”It’s in the between”: Inter-project organising in project ecologies

The word project is used to describe everything from mundane tasks to major government-initiated structural changes. Projects are also the focus of a growing research field that seeks to understand how society is organised. On the back of this ‘projectification’, projects are becoming increasingly entangled with each other, both in and between organisations. This means that it is not only important to understand single projects, but also the interdependencies between projects in multiproject contexts. There is a call for a deeper understanding of multiproject contexts as interdependencies between projects can influence project work and outcomes widely, even though the interdependencies are not visible in formal relationships. This thesis applies the concept of project ecologies to explore interdependencies that go beyond strategic or formal relationships. Inspired by a practice perspective, the purpose of this thesis is to increase the understanding of multi-project context, through investigating inter-project practices in project ecologies. In this thesis, urban development and construction projects are studied to gain insight into inter-project practices in project ecologies. Space interdependencies are multiple when parallel and sequential construction projects are carried out in a confined urban development district, and the actions of construction clients in this setting are studied using interviews, meeting observations and project documents. Routine dynamics are the main analytical framework, and the emergence of inter-project routines is used to study inter-project practices and how interdependencies become relationships through joint action. The findings show that construction clients commencing projects in an urban development district must apply both an intra- and inter-project focus. As project ecologies have low levels of formal management, construction clients must take actions to handle space interdependencies between projects, i.e. , actions patterned into routines between projects. These actions are not steered through principal-agent relationships, but stem from self-organising to a large extent. In project ecologies, the main complexities lie between projects, but benefits can be achieved if the actors can overcome issues relating to skewed power relationships, trust, and resource allocations. In the case of urban development, these benefits can include the creation of new neighbourhoods and sustainability. The focus on the space between projects and on inter-project routines suggests that the concept of project ecologies would benefit from an interproject layer running horizontally between projects. This layer, when coupled with the routine dynamics framework, could help move the concept of project ecologies beyond identifying actors, projects and organisations in networks, to following the actions and actors’ practices that emerge in a project ecology. This thesis contributes to project studies by exploring organising that is both inter-project and inter-organisational, moving beyond programmes and megaprojects as concepts explaining complex project organising. More specifically, it contributes to the literature on project ecologies by extending the understanding of organising in project ecologies through exploring actions between projects. By using organisational routines to zoom-in on the actions between projects, the current definition of project ecologies as centred around a single project and firm is scrutinised. Moreover, this thesis contributes to the construction management literature by redirecting the focus away from contractual relationships to showing how construction clients’ roles are influenced by interdependencies between projects and by having to perform intra- and inter-project practices in parallel.