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|  | « 2nd CRGP-GPS Symposium - Challenges of Managing Global Projects - 2006 | Main | CRGP Executive Committee Meeting, September 26, 2008 » September 3, 20072007 CRGP Global Projects Workshop, April 24-25th
The CRGP Global Projects, Business Networks, and Project Business Workshop was held on 24-25th April 2007 at Stanford University. Emphasizing the need to understand Global Projects, Business Networks, and Project Business, the program was attended by 40 representatives from a variety of academic and professional disciplines. Summarizing the workshop, Professor Scott emphasized a need to both learn from the existing ideas, theories and methods of organizational theory but at the same time to avoid common pitfalls. He saw three areas ripe for extension from existing theory: from organization to project, organization to network and project to global project. If ideas from organizational theory and research about diversification, integration, etc are intelligently transferred along these three continua from existing organizational theory to research on global projects, the result will not only inform but also revise the original theory and make it more robust. In addition, global projects provide unique opportunities to study organizational culture and conflict. The pitfall from previous organizational research that he urged us not to fall into when studying global projects is thinking of a single organization as the focal point for research. This approach is highly simplified and leads to an under-theorized view of the larger environment, or field, in which the organization acts. Instead, researchers should recognize that the organizational field is itself organized. Thus, research at the organizational field level - commonly referred to as the "structure of the field" or the "institutional environment" - would provide valuable information in terms of the rules, norms and cultural frameworks within which specific organizational players act. This type of information could provide real guidance to managers entering a new field or area of operation. Related to this line of thinking is a change in the language that we use to talk about organizations, moving from an entity-based to a process-based view. Professor Artto emphasized the need to think of organizations not as upstream or downstream but as important components of a value stream in which value is created. In addition, he felt the term "business" should be expanded to include the activities of business and non-business actors like environmental groups and national governments. Thus, a new theory of risk management should focus on understanding the wider context of the businesses of different players and not only one project or product. A new theory of risk management will be about strategic and political management. He felt we would fail if we start by arguing over competing definitions of risk. In general, management recognizes technical and market uncertainty but organizational uncertainty is much less discussed. A successful result in business is likely achieved by managing these different kinds of uncertainties. On a final note, this workshop has been one of the first of its kind and needs to be more directly linked to a research program as well as continued, with different organizers, in the future. On this page we present some images from the workshop, a set of papers and presentations that were used as the basis for discussion, as well as an Executive Summary of the proceedings of the workshop. A detailed version of the proceedings is available to all CRGP members, and is available by contacting Ryan J. Orr.
The Workshop in Progress
Participants at the workshop having a discussion at one of the breaks
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