CERES :: Browsing by Author "Maylor, Harvey"

Browsing by Author "Maylor, Harvey"

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Open Access
And then came Complex Project Management
(Elsevier Science B.V., Amsterdam., 2009-04-01T00:00:00Z) Whitty, S. J.; Maylor, Harvey
The subject of management is renowned for its addiction to fads and fashions. Project Management is no exception. The issue of interest for this paper is the establishment of standards in the area, specifically the ‘College of Complex Project Managers’ and their ‘competency standard for complex project managers’. Both the college and the standard have generated significant interest in the Project Management community. Whilst the need for development of the means to manage complex projects is acknowledged, a critical evaluation show significant flaws in the definition of complex in this case, the process by which the College and its standard have emerged, and the content of the standard. If Project Management is to continue to develop as a profession, it will need an evidence-based approach to the generation of knowledge and standards. The issues raised by the evaluation provide the case for a portfolio of research that extends the existing bodies of knowledge into large-scale complicated (or major) projects. We propose that it would be owned by the practitioner community, rather than focused on one organization. Research questions are proposed that would commence this stream of activity towards an intelligent synthesis of what is required to manage in both complicated and truly complex environments. This is a revised paper previously presented at the 21st IPMA World Congress on Project Management Cracow,
Open Access
Contextual Intelligence in Programme and Project Management: A preliminary framework for configuring resources to meet strategic objectives
(Cranfield University School of Management, 2009-04) Maylor, Harvey; Murray-Webster, Ruth; Geraldi, Joana; Lupson, Jonathan; Giudici, Alessandro
The purpose of this paper is twofold. Firstly it explores a key development from Operations Management, (Hayes and Wheelwright, 1985) and tests whether it provides insights into the practices of Programme and Project Management (PPM). Through an empirical study, it is found to provide a number of important insights, including that, in general, PPM is limited to a ‘stage two’ performance aspiration on the Hayes & Wheelwright four-point scale for competitive manufacturing, with a prevailing focus on conformance to standards. The resulting question is, ‘how does an organisation develop its PPM capability beyond stage two? Achieving stage three and beyond requires that resources are configured, not to conform to a standard, but to meet the strategic needs as defined by the organisation and any end ‘customers’ for the work. Secondly, the paper considers the research question, ‘what elements of an organisation designed for programme and project-based working can be configured to meet particular strategic requirements?’ It describes the investigation of this question in a field study of 11 cases to determine the nature of the elements of configurability, and hence to generate key decision areas for PPM. The results of this study provide a preliminary framework for determining what would constitute stage 3 - effectiveness in programme and project-based operations (PPOs). The paper concludes that the theoretical insights from Operations Management used in this paper offer a future direction for research on PPOs and sets out a research agenda.
Open Access
Game playing and operations management education
(Elsevier Science B.V., Amsterdam., 2007-01-01T00:00:00Z) Lewis, Michael A.; Maylor, Harvey
There is a well established tradition of teaching operations management (OM) via various kinds of production game: real players making real decisions in a practical, albeit simulated, situation. Surprisingly, there has been much less conceptual reflection on the process and content of this approach to OM education, something this paper aims to begin to rectify. The first section clarifies terminology and defines the game concept in terms of a transformation process. The second section reviews the extant population of teaching games and deploys the conceptual model to generate a number of specific observations that underpin a discussion about the content and process of OM-related game playing. In the conclusions, particular attention is drawn to (1) the predominant content of OM-related games has not developed with the same emphasis as the taught subject with manufacturing planning and control still dominating (2) the tendency to produce complex OM games requiring IT support, and (3) the removal of competition in gaming in favour of facilitating experimentation by players. The paper finishes with a discussion of potential further work.
Open Access
Hits and (near) misses: Exploring managers’ actions and their effects on localised resilience
(Elsevier, 2019-11-29) Turner, Neil; Kutsch, Elmar; Maylor, Harvey; Swart, Juani
Resilience is clearly a desirable attribute, but characterising it is challenging, especially as it can be understood either as the response to an incident, or its successful avoidance. Individual- and organizational-level resilience are established fields of study, whereas mid-range, managerial-level, evidence of how ‘localised’ resilience (e.g. in the department, work unit or project) is achieved is lacking. We ask the question ‘What do managers do to support resilience?’ We report on a study carried out with senior staff from five major UK-based organizations. From our qualitative data investigating critical incidents and ‘near-misses’, we unpack the key (ongoing) actions that managers undertake, and show that these can be understood as a complex interweaving of exploitative and exploratory activities. We also identify five response archetypes utilised when an incident occurs. We show the simultaneity of multiple enabling and responding arrangements and, in so doing, uncover the ‘messy’ characteristics over time which enable the awareness and containment of potential and realised adversities, i.e. resilience.
