Cool projects, boring institutions: Temporary collaboration in social context

This paper aims at providing a synoptic reading that interweaves contributions to this Special Issue and the forthcoming Environment and Planning A Theme Issue with the 'received wisdom' of project management accounts. First, the paper briefly sketches the emergence, spread, professionalization and institutionalization of projects as a distinct organizational 'form'. Second, it proposes a classification of defining features of project organizing which is robust and broad enough to cover the variety of industrial and regional contexts explored, and yet is specific enough to denote the particular characteristics of projects vis-à-vis other organizational forms and processes. Third, the introduction investigates into the societal context in which projects typically operate; it demonstrates that networks, localities and institutions are feeding essential sources of project-based organizing. Theorizing on functions of the societal context is, in a sense, theorizing about structural limitations of project-based organizing or, phrased differently yet again, thinking about the realm of permanent organizations. Fourth, the introduction aims at locating this particular realm of permanent systems by analysing the role of firms as 'incubators' and 'sponsors' of projects and in providing organizational arenas for cross-project learning.