Robert DeFillippi

Paradox in Project-Based Enterprise: The Case of Film Making

The creation of temporary enterprises for project-based work has become an increasingly salient feature of the new economy. These project-based enterprises challenge several tenets of strategic management theory. Film making has a long tradition of project-based organizing. This article presents an intensive case study of a big-budget motion picture project which provides the context for identifying some paradoxical attributes of project-based enterprises. Each of the paradoxes challenges strategic management theory assumptions of a relatively permanent firm as the locus of learning, knowledge transfer, and competitive advantage. Findings from the film case suggest the importance of human and social capital that is embodied in individual free-agent careers and mobilized within communities of professional and industry practice.

Project-Based Organizations, Embeddedness and Repositories of Knowledge: Editorial:

Project-based organizations refer to a variety of organizational forms that involve the creation of temporary systems for the performance of project tasks (Lundin and Soderholm 1995; DeFillippi 2002). Project-based organizations have received increasing attention in recent years as an emerging organizational form to integrate diverse and specialized intellectual resources and expertise (DeFillippi and Arthur 1998; Hobday 2000; Gann and Salter 2000; Keegan and Turner 2002; Lindkvist 2004). Recent interest in the emerging knowledge economy has reinforced the view that project organizations in their many varieties are a fast and flexible mode of organizing knowledge resources. Project-based organizations can circumvent traditional barriers to organizational change and innovation, since each project is presented as a temporary, relatively short-lived, phenomenon. As such, it does not pose the same threat to vested interests as would the creation of a permanent new department or division. Moreover, project-based organizations allow for low-cost experiments. Because of their limited duration, project-based organizations do not constitute irreversible resource commitments of fixed costs. Hence, companies and other types of organization may launch a variety of ventures through project-based organizations and may terminate unsuccessful ventures at low cost and little disturbance to the organizational sponsor (DeFillippi 2002). Project-based organizations are found in a wide range of industries. These include consulting and professional services (e.g. accounting, advertising, architectural design, law, management consulting, public relations), cultural industries (e.g. fashion, film-making, video games, publishing), high technology (e.g. software, computer hardware, multimedia), and complex products and systems (e.g. construction, transportation, telecommunications, infrastructure). For many of these industries, project-based organizations are employed to meet the highly differentiated and customized nature of demand, where clients frequently negotiate and interact with project organizers over the ofteninnovative design of products and services (Hobday 1998). However, firms in all types of industries are undertaking projects as a growing part of their operations even while their primary ‘productive’ activity might be volume-based or operations-oriented (e.g. Midler 1995; Keegan and Turner 2002). Hobday (2000) refers to these as project-led organizations and Organization Studies 25(9): 1475–1489 ISSN 0170–8406 Copyright

Temporary Organizing: Promises, Processes, Problems

Temporary organizing is introduced as process, form and perspective. Then key challenges and opportunities in the study of temporary organizing are discussed, including methodological issues, how to theorize time, and how to relate the temporary to the more permanent. This introductory article concludes with an overview of the special issue.

UNDERSTANDING RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN UNIVERSITIES AND SMEs IN EMERGING HIGH TECHNOLOGY INDUSTRIES: THE CASE OF OPTO-ELECTRONICS

It has long been recognised that the innovative and entrepreneurial capabilities of the small medium-sized enterprise (SME) sector can make an important contribution to the commercialisation of emerging technologies. In their role as centres of expertise and originators of new technical knowledge, universities are vital contributors to this process. Understanding the nature of relationships between universities and SMEs is therefore important, particularly in view of the fact that current theories on regional development suggest that concentrations of SMEs in certain regions, clustered around one or more university centres, can be effective locations for accelerating this process. As a counter to regional development theory, an alternative viewpoint is that the way emerging industries develop is affected more by the dynamics of industry life-cycles. The opto-electronics sector, which is characterised by regional clusters in the UK and USA, offers lessons for how SMEs and universities interact against a backdrop of these theories.

