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Human Resource Management in the Project-Oriented Organization
Human Resource Management in the Project-Oriented Organization
Human Resource Management in the Project-Oriented Organization
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Human Resource Management in the Project-Oriented Organization

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Human Resource Management (HRM) in project-oriented organizations is a relatively unexplored topic though it is essential to the success of the organization and its competitive advantage. Project-oriented organizations operate differently from classic business organizations in that they adopt temporary organizations in the form of projects and programs, therefore the HRM approach they adopt should support this unique structure. Human Resource Management in the Project-Oriented Organization takes a look at the multiple facets of HRM and how HRM should be applied in project-oriented organizations.It is important for both human resource managers and project managers to adopt specific HRM practices and processes when working in project-oriented organizations due to the effect these procedures have on employee perception of the work environment and the employment relationship. Through four in-depth case studies over a spread of organizations, Human Resource Management in the Project Oriented-Organization investigates the distinctive characteristics of project-oriented organizations that lead to the need for specific HRM practices and considers the implications for organizations, projects and individuals.Table of ContentsI.IntroductionII.People in The Project-Oriented OrganizationIII.Literature SearchIV.Research MethodologyV.HRM PracticesVI.HRM RolesVII.Employee Well-BeingVIII.Conclusions and Recommendations
LanguageEnglish
Release dateSep 14, 2018
ISBN9781628251272
Human Resource Management in the Project-Oriented Organization

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    Human Resource Management in the Project-Oriented Organization - Martina Huemann

    HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT IN THE PROJECT-ORIENTED ORGANIZATION

    ISBN: 978-1-933890-36-4

    ©2008 Project Management Institute, Inc. All rights reserved.

    PgMP is a service mark of Project Management Institute, Inc.

    PMI, the PMI logo, PMP, the PMP logo, PMBOK, Project Management Journal, PM Network, and the PMI Today logo are registered marks of Project Management Institute, Inc. The Quarter Globe Design is a trademark of the Project Management Institute, Inc. For a comprehensive list of PMI marks, contact the PMI Legal Department.

    PMI Publications welcomes corrections and comments on its books. Please feel free to send comments on typographical, formatting, or other errors. Simply make a copy of the relevant page of the book, mark the error, and send it to: Book Editor, PMI Publications, Four Campus Boulevard, Newtown Square, PA 19073-3299 USA.

    To inquire about discounts for resale or educational purposes, please contact the PMI Book Service Center.

    PMI Book Service Center

    P.O. Box 932683, Atlanta, GA 31193-2683 USA

    Phone: 1-866-276-4764 (within the U.S. or Canada)

    or +1-770-280-4129 (globally)

    Fax: +1-770-280-4113

    E-mail: book.orders@pmi.org

    Printed in the United States of America. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, manual, photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher.

    The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48—1984).

    10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

    TABLE OF CONTENTS

    List of Tables

    List of Figures

    Executive Summary

    CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

    The Research Project

    Summary Conclusions

    Structure of this Report

    CHAPTER 2: PEOPLE IN THE PROJECT-ORIENTED ORGANIZATION

    Project Orientation

    Project-Oriented Careers

    The Project-Oriented Organization

    Project Management Personnel

    Characteristics of HRM in the Project-Oriented Organization

    CHAPTER 3: LITERATURE SEARCH

    Different Foci and Missing Links

    The Authors’ Previous Research and Writings

    CHAPTER 4: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

    Introduction

    Aims and Approach

    Process

    Research Model

    CHAPTER 5: HRM PRACTICES

    Additional HRM Practices Specific to the Project

    Different HRM Practices in the Line

    CHAPTER 6: HRM ROLES

    The HRM Department

    Responsibilities of Line Managers

    Responsibilities of Project Managers

    Task Versus People Orientation of Project Managers

    CHAPTER 7: EMPLOYEE WELL-BEING

    The Nature of the Problem

    Project Management 9 to 5

    The Enjoyment of Project Work

    Diversity Management

    Matching Projects to Career Development

    CHAPTER 8: CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

    Final Hypotheses

    Analysis

    Implications

    Idealized Model for HRM in the Project-Oriented Organization

    Further Research

    APPENDIX A: AUTHOR CONTACT DETAILS

    Professor Rodney Turner

    Dr. Martina Huemann

    Dr. Anne Keegan

    APPENDIX B: EVOLUTION OF THE HYPOTHESES

    Hypotheses December 2003

    Hypotheses June 2004

    Hypotheses June 2005

    Hypotheses January 2006

    Hypotheses May 2006

    Hypotheses March 2007

    APPENDIX C: INTERVIEW QUESTIONNAIRE

    The Company

    Challenges of HRM

    HRM Policies, Practices, and Processes

    Our Model

    The HRM Department

    Any Other Comments

    APPENDIX D: CASE STUDY PROTOCOL

    International Research Team

    Overview of the Research Project: HRM in the Project-Oriented Organization

    Objectives and Scope of the Case Studies

    Benefits for the Case Study Company

    Contributions of the Case Study Company

    Interviews

    Documentation Analysis

    Overview on the HR Topics Covered in the Case Study

    Contact

    REFERENCES

    LIST OF TABLES

    2-1     HRM challenges in the project-oriented organization

    3-1     Companies interviewed by Huemann, Turner, and Keegan (2004a)

