<p>This thesis is about human resource management (HRM) in project-based organisations. Firms have over the last decades tended to rely increasingly on project-based structures. This process of projectification implies a changed work situation for individuals in modern organisations. Researchers from the project field of research as well as from the HRM field of research have pointed to possible implications that projectification might have for HRM. This thesis explores this area through a combination of multiple, comparative, and single case studies of project-based organisations. The studies aim at identifying and analysing the changes and challenges for HRM in this particular context.</p><p>The studies are presented in four separate papers. The findings suggest a number of important and empirically nested challenges related to Competence, Trust, Change, and Individuals. Moreover, the changing roles of HR departments and line managers in the overall HR organisation are discussed and analysed. The thesis proposes alternative roles for line managers, depending on the organisational context, and it also proposes two ’ideal types’ of HR-departmental structures.</p>

This thesis is about human resource management (HRM) in project-based organisations. Firms have over the last decades tended to rely increasingly on project-based structures. This process of projectification implies a changed work situation for individuals in modern organisations. Researchers from the project field of research as well as from the HRM field of research have pointed to possible implications that projectification might have for HRM. This thesis explores this area through a combination of multiple, comparative, and single case studies of project-based organisations. The studies aim at identifying and analysing the changes and challenges for HRM in this particular context. The studies are presented in four separate papers. The findings suggest a number of important and empirically nested challenges related to Competence, Trust, Change, and Individuals. Moreover, the changing roles of HR departments and line managers in the overall HR organisation are discussed and analysed. The thesis proposes alternative roles for line managers, depending on the organisational context, and it also proposes two ’ideal types’ of HR-departmental structures.

Objective: Public projects are used to delivery policy objectives. From a financial perspective, the Major Projects Authority (MPA) estimated a whole life investment of £488 billion for 199 major projects in 2014, only a small subset of the total number of public projects. Given the financial exposure, the impact of endemic public project failures could put the economic health of the nation at risk. This thesis studies the challenges facing public projects. It applies an organisational capabilities lens to investigate projectification, when organisations shift away from functional-based organising (FBO) toward project-based organising (PBO). Research Design: This study adopts an interpretivist research paradigm, with a constructionist epistemology and an idealist ontology, and employs an abductive research strategy. Structurally, it follows the Cranfield Executive Doctorate in Business Administration (DBA) methodology, with a linking document that summarises three complementary research projects: a systematic literature review (SLR) followed by two empirical studies that investigate the Department of Health (DoH) during the early phases of the Next Stage Review Implementation Programme (NSRIP). The findings are derived from over 250 academic literature sources, 100 government publications and 41 semi-structured interviews. ...[cont.]

I Malmö bedrivs ett tjugotal arbetsintegrerade projekt parallellt som är riktad mot samma målgrupp. I denna studie kvalitativt undersöks ” projektifiering av integrationsinsatser inom arbetsmarknaden” i Malmö. Studiens syfte besvaras genom en analys av den insamlade materialen med stöd av tidigare forskning inom fältet. Uppsatsens resultat tyder på att arbetsmetodiken i de flesta projekten handlar i första hand om att lösa de individuella problemen hos Malmöbor och i andra hand åtgärda stupröret mellan de involverade myndigheterna och aktörer. Styrningen av arbetsmarknadsinsatser blir komplex på grund av inblandning av flertal lokala, nationella och internationella aktörer i finansäring och genomförande av projekten. Vidare relationen mellan kommunens förvaltning och politikerna är avgörande för utformning av den kommunala styrningen. Detta komplexitet begränsar politikers handlingsutrymme att kunna styra och kontrollera integrationsinsatser i arbetsmarknaden i sin helhet. / In Malmo, around twenty work-integrated projects are being run parallelly that are the same group. This study qualitatively examines " the projectification of integration efforts in the labor market" in Malmo. The questions of the study are answered through an analysis of the collected material with support of previous research in the field. The results of the essay indicate that using methodology in most projects is primarily about solving the individual problems of Malmo residents and secondarily about fixing the gap between the authorities and involved organizations. The management of integration in labor-markets becomes complex due to the involvement of several actors in local, national, and international levels in the financing and implementing of the projects. Further, the relationship between the municipal administration and the politicians is crucial for shaping the municipal policy. This complexity limits the scope for politicians to manage and control integration efforts in the labor market as a whole.

