Project Organising – a contradictory practice that hinders innovation?

This paper addresses the issue of how project organising may influence innovation. Reporting on a practice-based case study in a consulting engineering company the aim is to provide knowledge of facilitating and impeding aspects of innovative efforts in project-organised knowledge work. Adopting the principle of symmetry in actor-network theory, the success of innovative efforts is analysed as depending on the degree to which actors (human and non-human) are mobilised and maintained as networks of relational strength. Resent research has suggested that strict procedures of project management may hamper innovation. The case study of this paper shows a contradictory practice of multiple coexisting projects. Here it is not so much a question of strict procedures impeding innovation in projects, but rather that a pervasive project-focus in a practice of numerous small or “one-man” projects may undermine a more collective and interactive initiative. Hence, it is argued that moving the empirical focus from single projects to a practice of multiple projects can contribute to discussions about the innovative promise of project organising.