Open Access
The improvement paradox in project contexts: A clue to the way forward?
(Elsevier Science B.V., Amsterdam., 2010-12-31T00:00:00Z) Brady, Tim; Maylor, Harvey
This paper emerged as the authors struggled to make sense of a phenomenon observed during fieldwork. We had entered the field knowing a project-based organisation to be performing poorly and to be in need of improvement in its management of projects. We expected that the organisation would be actively trying to achieve the necessary improvement. We found that the organisation as a matter of course was not pursuing any improvement activities. It was only following a crisis with its major client that limited changes were introduced, and then business as usual resumed. This we have termed, the improvement paradox. The paradox exists because there are two systems of logic operating: that of the researcher in forming the expectation of change and that of the organisation in not changing. Both of these systems provided insight. Our expectations reflected a bias for the logic that there was inherent goodness and desirability in improving PM practices. Furthermore, we are actors in an environment that actively promotes improvement and provides mimetic, coercive and normative pressures on an organisation to improve. The logic of the organisation was founded on complicity - between the organisation and its client, and between multiple levels of the organisation. This complicity was seen to be causal in maintaining a series of defensive routines - routines that perpetuated the status quo. Further reflection revealed many paradoxes in the world of projects and project management. Given the prevalence of paradoxes perhaps we should move beyond labelling these phenomena to explore them more deeply and to contribute insights which better reflect the complexity and ambiguity in project contexts.
Open Access
Innovation in project management: Voices of researchers
(Elsevier Science B.V., Amsterdam., 2009-09-11T00:00:00Z) Geraldi, Joana; Turner J, Rodney; Maylor, Harvey; Hobday, Mike; Brady, Tim
This paper reports and reflects on the discussions about the nature of the discipline of project management that took place during the 8th conference of the International Research Network of Organizing by Projects (IRNOP VIII), held in Brighton in September 2007. The discussions started with the provocative motion "This house believes that we no longer need the discipline of project management". The arguments are organised in the following areas: the use of the traditional body of knowledge by practitioners and by academics; the use of project management as a knowledge field by practitioners and by academics. The discussions indicate that project management research is in a fruitful moment of revolution of paradigms. We wish that the new paradigm accepts the plurality of research in projects and we need discussions supporting and also refusing the "motion", and by this means, proposing answers, rather than the answer, to the future of "the project management discipline".
Embargo
Mind the gap: Towards performance measurement beyond a plan-execute logic
(Elsevier, 2023-05-08) Maylor, Harvey; Geraldi, Joana; Budzier, Alexander; Turner, Neil; Johnson, Mark
Project performance measurement aims to identify deviations from intended goals and reduce ‘the gap’ between actual and expected performance. However, despite extensive measurement and control efforts, the gap is hard to close and, intriguingly, not necessarily related to the project's perceived performance, which is what will ultimately influence a stakeholder's satisfaction. Based on service quality research, this study explores the differences between perception and expectations of performance. Our mixed method study involving eighteen interviews and 85 survey responses in an IT-enabled change context shows that expectations and perceptions are fundamentally different concepts. As they are different, managing the gap between expectations and perceptions may be a nugatory task. The paper expands the literature on project performance measurement by questioning its foundations and offering a first step towards developing a more dynamic and subjective understanding of project performance that is consistent with a project's evolving nature.
