Tension management in logistics service innovation projects

Innovation projects create tensions, which may be envisaged as conflicts between different perspectives on how such projects should be managed. Such tensions have been described in such terms as autonomy versus standardisation. By tracking the origins and life cycle of tensions as they arose in an innovation project in practice, we sought to understand the nature of tensions and to gain insights into how they could be managed. The findings of an exploratory longitudinal case study were used to develop an optimised process model as well as to propose seven ways in which tensions could be managed pro-actively in innovation projects. In a second longitudinal case study, we tested these propositions by means of action research. In both cases, one of us was both project manager and researcher. This provided detailed operational access to the people and processes involved in two systems innovation projects at DHL Express in Germany.