“Adapt or die” is the spreading philosophy that shapes how organizations respond to change. Although change has always been inevitable in the business landscape, the pace of change has arguably increased during the 21st century. Simultaneously, there is a projectification happening, where projects are used for organizing work in more and more settings, increasing demands for flexible project managers. This has led to a heightened focus on concepts such as mindfulness and agility among academics and practitioners alike. However, the relationship between the two is sparsely investigated, and primarily set within a software development context. This paper therefore answers the call for more research investigating the two, and more specifically in the context of project management. This study explored the effect of mindfulness on project managers’ ability to be agile and lead agile work through a qualitative research approach, utilizing a case study with interviews. The study took place at a medium sized IT consultancy company in Sweden, where nine respondents were interviewed through semi-structured interviews. Additionally, an agility expert was interviewed to provide professional input on the complex concept of business agility. The data collected was analyzed through coding and thematic analysis techniques based on a previously defined theoretical framework, with five mindfulness principles and a definition of agility in project organizations as the foundation. The results validate the five mindfulness principles as a framework for assessing mindfulness in organizations. The study identified connections between mindfulness, agility, and project management within the case company. By understanding these connections, the study suggests that mindfulness can enhance agility and flexibility in project management, addressing the specific research gap. By incorporating an interdisciplinary approach and reviewing research from various organizational fields, the study provides a holistic perspective on mindfulness and agility in the project management context. Additionally, the study highlights the importance of a shared mindset in achieving successful agility, emphasizing the role of openness to change and organizational learning in agile work environments. Finally, the study suggests several practical implications for managers and organizations. Firstly, it emphasizes the role of mindfulness as an enabler of agility, highlighting the importance of a shared mindset and openness to change within teams. The five mindfulness principles are recommended as a concrete way to implement and assess mindfulness in organizational settings. Additionally, the findings suggest that project managers can play a crucial role in initiating and driving the mindfulness and agility processes within their organizations. The study provides insights into how mindfulness practices can support agile work environments and enhance organizational flexibility.

Since the end of the 1980’s  Swedish county council managers has been preoccupied with planning and implementing organisational change in order to alleviate the financial problems and to create more efficient production systems. Many of these efforts to change have implied changing the systems for management accounting and control, changes that have been inspired both by market-oriented ideologies and by the governance principles of large corporations in the private sector. Literature on manage­ment accounting and control indicates however, that management is unintentionally contributing to the creation of organisational inertia and conservatism. This contradiction is formulated as a change dilemma; ”How can managerial principles that make organizations subject to  bureaucratization and inertia be used as important strategies for organizational change?” The purpose of the study is thus to analyze the use of management control systems as organizational change strategies in health care, employing a change perspective on management control. When used as a change strategy,  management accounting and control becomes manifest as management control initiatives. Actors handle these control inititatives by organising themselves around the issue at hand. This organising process ends or fades away when there are no need for further attention to the control initiative. Empirical studies were made in the councils of Västerbotten, Sörmland and Upp­sala counties. Management control initiatives investigated were performance-related pay, quality improvement work, systematic planning procedures, provider/purchaser-models, downsizing projects and profit center systems. The systems for management accounting and control appeared to structure health care organisations in terms of spatial structuring temporal structuring and actor categorization. The management control initiatives introduced were structured as extraordinary organising processes delimited in terms of space, time and involved actors. Actors in the administrative norm system participated with the intention to change the organisation, while those in the medical norm system aimed at just handling the initiative. Management control initiatives can therefore be seen as passing opportunities to change, passing in the sense that the organising processes are temporary by nature, opportunities in the sense that temporary re-coupling can be used to  achieve long-term change. One such opportunity is the formulation of control initiatives; the possibility of using simple and standardized change strategies can be useful, but only if they are also linked to the medical norm system. A second opportunity is the temporary organising processes; if the project form of organising change can also be conveyed to the medical norm system, management control initiatives could result in short, intense courses of events that actually change things. The third opportunity  s the recurrent  cyc ica  pro­ perties  of  management  accounting  and control  systems, enabling  recurrent  activities around the same themes, thereby keeping them alive. / <p>Diss. av båda förf. Umeå : Umeå univ., 1998 ; Framlägges för vinnande av filosofie doktorsexamen respektive ekonomie doktorsexamen.</p> / digitalisering@umu