    4-1     Companies interviewed

    4-2     Learning message from the companies interviewed

    4-3     Case study companies

    4-4     Learning messages from the case study companies

    5-1     Additional HRM practices adopted specific to the project

    5-2     HRM practices adapted to meet the specific needs of the project-oriented organization

    LIST OF FIGURES

    2-1     The model "project-oriented company mature."

    4-1     Process of the research project, with timings.

    4-2     A simple model of HRM in the classically managed organization.

    4-3     A simple model of HRM in the project-oriented organization.

    4-4     HRM practices in the line and specific to the project.

    EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

    The Human Resource Management (HRM) literature suggests that HRM practices in an organization should be vertically aligned with its strategic choices, supporting the strategy of the organization, and horizontally aligned with other operational processes, facilitating the operations of the organization. Many have also argued that tight strategic alignment can damage the capacity of the HRM function to fulfill its historical role in balancing employee interests with managerial interests, and that each organization, and each HRM function, will be faced with dilemmas in this manner that need to be resolved. Project-oriented organizations make the strategic choice to adopt temporary organizations, such as projects and programs, to implement their work processes. Therefore the HRM practices adopted by the project-oriented organization should be aligned with that strategic choice and support the temporary work processes adopted, while also seeking to protect employee well-being in an environment where challenges to such well-being are ever present.

    Mainstream HRM theory, which has emerged over the last century, has been shaped by the large, routine, functionally managed organization, based on the Taylorian model of management. The conditions under which HRM emerges in the project-oriented organization are substantially different than the environment assumed by that model. The project-oriented organization adopts temporary organizations and temporary work processes to undertake its work, and that creates a dynamic work environment. Every time a new project starts or finishes, the HRM configuration of the organization changes, making the HRM practices more invasive than in the classically managed organization. Therefore, we would expect that HRM practices would need to be applied specific to the temporary organization that is the project, as well as in the line as we would conventionally expect. However, we might expect that HRM practices in the line may need to be adapted to align with the HRM practices specific to the project. We would expect that the HRM practices emerging from the project-oriented organization might be different from those suggested by mainstream HRM theory based on the Taylorian model.

    Further, because of the dynamic nature of the work environment in the project-oriented organization, it may be more difficult for project team members to achieve a work-life balance. If somebody is working on several projects at the same time, his or her workload may peak if demands from different projects or different clients peak together. Thus the issue of the well-being of employees and their ethical treatment may be significant in a project-oriented organization.

    Thus we undertook this research project, sponsored by the Project Management Institute (PMI®), to investigate the HRM practices that emerge in the project-oriented organization. Our project had the twin aims of:

    Exploring whether the distinctive characteristics of the project-oriented organization lead to the need for specific HRM practices and, if so, to what extent.

    Considering the implications for organizations, projects, and individuals of these emergent practices.

    Our research project consisted of four steps:

    First, building on prior research undertaken by the three authors, we explored the work environment in the project-oriented organization. We identified that it has eight key features:

    Adoption of temporary work processes

    Dynamic nature

    Uncertain requirements

    Specific management paradigm

    Employment of people competent in project management, fulfilling several roles

    Multiple resource demands

    Heightened pressures on employees

    Spiral staircase career, based on a series of diverse assignments, rather than climbing the ladder in one function

    We believe these features create the need for new and different HRM practices in the project-oriented organization compared to HRM mainstream theory. This discussion is presented in Chapter 2.

    Next we reviewed what the academic literature has said about HRM in project-oriented organizations. We reviewed the HRM, general management, and project management literatures, which we report in Chapter 3.

    The HRM literature has considered HRM in new forms of organization, but apart from some work on organizational behavior in research and development and the consequence for HRM practices, by and large has not considered the project-oriented organization. There has also been some work on employment in project-intensive industries such as the film and construction industries.

    The focus of the general management literature has mainly been on knowledge management in knowledge-intensive forms, and overcoming the disintegrative tendencies of project-oriented working.