Open Access
The Non-Adoption of Best/Accepted/Promising Practices in Projects: Towards a Theory of Complicity
(Cranfield University School of Management, 2009-04) Maylor, Harvey; Brady, Tim; Thomas, Janice
This paper describes an observed phenomenon: The non-adoption of beneficial practices in a project-based organization and the subsequent adoption of some basic project management techniques which are then heralded as best-practice. We examine two theories to explain this phenomenon, rational choice theory and institutional theory. Neither of these, however, explains satisfactorily what we observed. The phenomenon occurred in a project-based organization that was contracted to design, develop, and produce a major piece of military hardware. In the early years of the project, the project team performed very poorly, and their effort was marked by delivering prototypes that continually slipped behind schedule by many years, overruns that also involved accompanying cost escalation. It was only when an external auditor intervened that the team’s performance was properly identified and the whole basis for the project renegotiated. This renegotiation involved creating new requirements for managing the project. The team’s performance subsequently improved slightly, but eventually, again, stagnated. The organization did not identify or implement further practices to improve the team’s performance. While the organization exerted considerable effort to promote itself as performing best practices, the team’s actual performance continually failed to meet expectations. This paper constructs a theory of complicity so as to explain the phenomenon described above. The complicity occurred between the organization and its major customer and between multiple levels within the organization. We turn to insights from organizational learning research (specifically, the use of defensive routines) to shed light on the phenomenon. The theory proposes that practices and processes will remain within the defensive routines of the organization where such complicity exists. The level and rate of improvement of project performance by organizations has been a concern for some time. This paper contributes to the discussion of this concern and provides some illumination of one of causes hindering the team’s performance, namely, that there is considerable complicity in project-based organizations. Comparing this project with another case where many best/accepted/promising practices have been adopted has yielded numerous major insights. Complicity, as we describe here, was totally absent in the comparator case; the organization was making significant progress in developing practices. However, we found that complicity was temporarily suspended when the minor changes were implemented in the case organization and evident in the periods of no improvement. Further investigation into the conditions for the removal of complicity provided evidence of complicity being removed by coherent policy deployment, knowledge management and performance management. This paper supports the use and utility of phenomenon-based research in the development of the discipline of project management.
Open Access
Performers, trackers, lemmings and the lost: Sustained false optimism in forecasting project outcomes - Evidence from a quasi-experiment
(Elsevier Science B.V., Amsterdam., 2011-12-01T00:00:00Z) Kutsch, Elmar; Maylor, Harvey; Weyer, Birgit; Lupson, Jonathan
The consistently successful delivery of projects remains an ambition that many organisations do not achieve. Whilst the reasons behind project failure are many, one recognised factor is the ‘planning fallacy’ – over-optimism in the planning phase of a project. Whilst the planning phase of a project may be a battle for acceptance and resource allocation, the execution phase is a battle for delivery. Based on both qualitative and quantitative data gathered from a project management simulation, this study set out to establish whether optimism bias persists beyond the planning phase and into the execution phase, and, if so, to explore the reasons why. The results confirm the extent and impact of optimism bias in initial project planning. More importantly, the contribution of this study is to demonstrate on-going or sustained false opt
Open Access
Risk and opportunities management for programmes and projects: A synopsis
(2008-04-01T00:00:00Z) Kutsch, Elmar; Murray-Webster, Ruth; Maylor, Harvey
The purpose of this document is to provide the reader with a synopsis of current thinking in the area of risk and opportunities management in programmes and projects. It forms part of a package delivered to EDS and the thinking described is reflected in the changes recommended to the principles of risk management used in the organisation.
Open Access
The role of knowledge resources in managing project complexity
(2017-04-28) Swart, Juani; Turner, Neil; Maylor, Harvey; Prieto Pastor, Isabel; Martín Cruz, Natalia
In this paper we consider the nature of project complexity and draw on current literature to make the argument that we do not yet understand fully which resources managers draw on and how they then respond to the range of complexities they face. We consider the role of knowledge resources underpinning complexity responses, and ask the research question "What is the role of knowledge resources in managing project complexity?" We then summarise the empirical work we have undertaken to date in investigating this. Looking at the aerospace industry, we find a range of responses to different forms of complexity, drawing on important human, social and organizational capital.
Open Access
The role of social capital in project managers’ responses to complexities
(European Academy of Management (EURAM), 2024-06-28) Turner, Neil; Maylor, Harvey; Swart, Juani; Prieto Pastor, Isabel; Cruz, Natalia
Social capital has been demonstrated to be an important commodity for managers in project-based operations. This paper examines the role of social capital in the work of 36 managers from three engineering firms, using qualitative case data. We ask the research question ‘How is Social Capital used by Project Managers in responding to complexities?’ We derive an improved understanding of how social capital is used in responding to their context. To do this, we draw on two established bodies of work. First, we use the lived experience of the complexity faced by the managers to describe the context. Secondly, we use social capital theory to examine what elements of social capital are employed in response. The interchange between these is initially framed with ‘contextual complexities’ as stimulus and the 'social capital employed’ as response. Our findings show the temporal dynamics of complexity, whereby responses are not isolated but dependent upon both recent experience and expectations of future events. We also show the importance of social relationships in developing valuable recursive patterns of interaction in the project context.
