Browsing by Author "Brady, Tim"

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    The improvement paradox in project contexts: A clue to the way forward?
    (Elsevier Science B.V., Amsterdam., 2010-12-31T00:00:00Z) Brady, Tim; Maylor, Harvey
    This paper emerged as the authors struggled to make sense of a phenomenon observed during fieldwork. We had entered the field knowing a project-based organisation to be performing poorly and to be in need of improvement in its management of projects. We expected that the organisation would be actively trying to achieve the necessary improvement. We found that the organisation as a matter of course was not pursuing any improvement activities. It was only following a crisis with its major client that limited changes were introduced, and then business as usual resumed. This we have termed, the improvement paradox. The paradox exists because there are two systems of logic operating: that of the researcher in forming the expectation of change and that of the organisation in not changing. Both of these systems provided insight. Our expectations reflected a bias for the logic that there was inherent goodness and desirability in improving PM practices. Furthermore, we are actors in an environment that actively promotes improvement and provides mimetic, coercive and normative pressures on an organisation to improve. The logic of the organisation was founded on complicity - between the organisation and its client, and between multiple levels of the organisation. This complicity was seen to be causal in maintaining a series of defensive routines - routines that perpetuated the status quo. Further reflection revealed many paradoxes in the world of projects and project management. Given the prevalence of paradoxes perhaps we should move beyond labelling these phenomena to explore them more deeply and to contribute insights which better reflect the complexity and ambiguity in project contexts.
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    Innovation in project management: Voices of researchers
    (Elsevier Science B.V., Amsterdam., 2009-09-11T00:00:00Z) Geraldi, Joana; Turner J, Rodney; Maylor, Harvey; Hobday, Mike; Brady, Tim
    This paper reports and reflects on the discussions about the nature of the discipline of project management that took place during the 8th conference of the International Research Network of Organizing by Projects (IRNOP VIII), held in Brighton in September 2007. The discussions started with the provocative motion "This house believes that we no longer need the discipline of project management". The arguments are organised in the following areas: the use of the traditional body of knowledge by practitioners and by academics; the use of project management as a knowledge field by practitioners and by academics. The discussions indicate that project management research is in a fruitful moment of revolution of paradigms. We wish that the new paradigm accepts the plurality of research in projects and we need discussions supporting and also refusing the "motion", and by this means, proposing answers, rather than the answer, to the future of "the project management discipline".
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    The Non-Adoption of Best/Accepted/Promising Practices in Projects: Towards a Theory of Complicity
    (Cranfield University School of Management, 2009-04) Maylor, Harvey; Brady, Tim; Thomas, Janice
    This paper describes an observed phenomenon: The non-adoption of beneficial practices in a project-based organization and the subsequent adoption of some basic project management techniques which are then heralded as best-practice. We examine two theories to explain this phenomenon, rational choice theory and institutional theory. Neither of these, however, explains satisfactorily what we observed. The phenomenon occurred in a project-based organization that was contracted to design, develop, and produce a major piece of military hardware. In the early years of the project, the project team performed very poorly, and their effort was marked by delivering prototypes that continually slipped behind schedule by many years, overruns that also involved accompanying cost escalation. It was only when an external auditor intervened that the team’s performance was properly identified and the whole basis for the project renegotiated. This renegotiation involved creating new requirements for managing the project. The team’s performance subsequently improved slightly, but eventually, again, stagnated. The organization did not identify or implement further practices to improve the team’s performance. While the organization exerted considerable effort to promote itself as performing best practices, the team’s actual performance continually failed to meet expectations. This paper constructs a theory of complicity so as to explain the phenomenon described above. The complicity occurred between the organization and its major customer and between multiple levels within the organization. We turn to insights from organizational learning research (specifically, the use of defensive routines) to shed light on the phenomenon. The theory proposes that practices and processes will remain within the defensive routines of the organization where such complicity exists. The level and rate of improvement of project performance by organizations has been a concern for some time. This paper contributes to the discussion of this concern and provides some illumination of one of causes hindering the team’s performance, namely, that there is considerable complicity in project-based organizations. Comparing this project with another case where many best/accepted/promising practices have been adopted has yielded numerous major insights. Complicity, as we describe here, was totally absent in the comparator case; the organization was making significant progress in developing practices. However, we found that complicity was temporarily suspended when the minor changes were implemented in the case organization and evident in the periods of no improvement. Further investigation into the conditions for the removal of complicity provided evidence of complicity being removed by coherent policy deployment, knowledge management and performance management. This paper supports the use and utility of phenomenon-based research in the development of the discipline of project management.