Projectification in Iceland measured – a comparison of two methods

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to improve the methodology of assessing the importance of projects in a national economy. The subject of study is projectification in the Icelandic economy and to measure this, the share of project work in relation to the total work done in an organisation was used as an indicator. This is a time-consuming approach and it was decided to do an additional benchmark study, to verify the alleged importance of projects, and to investigate the usefulness of a benchmark study and establish whether the two approaches could complement each other.Design/methodology/approachData were collected from 146 organisations in Iceland, regarding the share of project work relative to total work, as explained by Schoper et al. (2018). In addition, by participation in a large quarterly omnibus survey among people with high management positions in their respective companies in Iceland, more general data were collected. The methods and outcomes of both surveys were compared, and general conclusions are drawn.FindingsThe authors conclude that the two research approaches complement each other and could be applied in a systematic way to give a longitudinal view of the evolution of projectification in a society, where projectification is measured, traced over time and benchmarked. The first part is more complicated and expensive in execution, and could be done at longer intervals, whereas the second part takes less effort and can be used to monitor the evolution more regularly.Originality/valueTwo very different research approaches were applied to assess projectification. On the one hand, a detailed quantitative survey of the economic impact of projects. On the other hand, a general survey of a very large sample of managers. This combined approach to assess the level of projectification is new, and the authors hope that this will be of value in the context of developing efficient, reliable and practical methods to assess projectification of societies.