Project Networks: Governance Choices and Paradoxical Tensions:

This article examines how project networks may be viewed as either a single interorganizational project or as a series of projects that are interconnected by interorganizational relationships. The article then discusses some core theoretic assumptions about project networks as more than temporary systems in comparison with the extant empirical research. Next, the article presents four types of mechanisms for governing and coordinating not only projects but also project networks: responsibilities, routines, roles, and relationships. Finally, the article unearths five types of paradoxes (the distance paradox, the learning paradox, the identity paradox, the difference paradox, and the temporal paradox) impacting project networks and offers insights into the governance-based choices available for coping with these paradoxical tensions.

Dilemmas of Project-Based Media Work: Contexts and Choices

Abstract Media firms exist in dynamic business contexts which influence how they and their creative workers respond to a series of project-based work dilemmas. The paper reviews three forms of dilemmas or tensions within media-based businesses: identity dilemmas of individualization versus collective belonging, organizing dilemmas of creative autonomy versus corporate control, and learning dilemmas of creative exploration versus commercial exploitation. The paper conceptualizes how creative businesses and creative workers respond to these dilemmas in terms of separating, integrating and shifting response options. It then examines how contextual features of media industry technologies, markets, institutional practices, and user coproduction convergences impact how project businesses and their creative workers are likely to respond to the dilemmas.

Aligning the co-creation project portfolio with company strategy

Purpose – An important task for all strategy leaders contemplating the use of co-creation is to determine how well the numerous co-creation project-design choices available to them align with their strategic priorities. Design/methodology/approach – In order to implement co-creation, firms need to assess how their projects or initiatives support their strategic commitments and priorities. To this end, the authors offer managers a practical, easy-to-use assessment framework. Findings – Executives should consider their approach to co-creation in terms of crafting and managing a portfolio of initiatives to be categorized and managed differently according to their strategic significance – high, medium or low. Practical implications – A six-question assessment framework was inductively derived from an extensive literature review (113 articles) focusing on practices associated with co-creation and stakeholder involvement. Though they do not represent an exhaustive list of categories for assessment, they do, how...

Internet odysseys: linking web roles to career and community investments

This paper examines a new kind of career odyssey, namely that into the relatively uncharted territory of the world wide web. It extends recent ideas about personal and communal career investments by exploring peoples web-enabled career behaviour, based on Tapscott et al.s (2000) typology of web roles. MBA students completed a preliminary career exploration instrument and then met in different focus groups according to the web role with which each student most identified. The reported career investments varied depending on the web role involved. An attempt was made to corroborate these findings through practitioner interviews, but there were problems in reconciling the two kinds of data. The implications of these findings are discussed, and a series of observations is offered concerning the further study of the increasingly virtual journeys anticipated for careers of the future.

Co-creation in design: how the UK company Own Label combines openness and ownership to manage talent

Purpose – This case study of a fashion-design company aims to show how a co-creation initiative produces competitive advantage by nurturing creativity, expanding the company’s innovation capabilities and enabling it to engage with both taste-making customers and designers from anywhere in the world. Design/methodology/approach – In 2009, Fronteer Strategy, a Netherlands-based market-analysis firm published a conceptual framework for identifying specifically how a firm’s processes and initiatives employ co-creation. This case looks at how this theoretical framework compares with the actual complexities of the co-creation process developed by Own Label. Findings – Own Label’s co-creation approach is a hybrid model that utilizes more than one type of co-creation across its fashion-design process. Practical implications – What makes co-creation in design-intensive industries a disruptive approach is the democratization of the process by which design choices are made. Originality/value – Own Label is utilizing...

Projects and Networks: Understanding Resource Flows and Governance of Temporary Organizations with Quantitative and Qualitative Research Methods

Project-based organizing is becoming increasingly common, but projects are challenging for managers because they must coordinate resources, including people and information, under time pressure to achieve a one-off outcome. In this article, we suggest that a network lens is ideal for researching project coordination because it enables the interested party to study the flows of resources and the structures that allow the project to be effectively governed. Both qualitative and quantitative, including graph-theoretic methods for analyzing networks are suitable for examining project network governance and network resource flows. However, governance tends to be studied more with qualitative methods, and resource flows are more commonly researched with social network analysis. The article concludes with considerations regarding multi-method approaches to the study of project networks.