Project-oriented management: dealing with contradictions

Abstract

More and more modern companies are choosing to organise their work in temporary and permanent forms at the same time. In doing so, they have to face contradictions between different modes of organising. Project management is well established to manage the temporary forms of work, while line management is used to manage permanent forms. This article introduces the concept of project-oriented management as a promising, though ambitious approach for dealing with the inevitable contradictions and dilemmas' that arise in those organisations using both ways of organising at the same time. We present the findings of an empirical case study that revealed 178 obvious and hidden contradictions between temporary and permanent work inside a project- oriented company. The case study uses the repertory grid technique to uncover the personal constructs - individual images of reality - of line and project managers. Our quantitative and qualitative analysis shows that more than 70% of the contradictions may be explained by two distinctions.