Objective: Public projects are used to deliver policy objectives. From a financial perspective, the Major Projects Authority (MPA) estimated a whole life investment of £488 billion for 199 major projects in 2014, only a small subset of the total number of public projects. Given the financial exposure, the impact of endemic public project failures could put the economic health of the nation at risk. This thesis studies the challenges facing public projects. It applies an organisational capabilities lens to investigate projectification, when organisations shift away from functional-based organising (FBO) toward project-based organising (PBO). Research Design: This study adopts an interpretivist research paradigm, with a constructionist epistemology and an idealist ontology, and employs an abductive research strategy. Structurally, it follows the Cranfield Executive Doctorate in Business Administration (DBA) methodology, with a linking document that summarises three complementary research projects: a systematic literature review (SLR) followed by two empirical studies that investigate the Department of Health (DoH) during the early phases of the Next Stage Review Implementation Programme (NSRIP). The findings are derived from over 250 academic literature sources, 100 government publications and 41 semi-structured interviews.

Studiens syfte är att belysa projektledares upplevelser och agerande för arbetsrelaterad hälsa i projekt inom offentlig sektor. Via explorativa intervjuer med nio projektledare från sju olika myndigheter beskrivs allt från det organisatoriska klimatet och förutsättningarna för hälsa i projekt samt deras eget bidrag i sin roll. Resultatet visade på upplevelser av bristande förutsättningar inom organisationerna i stort beskrivna i temat ”Som ett löv för vinden”. Otydlighet i vem som bär ansvaret för hälsa på arbetet illustreras via temat ”Var det inte din tur att vattna?”. Deras reflektioner kring det egna bidraget och goda förutsättningar som finns inom projektets ramar beskrivs som ”Den goda jordmånen”. Slutsatser som dras är att det finns behov av att hitta ett systematiskt sätt att främja och belysa hälsa, tydliggöra ansvar och öka kunskapen om hur hälsa uppnås och vinsterna med dessa. / The aim of the study was to investigate the experiences and actions for work related health in projects within government agencies. By exploratively ask nine project managers from seven different governments of work-related health they describe everything from the climate of the government and conditions for health and their own contribution in their own role as a leader. The results showed that there is an experience of deficient conditions within the government described as “Like a leaf to the wind”. Unclarity when it comes to responsibility for health at work illustrated in the theme: “wasn’t it your turn to nourish the soil?”. Their own thoughts of their contribution and the good conditions within the project described as “The good soil”. The conclusions of the study showed that there is a need of finding a systematic way of working with and spread light to health, make responsibilities even more clear and raise the knowledge how to contribute to health at work and the profits of it.

Today, integration is one of the questions that has increased considerably in importance for the Swedish voter. It is the local municipalities that are responsible for the establishment of immigrants. Since the 1990’s, methods from the private arena have become more common in the public sector. These strategies originate from The New Public Management, where temporary projects have become the norm within the public administration. This essay examines the integration project “Women Can” in Tingsryd, with the ambition to analyze whether the project holds any preventative measures that are long lasting or is rather to be seen as a short-term solution. Former research has shown that temporary integration projects often tend to result in short-term solutions for long-term problems. Using the factors cooperation, implementation and the identification of needs among with interviews with the projects managers as method. This essay shows that the project “Women can” has resulted in the implementation of some preventative tools. However, the project has failed regarding cooperation and the identification of needs, resulting in a short-term solution for the long- term integration question among immigrant women on the labor market in Tingsryd.

Regional project finance is an important national economic instrument for regional develop-ment in Sweden. Despite that, the research on the subject is limited meaning that there is little knowledge of the instrument’s distribution and consequences. This is problematic regarding the goal of the project funds, which is to contribute to growth throughout the country. The aim of this thesis was therefore partly to investigate how the distribution, and the applications of, regional project funds differ between Swedish municipalities with different geographical characteristics, partly to analyse the reasons for these differences. The study was a qualitative case study of Västerbotten and was divided into two parts. The first part was based on a data material on project funds of Region Västerbotten between 2014-2020 to examine how the project funds were applied for, and distributed, between the region´s municipalities during that period. The second part was mainly based on transcripts from interviews with municipal officials from six municipalities to examine the explanations for those differences. The result shows that there are significant differences between municipalities with different geographical characteristics of Västerbotten which is explained by differences in access to resources and participation in collaborative projects between the municipalities. In conclusion it therefore seems to be some challenges in enabling the whole country to take advantage of these funds.