Open Access
Towards an understanding of ‘dynamic ambidexterity’ in supporting managerial resilience
(None, 2018-04-27) Turner, Neil; Kutsch, Elmar; Maylor, Harvey; Swart, Juani
Resilience is clearly a desirable attribute, but characterising it is challenging. Individual- and organizational-level resilience are established fields of study, whereas mid-range, managerial-level, evidence of how resilience is achieved is lacking. In this paper we develop the argument that the ability both to exploit and explore (i.e. ambidexterity) may support, and be a valuable way to analyse, resilience. We ask: ‘What ambidextrous actions support managerial resilience?’ We report on a study carried out with senior staff from five major UK-based organizations. From our qualitative data investigating critical incidents and ‘near-misses’ we first unpack the key actions that managers undertake, categorising them in terms of ‘preparing’, ‘noticing’, ‘identifying’ and ‘determining potential responses’. These contain complex, interwoven, exploitative and exploratory characteristics which enable the awareness and containment of potential adversities, yet these vary over time. We posit that these actions are supported by the ‘dynamics’ of contextual ambidexterity which we identify and illustrate. These findings contribute to both the ambidexterity and resilience literatures and lead to practical considerations for managers.
Unknown
Understand, reduce, respond: project complexity management theory and practice
(Emerald, 2017-08-07) Maylor, Harvey; Turner, Neil;
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of complexity and its management from an OM perspective, building on and extending the systematic literature review published in this journal in 2011, and provide a foundation for exploring the interactions between complexities and responses. Design/methodology/approach The paper takes a subjective view of complexity, focusing on the “lived experience” of managers. It takes an updated systematic literature review, and demonstrates the comprehensiveness of a framework to classify complexities of projects. It reports the findings from 43 workshops with over 1,100 managers. Findings First, the complexity framework is effective in aiding understanding. Second, and somewhat unexpectedly, managers were able to identify strategies to reduce the majority of complexities that they faced. Third, the workshops identified a typology of responses to residual complexities. Research limitations/implications The framework has demonstrated its utility, and a gap in understanding emergent complexities is identified. The framework further presents the opportunity to explore the recursive nature of complexity and response. Practical implications This paper provides a framework that is both comprehensive and comprehensible. The authors demonstrate that complexities can be reduced and provide a means to assess responses to residual complexities, including potentially matching managers to projects. Originality/value This work extends the previous systematic review combined with extensive empirical data to generate findings that are having impact in practice, and have the potential to strengthen a relatively neglected area within OM. A research agenda is suggested to support this.
Unknown
What does it take for organizations to change themselves? The influences on the internal dynamics of organizational routines undergoing planned change
(Cranfield University, 2014-03) Murray-Webster, Ruth; Maylor, Harvey
Accomplishing desired benefits from investments in planned change is problematical for organizations, their leaders and the change agents charged with delivery. This is despite a well-developed literature, replete with advice on how change should be achieved. Examination of this literature shows the primary focus on change agents and their practices. This research widens the focus by observing the influence of change agents, change recipients and line managers on organizational routines undergoing planned change. It examines the interplay between stability and change in organizational routines, adopting a social practice perspective, and the routine intended to change as the unit of analysis (Feldman and Pentland, 2003, 2005). The research builds on claims that to understand the patterns of action within routines requires the internal dynamics – the claimed duality between ostensive (in principle) and performative (in practice) aspects - to be examined. A research method to operationalize the study of this claimed duality was devised following the principles of Strong Structuration (Stones, 2005). This method enabled a unique conceptualization of the study of routine dynamics, focused on planned change from the perspective of multiple, interdependent actors. Two cases of change agents following the advice in the planned change literature were explored. In one case, stability of the routine persisted when change was intended. In the other, change was relatively easy to achieve irrespective of change agent actions. The primary contribution is the demonstration of how the attitudes to change of change recipients, line managers and change agents influence the internal dynamics of routines undergoing planned change. Other contributions pertain to the method of ‘unpacking’ organizational routines and its potential for shaping future practice. This research does not offer new ‘normative’ advice but instead sensitizes planned change practitioners to the level of analysis they need to carry out to ensure that their interventions are suitably designed.

Browsing by Author "Maylor, Harvey"

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