies and theoretical literature on collaboration, knowledge integration, and project success. Based on the conceptual analysis of the extant literature, we identify eight collaboration antecedents and three collaboration outcome elements. The conceptual framework explains how two collaboration mediators, project-collaboration quality and knowledge-integration capability, relate collaboration antecedents with collaboration outcomes. In addition, based on the literature analysis, we identify 15 mechanisms that enhance the project-collaboration quality in multipartner projects. The article provides novel insights on the dynamics of collaboration in multipartner projects by offering the concepts of project-collaboration quality and knowledge-integration capability and explaining their role in collaborative projects.

Project strategy: strategy types and their contents in innovation projects

Purpose – Previous literature on project strategy has adopted the narrow view that a project is to be conducted under the governance of a single strong sponsor or parent organization. The purpose of this study is to provide a critical analysis on prior project management (PM) literature addressing different context‐specific strategies of single projects.Design/methodology/approach – Literature analysis.Findings – There are two important determinants in the projects context that affect the strategy of a single project: a projects autonomy in its environment and the complexity of projects stakeholder environment. Based on these two determinants, we characterize four types of alternative positions that projects can have in their context: parents subordinate and autonomous projects that occur in a stakeholder environment that is not complex, and projects with weak and autonomous positions in a complex stakeholder environment. The developed project strategy framework is applied in the context of innovation...

Mechanisms for Inter-Project Integration-Empirical Analysis in Program Context

This exploratory study focuses on the problem of inter-project integration and how the perceived uncertainty and structural complexity affect the importance of different integration mechanisms used. Four case programs from four companies were chosen as a source of empirical data. Data collection in the selected case programs was multifaceted and included in-depth interviews, questionnaires, and documents and archives. Fifteen integration mechanisms were identified and further categorized into five different classes based on the formality of the mechanism and whether the integration mechanism is personalized or impersonalized in nature. This study provides valuable insights for both researchers and program managers challenged to introduce strategic or large-scale changes in organizations. The study demonstrates that proper mechanisms for inter-project integration are dependent on the uncertainty and complexity of the program, and that the proper integration strategy in multi-project programs should allow the use of various alternative mechanisms for information delivery.

Integration of strategic level and operative level front-end innovation activities

The front-end phase is in the literature generally regarded as the most critical phase of the innovation process. This is due to its inherent uncertain and ambiguous nature and its significant potential to improve overall innovation capability in industrial firms. The front-end phase precedes and feeds the new product development project phase by creating a continuous stream of new incremental and radical product concepts. This article makes a distinction between strategic and operative level front-end activities, which are often confused and unclearly articulated in literature. Strategic level front-end activities form a basis for the success of operative level operations and necessitate top management involvement. Effective integration of strategic level and operative level frontend activities both in top-down and bottom-up processing is a cornerstone for creating an efficient innovation process. The objective of this article is to empirically examine how the integration of strategic and operative level front-end activities is perceived by top managers in the product innovation context. The research design is a multiple case study. The data has been collected from 20 large and medium-sized innovation-intensive Finnish companies with semi-structured interviews. The empirical data analysis focuses on clarifying the integration mechanisms and perceived integration challenges of strategic and operative level front-end activities. The findings indicate that companies exploit different strategy-making processes, and that each strategy-making mode is prone to particular challenges. The relationship between the integration challenges and employed strategy-making modes is partly moderated by the company size. The results also indicate that the efficiency of integration of strategic and operative level front-end activities is dependent on the level of concreteness of the defined business strategies, the amount of business-minded decision making, and the balance between control and creativity. Based on the empirical findings, this paper draws implications for effective front-end management and ends up with discussing contextual factors affecting effective integration, and creating propositions for effective front-end management.

TECHNOLOGY UNCERTAINTY AND PROJECT MANAGERS' INFORMATION SHARING — A COMPARATIVE CASE STUDY OF TWO NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS

Research has focused primarily on either intra-organizational information sharing (between actors within an organization) or inter-organizational information sharing (between organizations). This paper explores both intra- and inter-organizational information sharing and the role of technology uncertainty during various phases of new product development (NPD) projects. In this study, we compare two longitudinal NPD sub-projects that differ in uncertainty within the same large NPD project, in which the data source is the complete email exchange between a project manager and various actors (consisting of 3979 emails). The results show high levels of information sharing with the customer in both the early and late phases of high uncertainty. Interestingly, in the low uncertainty project, information sharing with the production department and the supplier is higher during the late phase of the NPD project. Unexpectedly, in both sub-projects, the project manager shares information with a wider range of both intra- and inter-organization actors in the early phases of the projects than in the late phases.