Governing Project-based Firms: Promoting Market-like Processes within Hierarchies

Lars Lindkvist ()

Journal of Management & Governance, 2004, vol. 8, issue 1, 3-25

Abstract: This article takes an empirical point of departure in an in-depth study of an R&D organization that was transformed into a strongly project-based organization. As demonstrated in the analysis, its mode of governance differed radically from traditional bureaucratic and cultural conceptions of governance. Instead the new “rules-of-the-game” introduced amounted to creating an institutional framework, promoting new individual responsibilities and enabling lower level market-like processes of self-organizing discovery. The specific set-up used, included anew organization structure, new responsibilities, etc and the use of “prices”, playing a role both in shaping incentives and guiding knowledge work. The interpretation put forward relies on combining economic theories of governance with more “fine-grained” organization theories, and suggests that there is some discretion for top managers to engage in the design of a market-promoting mode of governance for their project-based firms. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 2004

Keywords: governance; project-based firms; R&D organization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

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DOI: 10.1023/B:MAGO.0000015392.75507.ad

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