How Project Management and Top Management Involvement Affect the Innovativeness of Professional Service Organizations—An Empirical Study on Hospitals

Abstract

This study investigates how top management involvement and project management professionalization affect firm innovativeness. We focus on hospitals as representative of professional service organizations characterized by pluralistic individual and organizational interests. A multiyear analysis of project management survey and objective performance data of 90 hospitals indicates that top management involvement in innovation projects reduces hospital innovativeness, and project management professionalization increases hospital innovativeness. However, increasing project management professionalization simultaneously strengthens top management involvement’s effectiveness. The results contribute to our understanding of potential interactions and different effects of project management efforts at different organizational levels in professional service organizations.