    The project management literature has over, the last twenty years, shifted in its focus from a technical focus to a more people-oriented focus. The first literature on organizational behavior regarding projects was in the 1970s, but it did not really gather pace, with writings about the project teams, until the late 1980s. In the 1990s, there was a focus on the project as a temporary organization. There have been a small number of books on HRM in project-oriented organizations, but usually adopting a conventional approach to HRM. Most of the work on whether project-oriented organizations need to adopt new or different HRM practices has been done by the three authors working together and individually.

    Based on the work to this point, we developed a research model of HRM practices in the project-oriented organization. We suggest that new practices specific to the project are required, and practices in the line need to be adapted to dovetail with the practices on the project, and to deal with the dynamic work environment. Practices specific to the project should include assignment to the project, appraisal, development and reward on the project, and dispersement from the project. Thus the practices in the line that need to be adapted include recruitment and selection to the organization, appraisal, development and reward in the line, and release from the organization. Release from the organization particularly needs to focus on knowledge capture as temporary workers leave. In Chapter 4 we describe this research model. We also describe our research methodology, which includes two rounds of data gathering:

    First we conducted a series of semi-structured interviews; twenty-three interviews in thirteen companies. The companies came from Ireland, England, France, the Netherlands, and Austria. They were all private sector and several companies had American parents.

    Second we conducted more in-depth case studies with four organizations. The four companies were in the Netherlands, Austria, England, and the United States. The three European companies were private sector, but the North American one was public sector.

    Throughout our research we adopted a social constructivist approach. At each stage we developed a set of hypotheses. At the end of each stage we reviewed the hypotheses against what we had found in that stage, and updated them accordingly. Since we were using a social constructivist approach, we were not looking for the right answer, but a set of hypotheses which we believe have a high level of internal validity to the extent that they reflect a shared understanding of organizational reality communicated to us by our respondents. In this project we developed five sets of hypotheses:

    At the start

    After our investigation into the project-oriented organization

    After the literature search

    After the interviews

    After the case studies, which was the final set.

    We grouped our findings into three sets:

    The nature of the HRM practices adopted by the project-oriented organization—Chapter 5

    The way in which roles are shared between the HRM department, line management, and project management—Chapter 6

    Employee well-being and ethical treatment—Chapter 7

    Nature of HRM Practices—The HRM practices we observed were consistent with our model:

    New HRM practices specific to the project:

    Assignment to the project—Different practices are adopted by organizations who conduct small- to medium-sized projects as opposed to large-sized projects. If projects last for more than a year, the assignment can be planned in the annual budgeting cycle, but if they last less than a year, assignment is more an operational decision.

    Appraisal on the project—Even though the project management literature has been suggesting for almost twenty years that project appraisals are necessary for motivation of project team members and cohesiveness of the project team, many organizations still do not conduct them, relying on the line manager informally asking the project manager. However, some conduct 360-degree feedback and some conduct formal project appraisals.

    Reward on the project—Many organizations have methods of project rewards, usually involving non-financial rewards in the forms of gifts or social events. Some organizations pay project-related bonuses. In the closing chapter, we suggest a form of gainsharing whereby project team members could be more formally rewarded.

    Development on the project—We identified three types of project-specific development: (a) learning specific competencies, (b) being briefed about the project, or (c) learning how to use new technology developed by the project.

    Dispersement from the project—This is the least understood practice: what to do with project personnel at the end of a project. They can be assigned to a new project, either immediately or to a more appropriate one that will start shortly, returned to the line to perform functional duties, or sent to the bench. In many organizations the process is unmanaged.

    Adapted HRM practices in the line:

    Recruitment and selection processes—Recruitment and selection need to be more organic as previously suggested by the authors. Recruitment and selection processes need to be more aware of the necessity to identify broad project management competencies. Currently, an understanding of what it takes to function effectively in the environment of a project-oriented organization is low and this damages the effectiveness of these processes.

    Appraisal in the line—We believe that the main appraisal process should be in the line because the focus needs to be over a longer time scale than most projects. However, it should take project performance into account, but in many organizations, it is based only on informal contact between line manager and project manager. In other organizations, it is formalized through 360-degree feedback or project appraisals.

    Reward in the line—Reward needs to be aligned with the line, but should be based on the project performance, in the same way as an appraisal.

    Development in the line—In the project-oriented organization, careers are a series of projects, and the focus on development needs to be on identifying appropriate projects; and both the individual and the organization need to provide appropriate competence development. Having identified the desired projects, the organization needs to ensure that the individual receives appropriate experiences, taking into account the individual's development needs at the time of the project assignment.

    Release from the parent organization—The main project-specific issue for project-oriented organizations is knowledge capture when temporary workers leave at the project completion.

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